Bianca (Othello) request. Midway through 4.1., and prior to Bianca's entrance, Othello has been secretly observing a bawdy discussion between Iago and Cassio about the latter's sexual exploits with a young woman. Thanks to Iago's impeccable planning (and some bad luck), neither speaker mentions the name of the woman in question; it is in fact Bianca, but Othello tragically assumes it to be his wife, Desdemona. Bianca suddenly enters, and her suspicions of Cassio are even greater than before. She is convinced that the handkerchief belongs to another woman, and throws it contemptuously at Cassio's feet. In Othello's eyes, her apparent jealousy
Othello (character) the 1709 engraving in Nicholas Rowe's edition of Shakespeare), assume him to be a black man, while the earliest known North African interpretation was not until Edmund Kean's production of 1814. Honigmann questions the view that Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moorish ambassador of the Arab King of Barbary to Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, was one inspiration for Othello. He stayed with his retinue in London for several months and occasioned much discussion, and thus might have inspired Shakespeare's play, written only a few years afterwards. The exact date that Othello was written is unknown, though sources