Othello (character) of "The Three Apples", one of the stories narrated in the "One Thousand and One Nights" ("Arabian Nights"). Desdemona is the only named character in Cinthio's tale, his other characters being identified as the Moor, the squadron leader, the ensign, and the ensign's wife. While Shakespeare closely followed Cinthio's tale in composing "Othello", he departed from it in some details, particularly in the tale's depiction of Desdemona's death. In Cinthio, the Moor commissions his ensign to bludgeon Desdemona to death with a sand-filled stocking. In gruesome detail, Cinthio follows each blow, and, when the lady is dead, the Moor and
The Cambridge Shakespeare The Cambridge Shakespeare The Cambridge Shakespeare is a long-running series of critical editions of William Shakespeare's works published by Cambridge University Press. The name encompasses three distinct series: "The Cambridge Shakespeare" (1863–1866), "The New Shakespeare" (1921–1969), and "The New Cambridge Shakespeare" (1984–). "The Cambridge Shakespeare" was edited by William George Clark and William Aldis Wright and released in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866. Clark and Wright used the "First Folio" (1623) as their base text and collated it with the second, third, and fourth folios as well as all the known quarto editions. The edition modernized the orthography to