Othello Act 3 Scene 4

Do you know, fellow, where Lieutenant

Cassio lies?

I daren't say he lies anywhere.

Why not, man?

He's a soldier, and for me to say a soldier lies

is asking to be stabbed.

Oh, come on. Where does he lodge?

To tell you where he lodges would be to tell you

where I lie. (The whole exchange turns on 'lie' meaning both to sleep somewhere and to tell an untruth. The Clown refuses to say where Cassio sleeps on the grounds that saying anything at all would be lying.)

Can anything be made of this?

I don't know where he lodges, and for me to

invent a lodging and say he lies here, or lies

there, would be lying in my own throat.

Can you ask around for him, and be enlightened

by what you hear?

I'll put the world through its catechism about him — that is,

ask questions, and get my answers out of them.

Go and find him, tell him to come here. Tell him I've

worked on my lord for him, and I hope everything will

come right.

Doing that is within the range of human intelligence,

and so I'll attempt the doing of it.

Where could I have lost that handkerchief, Emilia?

I don't know, madam.

Believe me, I'd rather have lost my purse

with all the gold in it. And if my noble Moor

weren't sound in his mind, and free of the meanness

that jealous people are made of, this would be enough

to set him thinking badly.

Isn't he the jealous sort?

Him? I think the sun where he was born

burned all that out of him. (She explains her husband's temperament by the climate he comes from — which is the same reasoning Iago used one scene ago to argue that her marriage was against nature. In her mouth it is entirely loving, and it is just as wrong.)

Look, here he

comes.

I won't leave him alone now until Cassio

is called back to him. — How are you, my lord?

Well enough, my good lady. (aside) Oh, how hard it is

to pretend! —

How are you, Desdemona?

Well, my good lord.

(taking her hand) Give me your hand. This hand

is damp, my lady.

It hasn't felt age yet, or known any sorrow.

That indicates fertility and a generous heart. (A warm, damp palm was believed to show a hot, sexual temperament. He is examining his wife's body for evidence, out loud, while holding her hand.)

Hot, hot, and damp. This hand of yours needs

shutting away from its freedom — fasting and prayer,

plenty of discipline, devout exercises —

because there's a young sweating devil in here

that habitually rebels. It's a good hand,

an open one.

You may well say so,

because that's the hand that gave my heart away.

A generous hand indeed. In the old days hearts came with hands;

our modern coat of arms is hands without hearts. (In the old marriage rite, giving your hand meant giving your heart along with it. He is telling her the two have come apart — the gesture, without the thing it used to stand for.)

I can't talk about this. Come now — your promise.

What promise, pet?

I've sent word for Cassio to come and speak with you.

I've a nasty streaming cold bothering me.

Lend me your handkerchief.

Here, my lord.

The one I gave you.

I haven't got it on me.

No?

No, honestly, my lord.

That's careless of you. That handkerchief

was given to my mother by an Egyptian woman.

She was a magician, and could very nearly read

people's minds. She told her that as long as she kept

it,

it would keep her lovable and hold my father

entirely to her love. But if she lost it,

or gave it away, my father's eye

would find her loathsome, and his heart would go hunting

after new attractions. Dying, she gave it to me,

and told me that when fate provided me with a wife

I should give it to her. I did. So take care of it —

treasure it as you would your own eye.

To lose it or give it away would be a ruin

nothing else could match. (He has never told her any of this before. The curse arrives attached to the object at the exact moment the object is already gone.)

Can that be true?

It's true. There's magic woven into it.

A prophetess who had counted out

two hundred circuits of the sun in this world

sewed the pattern in a prophetic frenzy.

The silkworms that produced the thread were consecrated,

and it was dyed in a preparation the experts make

from the embalmed hearts of virgins.

Honestly — is that true?

Entirely true. So look after it properly.

Then I wish to God I'd never set eyes on it.

What? Why?

Why are you speaking so abruptly, so wildly?

Is it lost? Is it gone? Speak — is it missing?

Heaven help us.

What did you say?

It isn't lost. But what if it were?

What?

I say it isn't lost.

Fetch it. Let me see it.

Well, I could. But I won't just now.

This is a trick to put me off my request.

Please — take Cassio back.

Fetch me the handkerchief! (aside) I've got a bad

feeling about this.

Come now, come.

You'll never find a more capable man.

The handkerchief!

Please — talk to me about Cassio.

The handkerchief!

A man who has, all his life,

built his whole fortune on your friendship;

shared dangers with you —

The handkerchief! (The third time, and by now it is the only thing he can say. He demanded proof he could see with his own eyes; what he has is a piece of cloth that isn't there.)

Honestly — you're being unfair.

God's wounds!

Isn't this man jealous?

I've never seen him like this before.

There must be something uncanny about this handkerchief.

I'm wretched at having lost it.

