In the board game ‘Othello’, players must turn double-sided counters to their advantage. This doubleness is shared by Shakespeare’s play of 1604, marked from its outset by a dual and paradoxical title Othello, or the Moor of Venice . This study teases out instances of doubleness, duplication and paradox to discuss the play’s language and its themes. The chapters cover the issues of substitution, of racial polarity and its confusions, of the contested place of the domestic in the play, and the mixed generic signals this comedy-turned-tragedy gives out to its audiences. Throughout, the emphasis is on the close readings of the play on the page and on stage, informed by the recent scholarship that has made Othello so pressing a play for the vexed cultural politics of the 21st century.