Part 17 (1/2)

Few of Shakespeare's minor characters are more distinct than Emilia, and towards few do our feelings change so much within the course of a play.

Till close to the end she frequently sets one's teeth on edge; and at the end one is ready to wors.h.i.+p her. She nowhere shows any sign of having a bad heart; but she is common, sometimes vulgar, in minor matters far from scrupulous, blunt in perception and feeling, and quite dest.i.tute of imagination. She let Iago take the handkerchief though she knew how much its loss would distress Desdemona; and she said nothing about it though she saw that Oth.e.l.lo was jealous. We rightly resent her unkindness in permitting the theft, but--it is an important point--we are apt to misconstrue her subsequent silence, because we know that Oth.e.l.lo's jealousy was intimately connected with the loss of the handkerchief. Emilia, however, certainly failed to perceive this; for otherwise, when Oth.e.l.lo's anger showed itself violently and she was really distressed for her mistress, she could not have failed to think of the handkerchief, and would, I believe, undoubtedly have told the truth about it. But, in fact, she never thought of it, although she guessed that Oth.e.l.lo was being deceived by some scoundrel. Even after Desdemona's death, nay, even when she knew that Iago had brought it about, she still did not remember the handkerchief; and when Oth.e.l.lo at last mentions, as a proof of his wife's guilt, that he had seen the handkerchief in Ca.s.sio's hand, the truth falls on Emilia like a thunder-bolt. 'O G.o.d!' she bursts out, 'O heavenly G.o.d!'[121] Her stupidity in this matter is gross, but it is stupidity and nothing worse.

But along with it goes a certain coa.r.s.eness of nature. The contrast between Emilia and Desdemona in their conversation about the infidelity of wives (IV. iii.) is too famous to need a word,--unless it be a word of warning against critics who take her light talk too seriously. But the contrast in the preceding scene is hardly less remarkable. Oth.e.l.lo, affecting to treat Emilia as the keeper of a brothel, sends her away, bidding her shut the door behind her; and then he proceeds to torture himself as well as Desdemona by accusations of adultery. But, as a critic has pointed out, Emilia listens at the door, for we find, as soon as Oth.e.l.lo is gone and Iago has been summoned, that she knows what Oth.e.l.lo has said to Desdemona. And what could better ill.u.s.trate those defects of hers which make one wince, than her repeating again and again in Desdemona's presence the word Desdemona could not repeat; than her talking before Desdemona of Iago's suspicions regarding Oth.e.l.lo and herself; than her speaking to Desdemona of husbands who strike their wives; than the expression of her honest indignation in the words,

Has she forsook so many n.o.ble matches, Her father and her country and her friends, To be called wh.o.r.e?

If one were capable of laughing or even of smiling when this point in the play is reached, the difference between Desdemona's anguish at the loss of Oth.e.l.lo's love, and Emilia's recollection of the n.o.ble matches she might have secured, would be irresistibly ludicrous.

And yet how all this, and all her defects, vanish into nothingness when we see her face to face with that which she can understand and feel!

From the moment of her appearance after the murder to the moment of her death she is transfigured; and yet she remains perfectly true to herself, and we would not have her one atom less herself. She is the only person who utters for us the violent common emotions which we feel, together with those more tragic emotions which she does not comprehend.

She has done this once already, to our great comfort. When she suggests that some villain has poisoned Oth.e.l.lo's mind, and Iago answers,

Fie, there is no such man; it is impossible;

and Desdemona answers,

If any such there be, Heaven pardon him;

Emilia's retort,

A halter pardon him, and h.e.l.l gnaw his bones,

says what we long to say, and helps us. And who has not felt in the last scene how her glorious carelessness of her own life, and her outbursts against Oth.e.l.lo--even that most characteristic one,

She was too fond of her most filthy bargain--

lift the overwhelming weight of calamity that oppresses us, and bring us an extraordinary lightening of the heart? Terror and pity are here too much to bear; we long to be allowed to feel also indignation, if not rage; and Emilia lets us feel them and gives them words. She brings us too the relief of joy and admiration,--a joy that is not lessened by her death. Why should she live? If she lived for ever she never could soar a higher pitch, and nothing in her life became her like the losing it.[122]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 107: It has been held, for example, that Oth.e.l.lo treated Iago abominably in preferring Ca.s.sio to him; that he _did_ seduce Emilia; that he and Desdemona were too familiar before marriage; and that in any case his fate was a moral judgment on his sins, and Iago a righteous, if sharp, instrument of Providence.]

[Footnote 108: See III. iii. 201, V. i. 89 f. The statements are his own, but he has no particular reason for lying. One reason of his disgust at Ca.s.sio's appointment was that Ca.s.sio was a Florentine (I. i.

20). When Ca.s.sio says (III. i. 42) 'I never knew a Florentine more kind and honest,' of course he means, not that Iago is a Florentine, but that he could not be kinder and honester if he were one.]

[Footnote 109: I am here merely recording a general impression. There is no specific evidence, unless we take Ca.s.sio's language in his drink (II.

ii. 105 f.) to imply that Iago was not a 'man of quality' like himself.

I do not know if it has been observed that Iago uses more nautical phrases and metaphors than is at all usual with Shakespeare's characters. This might naturally be explained by his roving military life, but it is curious that almost all the examples occur in the earlier scenes (see _e.g._ I. i. 30, 153, 157; I. ii. 17, 50; I. iii.

343; II. iii. 65), so that the use of these phrases and metaphors may not be characteristic of Iago but symptomatic of a particular state of Shakespeare's mind.]

[Footnote 110: See further Note P.]

[Footnote 111: But it by no means follows that we are to believe his statement that there was a report abroad about an intrigue between his wife and Oth.e.l.lo (I. iii. 393), or his statement (which may be divined from IV. ii. 145) that someone had spoken to him on the subject.]

[Footnote 112: See, for instance, Aaron in _t.i.tus Andronicus_, II. iii.; Richard in _3 Henry VI._, III. ii. and V. vi., and in _Richard III._, I.