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Denise A. Walen

Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 58, Number 4, Winter 2007, pp. 487-508

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DOI: 10.1353/shq.2007.0058

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 Unpinning Desdemona
Denise A. Walen

O ne of the more striking differences between the quarto (1622) and

the First Folio (1623) texts of Othello is in the scene (4.3) that presages
Desdemona’s murder as Emilia undresses her and prepares her for bed. While
F unfolds through a leisurely 112 lines that include the Willow Song, Q clips
along with only 62 lines, cutting the scene by nearly half. These two versions
also differ thematically. F presents both Desdemona and Emilia as complex
characters. By delving deeply into her feelings, it portrays an active and tragically
nuanced Desdemona and raises empathy for her with its psychological exposé.
F also contains a surprisingly insightful and impassioned Emilia, who defends
the behavior of wives against the ill usage they suffer at the hands of their hus-
bands. In contrast, Q, while it retains the narrative structure of the longer F
scene, significantly alters the characterization of the women by presenting both
as one-dimensional: Desdemona as the patient Griselda and Emilia as the shal-
low, saucy maid. This essay offers a theory to explain why the two versions of
this scene differ so greatly.
The excellent work that debates the questions posed by F and Q texts
focuses on their many differences and the complicated textual issues they
raise. Looking more closely at a single difference—that occurring at the end
of Act 4—raises intriguing possibilities about the texts. Concentrating on the
curious issues of staging in that scene is even more enlightening, especially the
questions about Emilia’s “unpinning” of Desdemona. This essay will analyze
Funding to carry out this research came from a Mellon Faculty Enhancement Research
Award distributed by Vassar College. I thank the staff of the Folger Shakespeare Library, espe-
cially Georgianna Ziegler, for assistance with the promptbooks and other material discussed in
this essay. Thanks are also due to Alan C. Dessen for commenting on an early version of this
article, the anonymous reviewers for Shakespeare Quarterly for their thoughtful critiques, and
my colleague Holly Hummel. I must credit the work of my seminar students in “Shakespeare
in Performance” at Vassar College during the spring of 2006 for stimulating my interest with
excellent essays on the topic.

  In this article, citations of Q follow Scott McMillin, ed., The First Quarto of Othello (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge UP, 2001); here, see esp. 130–33. Quotations from the First Folio are from
The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare, Based on Folios in the Folger Shakespeare
Library Collection, prep. Charlton Hinman, 2d ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), and are cited
in the text by through-line number (TLN). For the Folio rendition of Othello 4.3, see pages
841–42.
488 Shakespeare quarterly
original staging practices in order to argue that Othello 4.3 was edited when
the company moved into the Blackfriars and that this editing had disastrous
consequences for the scene and for the character of Desdemona.
While the textual history of Othello is fraught with complex questions, one
principal concern that impacts this argument revolves around whether F was
revised and expanded or whether Q was edited and reduced. Scott McMil-
lin augmented Alice Walker’s theory that Q originated from a version of the
script the company used in production. Walker argued that Q is an obviously
inferior work, based on an acted version of the play that was compiled from
memory by a bookkeeper, and that it suffers from the “insensitive effort” of
an unreliable transcriber, along with the corrupting influence of actors who
cut the text for presentation, peppered it with vulgarizations, and forgot or
extemporized lines. McMillin contended, instead, that both the F and Q texts
derived from separate performance scripts. He blamed “scribal mishearings”
for many of the variations between the texts, hypothesizing that the scribe
preparing Q for printing was listening to the play, taking dictation from either
a performance or an oral reading. However, McMillin maintained that both F
and Q are important as discrete acting versions of the play, which suggests that
in order to understand the two texts, authorial intention may be less important


