Othello Act 4 Scene 3

Please, sir, don't put yourself to any more trouble.

Not at all — the walk will do me good.

Goodnight, madam. My humble thanks to your ladyship.

Your honour is very welcome.

Shall we walk, sir? — Oh — Desdemona —

My lord?

Go to bed at once. I'll be

back straight away. Send your attendant away.

See that it's done.

I will, my lord.

How are things now? He seems gentler than he was.

He says he'll be back immediately.

He's ordered me to go to bed

and told me to send you away.

Send me away?

Those were his instructions. So, good Emilia,

give me my nightclothes, and goodnight.

We mustn't annoy him now.

I wish you had never laid eyes on him.

I don't wish that. I love him so much

that even his obstinacy, his rebukes, his scowling —

unpin me, would you — even those have a kind of grace in them.

I've put those sheets you asked for on the bed.

It makes no odds. God, what foolish things our minds are.

If I die before you, please — wrap me for burial

in one of those same sheets. (She asked for her wedding sheets one scene ago. Now she asks to be buried in them. Shakespeare gives her the thought and offers no explanation for it.)

Come now, you're rambling.

My mother had a maid called Barbary.

She was in love, and the man she loved went wild

and abandoned her. She had a song about a willow —

an old thing it was, but it said exactly what had happened to her,

and she died singing it. Tonight that song

won't leave my head. It's all I can manage

not to hang my head over to one side

and sing it the way poor Barbary did. Hurry up, would you. (The willow was the emblem of love that has been thrown away, and the song is a real ballad older than the play. Desdemona did not write it and it is not about her; she has simply found that it fits.)

Shall I fetch your nightgown?

No — unpin me here.

That Lodovico is a good-looking man.

A very handsome man.

He speaks well.

I know a lady in Venice who'd have walked

barefoot to Palestine for one touch of his bottom lip.

(singing) The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,

sing all a green willow.

Her hand on her breast, her head on her knee,

sing willow, willow, willow.

The fresh streams ran past her and murmured her

moaning back,

sing willow, willow, willow.

Her salt tears fell from her and softened the

stones —

put these aside.

Sing willow, willow, willow.

Do hurry — he'll be here soon.

Sing all a green willow must be my garland.

Let nobody blame him; I accept his contempt.

No — that isn't the next line. Listen: who's that knocking? (She loses her place in the song, and the line she sings out of order is the one that describes what she is doing. She corrects the words and not the sentiment.)

It's the wind.

I called my love a false love — but what did he say then?

Sing willow, willow, willow.

If I chase other women, you'll go to bed with other

men. —

There, off you go. Goodnight. My eyes are itching.

Does that mean crying is coming?

It means nothing either way.

I've heard people say it does. Oh, these men, these men.

Do you honestly believe — tell me, Emilia —

that there really are women who betray their husbands

in that gross way?

There are some, no

question.

Would you do a thing like that for the whole world?

Why — wouldn't you?

No — by this light from heaven.

Nor would I, by this light from heaven.

I could just as easily do it in the dark.

Would you really do such a thing for the whole world?

The world is an enormous thing. That's a huge payment

for a small sin.

Honestly, I don't believe you would.

Honestly, I think I would — and undo it once I

had. Mind you, I wouldn't do it for

a cheap love-ring, or lengths of fine linen, or

dresses, petticoats, caps, or any small allowance.

But for the whole world — God's pity, who

wouldn't cheat on her husband in order to make

him a king? I'd risk purgatory for that.

Curse me if I'd do such a wrong

for the whole world.

But the wrong is only a wrong within the world —

and if you've got the world as your wages, then it's a wrong inside

your own world, and you could put it right

quickly enough.

I don't believe any such woman exists.

Yes there are — a dozen, and as many more on top as

would fill the world they were playing for.

But I do think it's their husbands' fault

when wives go wrong. Say they neglect their duties

and pour what belongs to us into other women's laps.

Or they break out in petty jealousies

and start restricting us. Or say they hit us.

Or cut down our allowance out of spite.

Well — we can feel bitterness too, and though we've some virtue,

we've a taste for revenge as well. Let husbands understand

that their wives have senses like theirs. They see, and

smell,

and have a taste for sweet and sour,

exactly as husbands do. What is it men are after

when they swap us for someone else? Is it pleasure?

I think it is. Is it desire that causes it?

I think so. Is it weakness that makes them slip?

That too. And haven't we got desires,

appetites for pleasure, and weakness, just as men have?

So let them treat us properly. Otherwise let them realise

that whatever wrong we do, they taught us how. (This is the only sustained answer to Iago that anyone in the play gets to make. His whole method rests on the idea that a woman's desire is a monstrous thing needing explanation; Emilia says it is ordinary, and the same as a man's.)

Goodnight, goodnight. God send me habits like this:

not to learn wrong from wrong, but to be improved by it. (She has listened to the whole argument and declined it in two lines. Neither woman convinces the other, and the play does not say which of them is right.)