Emilia

Who She Is

Emilia is the wife of Iago and the lady's maid of Desdemona, whom she calls "madam" and "mistress." She accompanies her lady from Venice to Cyprus, brings her closer to Cassio when he asks for help, and in scene 3 of Act III finds the handkerchief Desdemona dropped and hands it to her husband, who had asked her a hundred times to steal it, without knowing what he will do with it. She keeps quiet about the handkerchief in front of her mistress, hears Othello's jealousy grow without understanding it, and only before the corpse does she speak. She reveals the handkerchief, unmasks her husband and is stabbed to death by him, singing a verse of the willow song.

Trajectory

In scene 1 of Act II, she disembarks in Cyprus with Desdemona and Iago, and Iago addresses her, along with the other women, in tavern couplets. She answers back: she says he has few reasons to speak like that and that she does not want his compliments. In the soliloquy that closes the scene, Iago confesses that he suspects, without confirmation, that Othello himself lay with her.

In scene 1 of Act III, Cassio sends the clown to ask Emilia for an interview and then asks Iago for access to Desdemona. Emilia arrives, tells him the lady already defends Cassio before the general, and takes him to a place where he can speak with her alone. In scene 3 of Act III, she is in the room when Desdemona promises to intercede, and it is there, after Othello and Desdemona leave, that she finds the handkerchief, Othello's first gift, which her lady carried to kiss and to talk to him with. She says she will have it copied and handed to Iago, and adds that only heaven knows what he will do with it. When Iago arrives, she wants to know what she will receive in exchange. She hands over the handkerchief, asks what it is for, and is sent away.

In scene 4 of Act III, Desdemona asks where she lost the handkerchief and Emilia answers that she does not know. Desdemona says the Moor is an upright spirit, free of the baseness of jealous men, and Emilia asks whether he is jealous. After Othello leaves, she sums up what she thinks of men: they reveal themselves in a year or two, they are only stomachs, and they devour women like food.

She speaks without knowing she describes her own marriage.

In scene 2 of Act IV, Othello questions her, and she swears she has seen and heard nothing wrong in her mistress and stakes her soul on it. He treats her as a procuress and leaves her a coin. Later, before Iago, she says that some vile scoundrel has manipulated the Moor and asks heaven to strike that rabble down. Iago tells her to lower her voice, and she replies that such a fellow had also turned her own head and made her husband suspect her of being with the Moor. He calls her an imbecile. In scene 3 of Act IV, she undresses her mistress, spreads the wedding sheets and, faced with Desdemona's question about betraying a husband for all there is in the world, says that the fault lies with the husbands:

In scene 1 of Act V, she arrives after the attack in the dark street, is sent by Iago to find out about Cassio and then to the citadel, and calls Bianca a strumpet. In scene 2 of Act V, she is in the bedchamber when Desdemona says she dies guiltless. Upon hearing from Othello that Iago was the one who accused her lady, she denies the slander and says her husband lives on lies. When Montano, Gratiano and Iago arrive, Iago orders her to be silent and go home. She does not obey: she says it is proper to obey him, but not now. She calls Othello a dull Moor and tells what she knows:

Iago stabs her and flees. She asks that she be laid beside her lady, sings a verse of the willow song, tells Othello that Desdemona was chaste and loved him, and dies.

Themes Embodied

The long speech of Emilia in scene 3 of Act IV appears in the Folio and is missing from the Quarto, and it is verse where she had been speaking in prose.

The same Emilia who hands over the handkerchief without knowing what Iago will do with it, and who answers that she does not know when her lady asks where it was lost, is the one who, in scene 2 of Act V, refuses her husband's order to be silent.

Desdemona dies protecting her husband with a last lie. Emilia dies through the opposite movement, when she speaks against her own husband. The play sets the two responses to marital authority side by side.

It is Emilia's answer that resolves the plot.

Emilia's guilt is the most discreet in the play: she hands over the handkerchief, lies to Desdemona once ("I know not, madam," III.4, l. 24) and keeps silent, and the omission keeps the plot moving. For this reason the speech of scene 3 of Act IV, in which she describes without knowing it her own marriage and speaks of desire, is also the measure of what the play grants her: a clear voice, which rises only when there is nothing left to save. Truth and lies, which the play treats as Iago's weapon, find in her a counterweight, someone who decides to pay the price of telling the truth.

Relationships

• Iago: the husband, who asks her for the handkerchief a hundred times, orders her to be silent, stabs her and is unmasked by her.
• Desdemona: the lady she serves, undresses, defends and sings to at the end.
• Othello: the general, who questions her and pays her as a procuress, and whom she calls a dull Moor when she learns the truth.
• Cassio: the lieutenant whom she leads to Desdemona in scene 1 of Act III.
• Roderigo: the suitor Iago takes to Cyprus and kills, whose death she hears of from Iago in scene 1 of Act V.