  Those who argue in favor of expansion include Nevill Coghill, Shakespeare’s Professional
Skills (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1964), 164–202; John Kerrigan, “Shakespeare as Reviser,” in
English Drama to 1710, ed. Christopher Ricks (New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1987), 255–75;
John Jones, Shakespeare at Work (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 249, 255–78; Norman Sand-
ers, ed., Othello: Updated Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 203–215; Edward Pechter,
“Crisis in Editing?” Shakespeare Survey 59 (2006): 20–38, esp. 21–28; and Grace Ioppolo, Revis-
ing Shakespeare (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991), 154–59. W. W. Greg offers a complex
reading of the relationship between the texts in The Shakespeare First Folio, Its Bibliographical
and Textual History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 357–71. E.A.J. Honigmann first argued
for revision in his article “Shakespeare’s Revised Plays: King Lear and Othello,” The Library, ser.
6, 4 (1982): 142–73, esp. 156–73; he later accepted the possibility of excision in The Texts of
“Othello” and Shakespearian Revision (London: Routledge, 1996), 10–12, 101–2. See also Charl-
ton Hinman, “The ‘Copy’ for the Second Quarto of Othello,” in Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial
Studies, ed. James G. McManaway et al. (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1948),
373–89; Thomas L. Berger, “The Second Quarto of Othello and the Question of Textual
‘Authority,’ ” in “Othello”: New Perspectives, ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Kent Cartwright
(Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1991), 26–47; and David Lake and Brian Vickers,
“Scribal Copy for Q1 of Othello: A Reconsideration,” Notes & Queries 48 (2001): 284–87.

  Alice Walker, Textual Problems of the First Folio (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1953),
138–61, esp. 140. See also Alice Walker, “The 1622 Quarto and the First Folio Texts of Othello,”
Shakespeare Survey 5 (1952): 16–24; and Alice Walker and John Dover Wilson, eds., Othello
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1957), 121–35.

  Scott McMillin, ed., First Quarto of “Othello,” 1–44; and “The Mystery of the Early Othello
Texts,” in “Othello”: New Critical Essays, ed. Philip C. Kolin (New York: Routledge, 2002),
401–24, esp. 414, on “scribal mishearings.”
 unpinning desdemona 489
than theatrical practice. Most important here, McMillin believed that 4.3 was
reduced for Q, not expanded for F; he hypothesized that Q reflects playhouse
cuts made to affect the pace. He noted that the cuts occur primarily in the
fourth and fifth acts, with half of all missing lines in Q coming from the roles
of Desdemona and Emilia, which perhaps indicates that the play was lagging
near the end, that the boy actors proved uninteresting, or, finally, that someone
decided simply to excise material that failed to advance the plot.
I would argue that, in the case of 4.3, the F version of Othello offers more
than a longer text that someone decided to cut; as McMillin implies, it also
requires notably different staging. This issue of staging provides compelling
evidence that affects the debate surrounding the play’s textual history. McMil-
lin argued that both F and Q originate from playhouse books and that signifi-
cant variants between the texts reflect different production requirements. An
examination of theatrical practice suggests that F prints a version of the play
as performed at the Globe and that Q represents a separate, generally later,
version that shows signs of the cuts made in F to accommodate performance
at Blackfriars.

Staging the Text

Of the 160 lines that appear exclusively in F Othello, 50 are found in 4.3.
Thus, nearly a third of the large-scale differences between the texts pertain
to this one scene of the play. While many variants between F and Q can be
ascribed to printing errors, scribal negligence, or memorial corruption, this
sizable and visible discrepancy between the texts must originate in conscious
choice, either by Shakespeare himself or by the company. Scholars such as
E.A.J. Honigmann have long wondered if the scene was cut because the boy
actor who played Desdemona left the troupe or lost his singing voice, leaving
the company without a boy to perform the song. While this may be the case, as
Lois Potter points out, this would not explain the loss of Emilia’s speech. 
One point at issue is how long each version of Othello takes to play. W. W.
Greg, who accepted the “cutting” theory, nevertheless thought that cutting the


  Michael Neill, in his recent Oxford edition of the play, agrees with the theory of reduction;
see Othello, the Moor of Venice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 408, 421–32. Pervez Rizvi,
“Evidence of Revision in Othello,” Notes and Queries 45 (1998): 338–43, esp. 341, argues that
Shakespeare reduced F but that he did not cut the text in response to production needs.

  See McMillin, ed., First Quarto of “Othello,” 8–13; and McMillin, “Mystery of the Early
Othello Texts,” 407.

  Honigmann, Texts of “Othello,” 10–12, 39–40; Greg, 358; Walker and Wilson, eds., 123;
and McMillin, “Mystery of the Early Othello Texts,” 409.

