The problem of Othello

William Shaxpere of Stratford died in 1616, unremarked by his contemporaries. Nobody published a word about it at the time. Othello was printed in 1622, then again the following year in the First Folio. The 1622 and 1623 versions are significantly different. Who did the revisions? Where have the manuscripts gone?

This is just one incongruency in the whole Shakespeare picture. Julius Caesar wasn’t printed until the First Folio, same with Macbeth and As You Like It, something like half of the plays had never been published. And yet, not a scrap of handwriting that went into the immense tome survives. It was either lost or deliberately destroyed, and the evidence strongly suggests the latter.