Desdemona Desdemona Desdemona () is a character in William Shakespeare's play "Othello" (c. 1601–1604). Shakespeare's Desdemona is a Venetian beauty who enrages and disappoints her father, a Venetian senator, when she elopes with Othello, a Moorish man several years her senior. When her husband is deployed to Cyprus in the service of the Republic of Venice, Desdemona accompanies him. There, her husband is manipulated by his ensign Iago into believing she is an adulteress, and, in the last act, she is murdered by her estranged spouse. The role has attracted notable actresses through the centuries and has the distinction of being
Manservant and Maidservant an altogether unforeseeable change of heart that the real difficulties begin. Is the repentant master a victim along with his sometime slaves? What compensation, or consolation, can there be for the wrongs that have been done?” — from the back cover of the NYRB Classics edition, 2001. Manservant and Maidservant Manservant and Maidservant is a 1947 novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett. It was published in the United States with the title "Bullivant and the Lambs." Whenever the author was asked which of her novels were her favorites, she always mentioned "Manservant and Maidservant" and "A House and Its Head." “"Manservant and