  Lois Potter, Shakespeare in Performance: “Othello” (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002), 11.
490 Shakespeare quarterly
160 lines would do “nothing appreciable to shorten the play.” Nevill Coghill,
who calculated that these lines would shave only eight minutes of performance
time, contended that the company would not have edited the text for so slight
a saving.10 Therefore, for him, the discrepancies between F and Q must point
to later additions. McMillin believed that Coghill’s estimate was low overall,
especially in regard to the Willow Song, which he suggested would take con-
siderably longer to perform than spoken dialogue.11 Based on Ross Duffin’s
conjectural reconstruction from the existing consort music, the song takes
roughly two minutes to perform.12 The loss of Emilia’s speech cuts another
minute. In a scene that probably ran under seven minutes, some three minutes
is proportionately long; the amount of time saved overall in performance is
not.
I would argue, however, that these cuts entail the excision of more than the
song, which itself covers a physical action: Desdemona’s unpinning as Emilia
prepares her for bed. While the song alludes to themes of infidelity, madness,
melancholy, and death, it also functions practically to cover the rather com-
plicated business of unpinning and unlacing various articles of clothing that
constituted the dress of an aristocratic Englishwoman. The undressing itself
symbolizes Desdemona’s vulnerability and innocence.13 In modern produc-
tions, it is often Desdemona’s hair that is unpinned, since this offers an easily
accomplished physical action and since the text does not seem to allow time
for much else; but that action is not what “unpinning” meant in the early sev-
enteenth century.14 Alan C. Dessen has for years encouraged scholars to look

  Greg, 358.
10
  Coghill, 178. See also Honigmann, “Shakespeare’s Revised Plays,” 157.
11
  McMillin, ed., First Quarto of “Othello,” 13n.
12
  Ross W. Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004),
467–70. Duffin’s book includes a CD with his versions of the songs, which provided the
estimate of the song’s duration in performance. An alternate version of the Willow Song also
appears on a Web site associated with the book, http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/
nael/noa/audio_shakespeare.htm (accessed 13 October 2007).
13
  Alan C. Dessen, Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1995), 28–30, notes that nightgowns were probably used in the opening scene of Othello,
in 2.3, and in the final scene to indicate the night and to signify the unreadiness of a character
roused from sleep. As such, they symbolize the character’s vulnerable state. When Desdemona
undresses in 4.3, she (like Brabantio and Othello in the other scenes) highlights her vulnerabil-
ity, but the gesture also underscores her lack of deception—her naked innocence.
14
  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “unpin” as “to undo the dress of (a woman) by
the removal of pins” and cites Desdemona’s lines from Othello. See OED, 2d ed., J. A. Simpson
and E.S.C. Weiner, prep., 20 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), s.v. “unpin” (v.), 3. Neill’s edition
identifies this shift in staging by noting that “unpin” was “usually played (since the time of Ellen
Terry at least) as a direction to unpin Desdemona’s hair; but OED entries (v. 3–4) suggest that
from the 16th century to the 18th it referred to the unpinning of a lady’s dress” (357n).
 unpinning desdemona 491

