Scene summary
After dinner with Lodovico, Othello goes out to accompany him, and first he tells Desdemona to go to bed at once and dismiss Emilia, her attendant, because he will return soon. Desdemona obeys without argument. While Emilia undresses her, Emilia says she has already put the marriage sheets on the bed, as she asked, and Desdemona replies that if she dies before her friend, she wants to be wrapped in one of them. Desdemona remarks that Lodovico is a distinguished man, and Emilia agrees that he is handsome and tells of a Venetian lady who would walk barefoot to Palestine to brush his lips.
Before the conversation about Lodovico, Desdemona had recalled Barbary, a servant of her mother's, who loved a man who went mad and left her, and who died singing a willow song; that song, Desdemona says, will not leave her mind tonight, and she sings it while preparing, changing the order of one line and startling at a noise that Emilia says is the wind. Then she asks Emilia whether there are women who betray their husbands, and whether Emilia herself would do so for everything in the world. Emilia replies that she would not do it for small things, but perhaps for the whole world, and argues that the fault lies with the husbands, who betray, beat, control and take from women what is their due. Desdemona takes her leave, asking God to teach her not to repay evil with evil, but to overcome evil with good.
Analysis
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