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Plays › The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice › Clown

Clown

The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice · 14 speeches across 2 scenes

A comic servant to Othello and Desdemona, providing bawdy wordplay and levity amid the mounting tragedy.

Who they are

The Clown appears in Acts 3 and 4, serving as Othello’s household servant. His brief scenes offer darkly comic relief through puns on sexual innuendo and soldiers’ lies, directly following pivotal plot moments—the drinking scene and Cassio’s disgrace, then before the handkerchief confrontation. He interacts with the musicians (Act 3.1) and with Desdemona (Act 3.4), delivering messages that ironically underscore themes of trust, deception, and honesty.

Playing them

Play with a dry, mischievous energy—relish the double entendres but keep a straight face. Physicalize the wordplay (e.g., miming a wind instrument for 'wind instrument'). Traditions often cast a young male actor; some productions double the Clown with another minor role. Vocal control matters: the jokes land best when played as naive wit rather than broad clowning.

Where they appear

Play Clown

Take the part and Yorick reads every other role aloud, following you line by line as you speak.

Rehearse Othello on your phone: App Store · Google Play

Shakespeare the way it was meant to be had — out loud

These plays were written to be performed, not silently read. Yorick is a rehearsal app that lets you perform them: you take a part in any of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, and Yorick reads every other role aloud, listens while you speak your lines, keeps your place, and prompts you the moment you dry.

It is built for the person who has to be off book by tech week — school and college productions, community theatre, festivals, drama students and classical auditions — and for anyone who wants to hear a scene rather than skim it. Alongside the performance you get a plain-English translation of every speech, scene context, performance notes, and the ability to ask about any line and get an answer that already knows the play, the scene and who is speaking.

The text is the public-domain Cambridge/Globe edition. Translations and notes are AI-generated rehearsal aids for actors and students, not a scholarly apparatus. Yorick runs in a browser with nothing to install, and on iPhone and Android.