[Translated by Sir Barry Jackson] Of all the tragedies of Shakespeare, Othello is undoubtedly the one which the French theatre-goer has been able to accept with least perplexity. The action is complete, developing with compact logic. Louis Gillet, the French critic, says: “In form, Othello is the author’s finest work. No play is so simple, so well constructed, or more in accord with the classic spirit. The poet has left us nothing more complete and rounded. . . . All the reactions are of common humanity, entirely comprehensible, with no place for the supernatural or the marvellous.” There is truth in this statement: although perhaps it might be better re-phrased in a slightly different manner—in Othello the mysterious, always repellent to Latin races, does not immediately make itself apparent, and might indeed in desultory reading be thought to be absent altogether, while the characters are so conceived that French actors, trained by classic discipline, will always be more at ease in this play than in any other of the poet’s works.