Emilia's Death
Bill Long
Dying in Music (5.2.248)
The only thing that cuts short Emilia's eruptive challenge to her husband and Othello in the previous lines is Iago's sword. In the confusion surrounding Othello's attack on Iago, Iago stabs his wife, and she quickly dies. But, as is often the case for major Shakespearean characters, they have just enough time and breath for some quickening lines as they die. Five things about Emila's death and her final words are arresting.
Emilia's Isolation
Her attack on Iago and Othello might have produced truth for all to see but it also resulted in her emotinal isolation. In this regard she imitates her mistress. When Othello furiously and cynically attacked Desdemona in 4.2 before storming off enraged, Desdemona realized her terrible aloneness. Emilia says, "Good madam, what's the matter with my lord?" to which Desdemona responds a few lines later, "I have none. Do not talk to me Emilia;/ I cannot weep, nor answers have I none/ But what should go by water (4.2.98-104)." Likewise, after Emilia unleashed her fury on Iago and he bade her charm her tongue and go home, she said, "Perchance, Iago, I will ne'er go home (5.2.197)." Violent verbal attack leaves scarifying human detachment. The two heroic and innocent women die alone, with only the song of another dying woman on their lips.
Singing the Song
The Willow Song, a song of Desdemona's maid Barbary as she died mourning the loss of her love, is Emilia's vade mecum as she dies. Unlike Desdemona, who sings each verse while preparing for bed, all Emilia sings is "Willow, willow, willow (5.2.248)." Is it because she has no energy to sing all four stanzas like her mistress or is it because the content of the song is subordinate to the symbolism of the song for her? The Willow Song symbolizes for Emilia a connection with her mistress. In fact a kind of circle is created by the song, for it originated as the tune of a servant woman and now is returning to the lips of such a woman. It is a song of lost love and the uncertainty of loves that could be.
Returning to Desdemona
The song reminds her of her mistress, and Emilia speaks one of her more moving lines. "Moor, she was chaste; she lov'd thee, cruel Moor (5.2.249)." This type of construction is called a chiasmus, after the Greek letter "chi" (an "X") because the first and last words are identical and the second and third are similar. Chiasmus is an ancient rhetorical device only recognized with this word in the 19th century and functions as a means of focusing the reader's attention on the complementary truths expressed. It is captured in the title of the popular book by Dr. Mardy Grothe, Never let a Fool Kiss you or a Kiss Fool You and described further in his website, www.chiasmus.com.
Our attention is drawn to the middle words: words about Desdemona's chastity and her love. Though Emilia had said similar words to Othello in the early lines of 4.2, their appearance here is heart-rending. "She loved thee, cruel Moor," is a statement summarizing the essence of Desdemona, with all externals removed, with the frenzy of the last two acts stripped away. "She loved thee, cruel Moor." It is as if she is saying:
'Why couldn't you hear that reality when the cacophonous sounds of your own tormented mind were oppressing you? Why did you allow the frenzy of suspicion and jealousy to come in and take up residence in your life, torture you and hound you unmercifully until you had to stifle and smother and strangle the very person that loved you and that you yourself loved? Why did you feel that the chaos you feared could only be averted by killing he one who loved you? She was chaste, cruel Moor. And she loved you, cruel Moor. Why couldn't you see that?'
Coming to Death and Coming to Bliss
After focusing on Desdemona and her love for Othello, Emiia breathes her last:
"So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true;/ So speaking as I think, alas, I die (5.2.250-251)."
The threefold chain of bliss, truth and thinking, along with her music, takes her to her death. Iago spoke two of those words: what he "thought," and what Othello believed was apt and "true (5.2.176,177)," but he would later be captured and possibly tormented by his captors. He certainly would not come to "bliss." Only Emilia comes to bliss in her death. Her bliss is a function of her discovery of the power of speaking true, of her speaking as "liberal as the north." Her bliss comes because she refused to follow her husband's command to go home and to charm her tongue. Using language from earlier in the play, her words "out-tongued" the others (cf. 1.2.19). When words become the instrument for truth and thinking, they become an occasion for bliss.
Ending with an Alas
But it is one thing to discover one's bliss in speaking the truth and then continue to live, and another to discover this when one is dying. She has learned to speak what she thinks, and this speaking has brought truth, a truth that honors her mistress, exposes her husband and brings the awful reality of Othello's conduct home to him. And it is this truth that brings a kind of bliss of its own, despite the unfathomable torment it also creates. It is the bliss of knowing that you have been true to what you know is right.
But she ends with an "alas," because she only learns the connection between thinking, truth and bliss when she is going to die. She speaks an "alas" because she now cannot live in her new-found discovery of truth in speaking. It was also only on his deathbed in the Jerusalem chamber that Henry IV realized that the prophecy that he would die "in Jerusalem" would be fulfilled, but his reaction is different.
"Laud be to God! even there my life must end./ It hath been prophesied to me many years,/ I should not die but in Jerusalem,/ Which vainly I suppos'd the Holy Land./ But bear me to that chamber, there I'll lie,/ In that Jerusalem shall Henry die (2 H IV 4.4.235-240)."
What Henry lauds Emilia laments. Henry lauds God at his death because he realizes that the goodness of God is not stinted by human confusion over the meaning of Jerusalem. Emilia says "alas," because she realizes for a fleeting moment how nice it would have been to have lived in the strength of truth throughout one's life. But it simply is not to be. And so she can only say her last words, "I die."
Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long |