It takes more than a year or two to show you what a man is.

They're all just stomachs, and we're all just food.

They eat us hungrily, and when they're full

they belch us up. (Emilia gets the plainest lines in the play, and this is the plainest of them. Nobody on stage takes any notice.)

Look — Cassio, and my husband.

(to Cassio) There's no other way — she's the one who has to do it.

And look, what luck! Go and press her about it.

Well now, good Cassio — what news have you?

Madam, the same request as before. I beg you

that through your good offices I may exist

again, and be part of the affection of the man

whom I honour completely, with every

duty of my heart. I'd rather not be kept waiting.

If my offence is of such a deadly kind

that neither my past service, nor my present sorrow,

nor anything I might deserve in future

can buy me back into his favour,

then simply knowing that would be worth something to me.

I'd dress myself in a forced contentment

and shut myself into some other line of life,

living on whatever charity fortune hands out.

Oh, kindest of men, Cassio —

my advocacy is out of tune just now.

My lord isn't my lord. I wouldn't recognise him

if his face had changed as much as his mood has.

So help me every blessed spirit,

I've spoken for you as hard as I possibly could,

and stood in the very centre of the target of his anger

for speaking so freely. You'll have to be patient a while.

What I can do, I will — and I'll do more

than I'd dare do for myself. Let that be enough for you.

Is my lord angry?

He left just now,

and certainly in a strange state of agitation.

Can he be angry? I've watched cannon fire

blow his own ranks into the air

and, like the devil, snatch his own brother

away from his very arm — and now he's angry?

Something serious, then. I'll go and find him.

There's something in it, if he's angry.

Please do. (Iago leaves.)

Something to do with the state, surely —

either from Venice, or some plot not yet hatched

that's been exposed to him here in Cyprus —

has muddied his clear spirit. And in cases like that

men pick quarrels with small things

when the real cause is a large one. That's how it is.

Let a finger ache, and it spreads the feeling

of pain through the rest of the body,

healthy as it is. No — we must remember men aren't gods,

and not expect from them the attentiveness

that suits a wedding day. Shame on me, Emilia —

I was, poor soldier that I am,

putting his unkindness on trial in my mind.

But now I find I'd bribed the witness,

and he's been wrongly charged. (She has run a trial in her head, caught herself coaching the evidence, and thrown out her own case against him. She is the only person in this play who audits her own reasoning — and she does it to acquit a man who, one scene ago, knelt and swore to kill her.)

I pray to heaven it is

state business, as you think, and not some notion

or jealous fancy about you.

Oh, God — I never gave him any reason to.

But jealous minds won't accept that as an answer.

They're never jealous because there's a reason —

they're jealous because they're jealous. It's a monster

that fathers itself and gives birth to itself. (She has the disease diagnosed exactly right. She is also the person who put the handkerchief into her husband's hand, and she still has no idea what she did.)

Heaven keep that monster out of Othello's mind.

Amen to that, madam.

I'll go and look for him. — Cassio, wait about here.

If I find him in the right mood I'll raise your case

and do everything I can to get it settled.

I humbly thank your ladyship.

God save you, Cassio, my friend.

What are you doing away from

home?

How are you, my beautiful Bianca?

Honestly, sweet love, I was on my way to your house.

And I was going to your lodgings, Cassio.

What — stay away a whole week? Seven days and nights,

a hundred and sixty-eight hours — and hours apart from a lover

drag a hundred and sixty times slower than the clock.

Oh, what a weary sum to add up.

Forgive me, Bianca.

I've been weighed down with heavy thoughts all this while,

but when I've a longer stretch of free time

I'll pay off this debt of absence. Sweet Bianca —

(giving her Desdemona's handkerchief) copy this pattern out for me. (The handkerchief has now travelled from Desdemona to Emilia to Iago to Cassio to Bianca. Only one person in that chain knows what it is for.)

Oh, Cassio — where did this come from?

This is a present from some newer friend.

Now I can feel a reason for the absence I've been feeling.

So it's come to this? Well, well.

Oh, come off it, woman.

Throw your filthy guesses back into the devil's teeth,

since that's where you got them. Now you're jealous

that this came from some mistress — some

keepsake.

No. On my honour, Bianca.

Then whose is it?

I don't know that either. I found it in my room.

I like the embroidery. Before it's asked for —

which it very likely will be — I'd like it copied.

Take it, do that, and leave me for now.

Leave you? Why?

I'm waiting here for the General,

and it would do me no credit, and I don't want,

to have him see me with a woman on my arm.

Why not, may I ask?

It isn't that I don't love you.

No — it's that you don't love me.

Please walk with me a little way,

and tell me whether I'll see you tonight.

It's only a little way I can come with you,

because I'm on duty here. But I'll see you soon.

Very well. I have to take things as they come.