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Desdemona
also: жену свою, Дездемону
The wife of Othello in Shakespeare's tragedy, murdered by her husband out of jealous suspicion.
Reading notes
- To I. P. Chekhov, 1891. Venice. §3 the house where Desdemona lived
The traditional Venetian house associated with Shakespeare's Desdemona, heroine of \textit{Othello} -- a tourist-trail identification rather than a historical fact, since Desdemona is a fictional character.
- To the Chekhovs, 1891. Venice. §5 the house where Desdemona lived
\textit{домик, где жила Дездемона} -- a stock nineteenth-century tourist attraction (the so-called "Casa di Desdemona") pointing out a house associated with Shakespeare's heroine, treated by guidebooks and gondoliers as a historical site despite Desdemona's fictional status; Chekhov's Venice companion Suvorin's circle visited the same stop, also noted in, \S3.
- To the Chekhovs, 1891. Venice. §11 The house where Desdemona lived is to let
The same standing Venetian tourist joke -- the traditional house associated with Shakespeare's Desdemona -- that Chekhov had made the previous day in his letter to Kiseleva (\S4, "The shade of the fair Desdemona sends her smile to the rural superintendent"); here delivered as a flat, deadpan real-estate notice instead.