Othello and questions the men as to what happened. Othello blames Cassio for the disturbance and strips him of his rank. Cassio is distraught. Iago persuades Cassio to ask Desdemona to convince her husband to reinstate Cassio. Iago now persuades Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona. When Desdemona drops a handkerchief (the first gift given to her by Othello), Emilia finds it, and gives it to her husband Iago, at his request, unaware of what he plans to do with it. Othello reenters and vows with Iago for the death of Desdemona and Cassio, after which he makes Iago
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