Blind Spots of Knowledge in Shakespeare and His World by Subha Mukherji;

Author:Subha Mukherji;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Emilia’s first appearance in the play is in a scene that “bristles” unyieldingly. This is the opening scene of the second act in Cyprus—a long scene of desultory conversation among the Venetians, as they wait on the headland for Othello’s arrival. Desdemona is anxious and restive, and her companions—Emilia and Iago, together with the worshipping Cassio and the inflamed Roderigo—try to help her while away the time. The texture of this scene brilliantly captures the drift of polite social talk, what Iago calls “chronic[ling] small beer” (2.1.160). But there is an Emilia-shaped hole in this texture, very similar to those astutely choreographed scenes in Jane Austen—usually at balls, private theatricals, or in the Upper Rooms in Bath—where her mousy, silent heroines are silhouetted against a background of chatter. This is how we initially get to know Catherine Moreland in Northanger Abbey or Fanny Price in Mansfield Park.

As Emilia joins this little gathering, Cassio greets her with a kiss, assuring her husband that it is merely a “show”—although somewhat “bold”—of “courtesy” (2.1.99). Iago immediately absorbs Cassio’s courtesy into his own brand of bawdy: “Sir, would she give you so much of her lips / As of her tongue she oft bestows on me / You’d have enough” (2.1.100–102). To this Desdemona interjects, “Alas! She has no speech” (2.1.103). Iago disagrees, for Emilia talks so much in bed that he cannot go to sleep—“In faith, too much; / I find it still, when I have list to sleep” (2.1.103–4)—but allows that perhaps, in front of Desdemona, Emilia “puts her tongue a little in her heart, / And chides with thinking” (2.1.106–7). Then, and only then, Emilia answers him: “You have little cause to say so” (2.1.108). The impeccable playfulness that Cassio and Desdemona have kept up so effortlessly between them has therefore been broken into twice: once by Iago’s gratuitous and suggestive disclosures regarding Emilia’s bedroom habits, and then by Emilia’s words, “You have little cause to say so.” She is the first to use the play’s most famous word, “cause,” and her smouldering quietness immediately strikes a contrary note. She directly and exclusively addresses her husband in a conversation that has so far been strenuously public. What do her words imply? She could be saying, “You are misrepresenting me to these people because, actually, I hardly speak at all,” thereby endorsing Desdemona’s “Alas! She has no speech.” Or, she could be picking up Iago’s intriguing “she ... chides with thinking” in order to say, “You can’t say this because you have no idea of what I think.” Either reading immediately opens up an area of darkness that is always present at the heart of the play: the realm of what another person could be thinking. It is an inwardness that is imponderable, cannot be possessed, and is therefore obscurely threatening; it later becomes Iago’s trump card and Othello’s greatest fear. Later in this scene, Iago’s mock-misogynist badinage with Desdemona imagines a woman who “could think, and ne’er disclose her mind” (2.1.156). And, after Iago has successfully aroused in Othello the desire for “ocular proof ” (3.

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