Figure 1: A Dutch caricature showing a woman being fitted with a French farthingale, c. 1600.
Reproduced from Norah Waugh, Corsets and Crinolines (London: B. T. Batsford, 1954), 31
(Figure 9).
closely at Shakespeare’s “theatrical vocabulary” as an important method in the
interpretation of his plays.15 Arguing that the specificity of original perfor-
mances—when, where, and by whom they were produced—had a significant
impact on their construction, Dessen advocates examining the plays in the
theatrical context in which they were written. His concern is that we not simply
analyze what is said but also look at “what the original playgoers saw or might
have seen.”16 It follows that to understand Othello 4.3, we must pay attention to
the stage action—in this case, to the undressing.
Dress for a woman of Desdemona’s social standing would have included a
shift (or chemise or smock): a long, simple, loose-fitting gown that served as
both sleepwear and undergarment. Over this, a woman wore a bodice or “pair
of bodies,” a stiffened outer garment that covered the area above the waist,
functioning something like a corset but producing a different silhouette. To the
bodice might be attached sleeves, if they were not already sewn to the bodice,
as well as a stomacher, lace collar, and cuffs. Below the waist, a woman wore a
petticoat over a farthingale, with a skirt—sometimes split to reveal the petti-
coat or a decorative panel called a forepart—covering both (Figure 1). Over all
these, a woman wore a gown, from which she could choose various styles, both
15
  Dessen, Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary, 1–18.
16
  Dessen, Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary, 3.
492 Shakespeare quarterly
open and closed.17 Variety was key, and women achieved an infinitely varied
wardrobe by combining different articles of clothing. All these pieces, and other
decorative accessories, were fastened by various buttons, hooks, ribbons, and
laces, but chiefly by pins.18
Dressing a woman was not a simple process in early modern England, and
playwrights found an easy comic target in the subject. For example, in Thomas
Tomkis’s play Lingva, Tactus offers the following complaint to explain why his
intended entertainment has not begun:
Thus ’tis, five houres agoe I set a douzen maides to attire a boy like a nize
Gentlewoman: but there is such doing with their looking-glasses, pinning,
vnpinning, setting, vnseting, formings and conformings, . . . such stirre with
Stickes and Combes, . . . Bodies, Scarffes, Neck-laces, . . . Pendulets, Amulets,
Annulets, Bracelets, and so many lets, that yet shee is scarse drest to the girdle:
and now there’s such calling for Fardingales, Kirtlets, Busk-points, shootyes
&c. that seauen Pedlers shops, nay all Sturbridge Faire will scarse furnish her:
a Ship is sooner rigd by farre, then a Gentlewoman made ready.19

John Heywood’s Apothecary offers a similar complaint about “pynnynge”

women in The Four Ps:
An other cause why they come nat forwarde
Whiche maketh them dayly to drawe backwarde
And yet is a thynge they can nat forbere
The trymmynge and pynnynge up theyr gere
Specyally theyr fydlyng with the tayle pyn
And when they wolde haue it prycke in
If it chaunce to double in the clothe
Then be they wode and swereth an othe
Tyll it stande ryght they wyll nat forsake it. . . .
But prycke them and pynne them as nyche, as ye wyll
And yet wyll they loke for pynnynge styll.20

17
  On the styles and fashions of women’s clothing, see Susan Vincent, Dressing the Elite:
Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 23–41; C. Willett [Cunnington] and
Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth Century (London: Faber and
Faber, 1954), 80–128; and M. Channing Linthicum, Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and
His Contemporaries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 177–92.
18
  On the importance of pins to female clothing, see Cunnington and Cunnington, 189; and
Linthicum, 280–82.
19
  Thomas Tomkis, Lingva: Or the Combat of the Tongue, and the Five Senses for Superiority,
Old English Drama Students’ Facsimile Edition (n.p.: n.p., 1913), sig. I2v (4.6.17–30).
20
  John Heywood, “The Pardoner and the Friar” and “The Four Ps,” prep. G. R. Proudfoot and
J. Pitcher, Malone Society Reprints (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984), sig. B1v.
 unpinning desdemona 493
Comic exaggeration aside, the dressing and undressing of an Englishwoman
took time, which raises provocative questions about the action of F Othello.
What actually took place on stage during this scene, and how long did it take?
Of course, it is impossible to know exactly what happened in performance, and
it should be assumed that actors who managed the infinitely more shocking, if
not necessarily more difficult, tasks of gouging out the eyes of Gloucester and
cutting off the hand of Titus onstage could find a way to undress a boy actor
with little fuss. And yet, the scene calls attention to the time and effort it takes
to undress a woman.
When the Folio scene begins, Lodovico takes his leave of Desdemona,
accompanied by Othello, who instructs his wife to dismiss Emilia and go
immediately to bed. His command infects the scene with a grave urgency,
as a despondent Desdemona complies with his order. She entreats Emilia to
help her change and then to leave: “Giue me my nightly wearing, and adieu”
(TLN 2985). The text implies that Emilia undresses Desdemona during the
next forty-two lines of the script. Desdemona twice calls for Emilia to “vn-pin
me” (TLN 2990, 3005), urges the prompt completion of her work (“prythee
dispatch” [TLN 3003]), asks her to put aside articles of clothing that have
been removed (“Lay by these” [TLN 3018]), and implores her to work faster
(“Prythee high thee: he’le come anon” [TLN 3019]). When Emilia is presum-
ably finished with the task, Desdemona discharges her (“So get thee gone, good
night” [TLN 3027]). The scene continues for another fifty-plus lines but makes
no more mention of the condition of Desdemona’s clothing. She is by this point
either already undressed or too distracted to allow Emilia to continue. Since
her short, digressive comments, which interrupt both her dialogue with Emilia
and the Willow Song, demonstrate her desire to follow Othello’s directions, we
can surmise that the reason these comments end midway through the scene is
because Desdemona has undressed to her smock and is ready for bed (Figure 2).
Perhaps Emilia inventories these very items later in the scene when she men-
tions measures of lawn, gowns, petticoats, and caps.21
What is not clear from the text, however, is how the actors could complete
the business. Emilia has little time to undress Desdemona in the space of the
song printed in F, and a fair amount of clothing would need to come off to
complete Desdemona’s preparations for bed. Desdemona begins the scene fully
dressed, having just dined with Othello and Lodovico. She rejects Emilia’s offer
to “go fetch your Night-gowne” (TLN 3004), a “Night-gowne” being a loose
gown usually worn in the evening at home, although it could be worn outside

