Othello and literary adaptations. Roderigo, a wealthy and dissolute gentleman, complains to his friend Iago, an ensign, that Iago has not told him about the secret marriage between Desdemona, the daughter of a senator named Brabantio, and Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army. Roderigo is upset because he loves Desdemona and had asked her father for her hand in marriage. Iago hates Othello for promoting a younger man named Cassio above him, whom Iago considers less capable a soldier than himself, and tells Roderigo that he plans to use Othello for his own advantage. Iago convinces Roderigo to wake
Othello is the model for Shakespeare's Othello, but some researchers believe the poet also took inspiration from the several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England "circa" 1600. Another possible source was the "Description of Africa" by Leo Africanus. The book was an enormous success in Europe, and was translated into many other languages, remaining a definitive reference work for decades (and to some degree, centuries) afterwards. An English translation by John Pory appeared in 1600 under the title "A Geographical Historie of Africa, Written in Arabicke and Italian by Iohn Leo a More..." in which form Shakespeare may have seen