One of the most remarkable things that I learned in preparing for today's lecture on Othello came from Norman Sanders' splendid introduction to the New Cambridge edition. In it, he gives a concise but thorough summary of the sources that Shakespeare used in writing the play. The most important of these was the original prose story version from Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi, or The Hundred Tales, in English. Shakespeare followed it quite closely, particularly in acts three to five, but he made many changes and additions as well. The most striking example of which concerned the small amount of original material that led to the creation of some of the play's most memorable moments: "A sentence in Cinthio to the effect that Desdemona's family wished her to marry another man is the seed that produced Desdemona's noble birth, her elopement and her distraught and racially prejudiced father, indeed much of the matter contained in the first three scenes of the play... Perhaps most remarkable of all are the breathtaking addresses to the Senate by Othello and Desdemona which Shakespeare conjured out of one bald statement from the Italian original: 'It happened that a virturous lady of wondrous beauty called Disdemona, impelled not by female appetiete but by the Moor's good qualities, fell in love with him, and he, vanquished by the lady's beauty and noble mind, likewise was enamboured of her.'" (The altered spelling of Desdemona is not a typo. It's Cinthio's.) It seems, therefore, that one of the ways that Shakespeare worked was to begin with a result (in this case, Desdemona's family's thwarted wish regarding her choice of husband) and to work backwards from it. Sanders' introduction has many enlightening moments such as this one. It's highly recommended.