21
  My thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this idea.
Figure 2: Théodore Chassériau (1819–56), Othello, Plate 8 (1844). The Baltimore Museum of
Art: The George A. Lucas Collection, purchased with funds from the State of Maryland and
the Laurence and Stella Bendann Fund and contributions from individuals, foundations, and
corporations throughout the Baltimore community. BMA 1996.48.12480.
 unpinning desdemona 495
22
during the day as well. Instead, she directs Emilia to “vn-pin me here” (TLN
3005), obediently following Othello’s earlier directive to get ready for bed “on
th’instant” (TLN 2975). The script thus carefully explains that she is not slip-
ping into more comfortable and casual attire such as a “night” gown, i.e., simply
replacing one outer garment for another. She is removing her clothes so that
she may go to bed. Still, the two minutes of song time printed in F seems inad-
equate to allow the two actors to remove all of Desdemona’s outer garments.
A closer examination of the text suggests a possible explanation. The script
provides a number of the song’s lines and the accompanying refrain. However,
the extant versions that probably served as sources for Shakespeare provide
many other verses not printed in F.23 The text is also careful to provide Emilia
with prose cues; she never responds to singing. Finally, Desdemona’s interjec-
tions at TLN 3018 and 3019 are printed next to repeating refrains. Given this
evidence, it is certainly possible that the script provided the boy actors with the
lines they needed to give and receive clear cues, but that in the interval between
the first interjection, “Lay by these” (TLN 3018), and the second, “Prythee
high thee: he’le come anon” (TLN 3019), the actor introduced other verses to
cover the physical action of undressing. That this was an old familiar song is
exactly why, according to Joel Fineman, Shakespeare used it in the play.24 The
actor playing Desdemona might have supplied verses of this popular tune not
printed in F to fill time on stage while being undressed by the actor playing
Emilia. Certainly, such a theory is highly conjectural, as theories surrounding
the Othello texts tend to be. It suffers from what Dessen terms “the Three Ps”
(perhaps, probably, and presumably), those contingent expressions of conjecture
and hypothesis that necessarily follow attempts to recover the theatrical action
of Shakespeare’s stage.25 Still, it offers a plausible rationale for why the company

