Othello that opposition of Brabantio to Desdemona marrying Othello-a respected and honoured general-cannot make sense except in racial terms, citing the scene where Brabantio accuses Othello of using witchcraft to make his daughter fall in love with him, saying it is "unnatural" for Desdemona to desire Othello's "sooty bosom". Singh argued that since people with dark complexions are common in the Mediterranean area that for a Venetian senator like Brabantio to oppose Desdemona marrying Othello for merely being swarthy makes no sense, and that character of Othello was intended to be black. Michael Neill, editor of "The Oxford Shakespeare", notes that
Othello his actions and leaves to tell the others what has happened. "Othello" is an adaptation of the Italian writer Cinthio's tale "Un Capitano Moro" ("A Moorish Captain") from his "Gli Hecatommithi" (1565), a collection of one hundred tales in the style of Giovanni Boccaccio's "Decameron." No English translation of Cinthio was available in Shakespeare's lifetime, and verbal echoes in "Othello" are closer to the Italian original than to Gabriel Chappuy's 1584 French translation. Cinthio's tale may have been based on an actual incident occurring in Venice about 1508. It also resembles an incident described in the earlier tale of "The