linguistic:paraphrasing, stylistic:style_transfer, linguistic:voice_change, information:extraction
Restoration and 18th century

All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them: Othello being allocated to the King's Company's repertoire. These patents stated that "all the women's parts to be acted in either of the said two companies for the time to come may be performed by women". The first professional acting appearance by a woman on the English stage was that of Desdemona in Othello on 8 December 1660, although history does not record who took the role. Margaret Hughes is the first woman known to have played Desdemona.

In Restoration theatres, it was common for Shakespeare's plays to be adapted or rewritten. Othello was not adapted in this way, although it has often been cut to conform to current ideas of decorum or refinement. These cuts were not limited to removing violent, religious or sexual content, but extended on different occasions to removing references to eavesdropping, to Othello's fit, to Othello's tears, to the first 200 lines of the fourth act, or to the entire role of Bianca.

Among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century actors praised for expressing the nobility of the Moor – and fully exploring the degrading passions which lead to the brutal murder he commits – were Thomas Betterton and Spranger Barry. A review of the latter by John Bernard expressed how Barry's Othello "looked a few seconds in Desdemona's face, as if to read her feelings and disprove his suspicions; then, turning away, as the adverse conviction gathered in his heart, he spoke falteringly, and gushed into tears."

The first professional performances of the play in North America are likely to have been those of the Hallam Company: Robert Upton (William Hallam 's advance man) performed Othello at a makeshift theatre in New York on 26 December 1751; and religious objections to theatre led the Hallam Company to perform Othello as a series of "moral dialogues" at Rhode Island in 1761.

Although not performed in Portugal until the nineteenth century, the play holds of the distinction of being the first of Shakespeare's works to have reached a Portuguese-speaking country, possibly at the request of a Portuguese reader, in 1765.