22
  See Linthicum, 184–85; and OED, s.v. “nightgown” (n.).
23
  Duffin (467–70) shows that the forlorn lover of the original song was male. Shakespeare
changed the lover to a woman to suit Desdemona’s situation; the boy actor would have had to
switch pronouns for these and any verses he might have added.
24
  Joel Fineman, “The Sound of O in Othello: The Real of the Tragedy of Desire,” in Critical
Essays on Shakespeare’s Othello, ed. Anthony Gerard Barthelemy (New York: G. K. Hall & Co.,
1994), 104–23, esp. 116. Stephen Orgel emphasizes this point in the foreword he provided
for Shakespeare’s Songbook (11–14, esp. 13). See also Alisoun Gardner-Medwin, “The ‘Willow’
Motif in Folksongs in Britain and Appalachia,” Studies in Scottish Literature 26 (1991): 235–45,
who explains that the willow motif symbolized mourning after a lost lover in sixteenth-century
England. The audience, according to John Gouws, would have also easily recognized the song as
a moriturus lyric. See John Gouws, “Shakespeare, Webster, and the Moriturus Lyric in Renais-
sance England,” Shakespeare in Southern Africa 3 (1989): 45–57.
25
  Alan C. Dessen, “Recovering Elizabethan Staging: A Reconsideration of the Evidence,” in
Textual and Theatrical Shakespeare: Questions of Evidence, ed. Edward Pechter (Iowa City: U of
Iowa P, 1996), 44–65, esp. 62.
496 Shakespeare quarterly
may have found it advisable to cut the Willow Song: what was being cut was the
“unpinning” part of the scene, which would have taken a long time and which
adds nothing to the plot. Emlia’s excursus on infidelity could have been seen as
similarly slow and, in terms of plot, unnecessary.
According to A. C. Bradley, 4.3 was specifically designed to provide a pause
in the action. The great tragedies, he explained, never proceed immediately to a
conclusion after the conflict has been established. Instead, these plays provide
a bit of relief and create interest with a “momentary pause,” which results in “a
decided slackening of tension.” True to this model, Othello 4.3 focuses on the
“comparatively unfamiliar” characters of Desdemona and Emilia and relieves
the mounting tension of the plot with a scene of great pathos.26 Scholars have
commented appreciatively on this aspect of the scene. John Russell Brown
describes this as an “intimate,” “unhurried,” and reflective moment that offers a
“release from the violence” that has been escalating.27 According to Ann Jennalie
Cook, it is a moment of “stas[i]s . . . where the movement of the action pauses.”28
Martha Ronk describes the scene as “slowed and curtained off from the rest of
the action.”29 Eamon Grennan elegantly echoes these thoughts in his sensitive
study of the “pivotal position” the female voice “occupies . . . in the play’s moral
world.” Pointing to the “willow scene” as “one of the most dramatically compel-
ling scenes in Shakespeare,” Grennan writes of its “unhurried simplicity,” saying
it “composes both a ‘theatrical’ and a ‘dramatic’ interlude suggesting peace and
freedom, within the clamorous procession of violent acts and urgent voices.”30

26
  A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1904), 56–60, esp. 56. See also Maynard Mack, “The Jacobean
Shakespeare: Some Observations on the Construction of the Tragedies,” in Essays in Shakespear-
ean Criticism, ed. James L. Calderwood and Harold E. Toliver (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall, 1970), 22–48, who believes these scenes not merely relief but offer provide an exposition
of the “predicament of being human” (31–32). For him, the scene shows the soul (Desdemona)
in conversation with the body (Emilia) (30–31). For Kenneth Burke, this scene is typical of oth-
ers in the fourth acts of Shakespeare’s plays that elicit pity; see “Othello: An Essay to Illustrate
a Method,” in “Othello”: Critical Essays, ed. Susan Snyder (New York: Garland, 1988), 127–68,
esp. 136–37.
27
  John Russell Brown, Shakespeare: The Tragedies (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2001),
209–12, esp. 209.
28
  Ann Jennalie Cook, “The Design of Desdemona: Doubt Raised and Resolved,” Shakespeare
Studies 13 (1980): 187–96, esp. 194.
29
  Martha Ronk, “Desdemona’s Self-Presentation,” English Literary Renaissance 35 (2005):
52–72, esp. 61–62.
30
  Eamon Grennan, “The Women’s Voices in Othello: Speech, Song, Silence,” Shakespeare
Quarterly 38 (1987): 275–92, esp. 276–77. Other critics, despite their appreciation of the scene
and the theatrical quality of its separation from the action, suggest the potential danger inher-
ent in its construction. Ronk calls it “artificial” (61); Joel Fineman finds it “strange and haunting”
(116–17) but believes this is a pivotal scene in the play and that Shakespeare interrupts the
 unpinning desdemona 497
While such critics champion the exquisite beauty of Othello 4.3 and find its
isolation critical, these same characteristics of emotional intensity and interrup-
tion may be the very reasons Shakespeare’s company cut it. Made long by the
undressing, and of a slow, somber pace, the scene may have been more effective
on the Globe stage with its practice of continuous staging than it became once
the company acquired the Blackfriars and began using intervals between the
acts. According to Gary Taylor, before 1608 theatrical presentation occurred
without interruption—no act or scene breaks, no intervals, no intermission.
However, after the troupe gained control of the Blackfriars, performance con-
ditions changed and the company paused for a musical interval between each
act of a play.31 At the Globe, where the King’s Men would have first presented
Othello some time around 1604, a scene such as 4.3 functioned exactly as Brad-
ley suggested—the long, measured pace of Desdemona’s unpinning relieved
the dramatic tension and replaced it with pathos, providing the audience with
a slight respite before the play moved on to the concluding violence. Once the
company began using act breaks at the Blackfriars, they had less need for a
pause written into the script because the interval provided its own relief from
the dramatic tension of the plot. The company no longer needed to slow down
the action with Desdemona’s undressing and Emilia’s disquisition on marital
infidelity. The Willow Song became superfluous, since music generally filled
the intervals at the private theaters.32 In fact, the new staging practice might
have heightened the theatricality of the Folio-length scene and made it appear
artificial.
The shift in staging also led to, or fed, changing tastes of dramatic style.
Jacobean and Caroline plays became more sensational, as Taylor explains, with

