Othello (1604) is among four of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, marking the peak of his dramatic work. Written in the genre of a family tragedy, popular in Elizabethan England, “Othello” was staged at court and enjoyed enormous success.
Shakespeare’s comedy “The Merchant of Venice” (c. 1596) was written by him for his company, which wanted to stage a play that could rival, at the time, Marlowe’s popular “The Jew of Malta.”