Margaret Hughes, also Peg Hughes or Margaret Hewes, was an English actress who is often credited as the first professional actress on the English stage, as a result of her appearance on 8 December 1660. Hughes was the mistress of the English Civil War general Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
Portrait by Sir Peter Lely, 1672
The Dorset Garden Theatre of the Duke's Company of actors, where Hughes spent a busy season in 1676.
Portrait of Hughes, with breast exposed, c. 1670 by Peter Lely
Margaret Hughes' lover and partner, Prince Rupert, Duke of Cumberland, by Simon Verelst
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 Moorish Venetian military prodigy. 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.
Desdémone by Alexandre Cabanel
Othello and Desdemona in Venice by Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856)
Rodolfo Amoedo – Desdemona
Suzanne Cloutier as Desdemona in Orson Welles' 1952 film, Othello
