Othello tale in composing "Othello", he departed from it in some details. Brabantio, Roderigo, and several minor characters are not found in Cinthio, for example, and Shakespeare's Emilia takes part in the handkerchief mischief while her counterpart in Cinthio does not. Unlike in "Othello", in Cinthio, the "Ensign" (the play's Iago) lusts after Desdemona and is spurred to revenge when she rejects him. Shakespeare's opening scenes are unique to his tragedy, as is the tender scene between Emilia and Desdemona as the lady prepares for bed. Shakespeare's most striking departure from Cinthio is the manner of his heroine's death. In Shakespeare,
Othello (character) directors lean away from a North African Moorish interpretation but Shakespeare's textual references are unclear. Iago twice uses the word "Barbary" or "Barbarian" to refer to Othello, seemingly referring to the Barbary coast inhabited by the "tawny" Moors. Roderigo calls Othello "the thicklips", which seems to refer to European conceptions of Sub-Saharan African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that, as these comments are all intended as insults by the characters, they need not be taken literally. Michael Neill, editor of the Oxford Shakespeare edition, notes that the earliest critical references to Othello's colour, (Thomas Rymer's 1693 critique of the play, and