narration to highlight its critical importance. Lisa Hopkins notes that Shakespeare made an
“unusual decision” when “he suspends the action” to allow Desdemona to sing; see “ ‘ What did
thy song bode, lady?’: Othello as Operatic Text,” Shakespeare Yearbook 4 (1994): 61–70, esp. 63,
69. Hopkins argues that the “falsity” of that choice is what makes the scene so similar to the
“luxuriant artificiality of opera.”
31
  Gary Taylor and John Jowett, Shakespeare Reshaped: 1606–1623 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1993), 12–15, 30–31. See also Wilfred T. Jewkes, Act Division in Elizabethan and Jaco-
bean Plays, 1583–1616 (Hamden, CT: Shoe String Press, 1958), 76, 91, 99–101. As early as
1927, J. Dover Wilson argued that the King’s Men began pausing at act divisions after they
acquired the Blackfriars; see “Act- and Scene-Divisions in the Plays of Shakespeare: A Rejoin-
der to Sir Mark Hunter,” Review of English Studies 3 (1927): 385–97.
32
  Gary Taylor suggests that when the King’s Men obtained the Blackfriars, they assimilated
some of the boy companies’ “more attractive conventions of performance,” such as pausing for
music-filled intervals between acts; see Taylor and Jowett, 31–32, esp. 32. Tiffany Stern claims
that music kept the audience from growing impatient during intervals when the stage candles at
the Blackfriars would have been trimmed; see Making Shakespeare: From Stage to Page (London:
Routledge, 2004), 30–32. See also Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642, 3d ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), 177–78.
498 Shakespeare quarterly
a strong event required to end each act and sustain interest during the break.33
Allardyce Nicoll had long ago noted such a trend when he found that Jacobean
dramatists, driven by audience demand, increasingly turned away from char-
acterization toward situation and “thrilling events.”34 While the melancholy
Willow Song and Emilia’s defense of wives are clearly not sensational enough
to cause the kind of intense excitement Nicoll describes, the plot to murder
Cassio is. Q focuses the end of Act 4 on that scheme and leaves the audience
to ponder the prospects of murder orchestrated for the final act. The Q version
drives the narrative more quickly toward its conclusion without the lengthy
detour for Desdemona and Emilia, and it thereby heightens the dramatic ten-
sion of the play in performance. It seems probable, then, that Shakespeare or
the company created from the F source copy a trimmed version of the play
that would become the Q text, and that they created this tighter version in
response to new staging practices at their private theater and to changing tastes
in drama.35

Consequences

While the full version of 4.3 had a specific function within the continuous
staging of the amphitheater, the scene’s dramatic purpose diminished in the
private theater, where an entr’acte paused the action. Thus, when the play was
taken out of its original circumstances, and the scene did not work as it once
did, it was edited. The further the play moved away from its original perfor-
mance conditions, the less functional the scene became. As later theater prac-
tices fragmented the narrative with a progression of elaborate scenic demands
and staging conventions that required more frequent and longer periods of
pause and separation, 4.3 became increasingly dispensable.36

