from act 4, scene 3 – Othello
by richibi
when Desdemona learns that Othello
suspects her of adultery, she asks
her maidservant
Dost thou in conscience think,–tell me, Emilia,–
That there be women do abuse their husbands
In such gross kind?
Emilia, older, wiser, replies
There be some such, no question.
But I do think it is their husbands’ faults
If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is: and doth affection breed it?
I think it doth: is’t frailty that thus errs?
It is so too: and have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
“fall” in the second verse, for this is
indeed a poem, in iambic pentameter,
could easily be replaced by “fail“,
nearly even calls out for it,
homophones but for the timbre of
their vowels
say that their husbands slack, she says,
then lists the several manners in which
husbands might betray their marital
duties, by “foreign“, she means “other“,
foreign to the family circle
“laps“, incidentally, is a wonderful
metaphor to accompany “treasures“,
suggesting intimate physical contact,
much more so, say, than “hands“
would’ve, for instance, been
“restraint” means conditions, stress,
impositions
“scant our former having“, to diminish
that which formerly had been given,
of either material or psychological
goods – “having” is a noun here, not
a participle
“in despite“, which is to say, “out of
spite“
“galls“, a synecdoche for internal
organs, a synecdoche, the word
that means a part which signifies
the whole
“affection” is “lust“
we’re equal partners, Shakespeare
says, men and women, in a shared
humanity, indeed Shakespeare is
one of the first Humanists after
centuries of religious subjugation,
centuries of the suppression of
independent thought, a defining
notion, not incidentally, of the
Renaissance
R ! chard
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