Desdemona is a character in William Shakespeare's play Othello. Shakespeare's Desdemona is a Venetian beauty who enrages and disappoints her father, a Venetian senator, when she elopes with Othello, a man several years her senior and not of her race. 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 adultress, 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 the role performed by Margaret Hughes, the...more »