33
  Taylor and Jowett, 37.
34
  Allardyce Nicoll, British Drama: An Historical Survey from the Beginnings to the Present
Time, 4th rev. ed. (London: George G. Harrap and Co., 1949), 111–15, esp. 111.
35
  Perhaps F Othello represents the maximal text authorized by the Master of the Revels for
performance at the Globe. Q would then reflect a version, possibly a transcription from per-
formance, of a Blackfriars text, in which Shakespeare made or allowed deletions to his original
necessitated by the theatrical conventions for the smaller hall theater. When act intervals were
later incorporated into performance at the Globe, Q could have become the standard text. John
Hemings and Henry Condell would have then returned to the maximal text for the version of
Othello printed in the Folio. For an explanation of the term “ ‘maximal text,’ ” see Andrew Gurr,
“Maximal and Minimal Texts: Shakespeare v. the Globe,” Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999): 68–87,
esp. 70.
36
  For a useful overview of the cuts to Othello, see Julie Hankey, ed., Shakespeare in Production:
“Othello,” 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005), 14–19, 255–60.
 unpinning desdemona 499
In the Restoration, companies apparently performed the scene as it had been
done at the Blackfriars. The playhouse book for a production at Smock Alley in
1670, while it uses the F text, clearly shows cuts to both the Willow Song and
Emilia’s concluding speech.37 By the mid-eighteenth century, standard acting
editions of the play cut the scene even further, leaving only the first eighteen
lines.38 For example, the 1761 edition printed for C. Hitch, which John Palmer
used as the Haymarket promptbook, ends the scene at the eighteenth line
with Emilia’s entreaty, “I would you had never seen him!”39 The popular acting
editions J. P. Kemble published in the early 1800s end the scene here as well.
Kemble’s Covent Garden promptbook from 1807–8 includes blocking notation
for this abbreviated version of the scene, which at least provides evidence the
company performed (or planned to perform) it.40
Other promptbooks dispense with Desdemona and Emilia altogether.
Books belonging to John Moore and Samuel Phelps and a book used at Drury
Lane from 1820 to 1843 for productions by many of the great nineteenth-cen-
tury actors all show blocking annotation for the shortened scene; but they also
indicate that, in many cases, the scene was cut entirely.41 For example, the book
37
  G. Blakemore Evans, ed., Shakespearean Prompt-Books of the Seventeenth Century, 8 vols.
(Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1980), 6:n.p.
38
  William P. Halstead’s exhaustive study of promptbooks and acting editions shows that the
majority of productions from the mid-seventeenth through the late nineteenth centuries cut all
or part of the scene; see Shakespeare as Spoken: A Collation of 5000 Acting Editions and Prompt-
books of Shakespeare, 12 vols. (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1977–79),
11:ss 904a–ss 905a.
39
  William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice. A Tragedy. As It Is Now Acted at the
Theater Royal in Covent-Garden (London: C. Hitch et al., 1761). John Palmer promptbook,
London, King’s and Haymarket, 8 August 1766. Folger Shakespeare Library PROMPT Oth.
27, page 58. This and subsequent bibliographic descriptions of Folger Shakespeare Library
promptbooks rely on the Folger catalogue and on Charles H. Shattuck, The Shakespeare Prompt-
books: A Descriptive Catalogue (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1965), 354–79.
40
  William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice, a Tragedy, Revised by J. P.
Kemble; and Now First Published as It Is Acted at the Theatre Royal in covent Garden (London:
T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1804). Promptbook, marked originally by J. P. Kemble. Checked
for Iago and played by Kemble in the 1807–8 season at Covent Garden. Folger Shakespeare
Library PROMPT Oth. 45, page 67.
41
  William Shakespeare, Othello (London: J. Nichols and Son; F. C. and J. Rivington; J. Stock-
dale, 1811). Promptbook [pages 291–424 from volume 9 of a Works] made by John Moore
and used over a period of several years. Folger Shakespeare Library PROMPT Oth. 26, pages
397–401. William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice, a tragedy, revised by J.
P. Kemble; and now first published as it is acted at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden (London:
T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1804). Promptbook, inscribed at head of Act 1: T[heatre]. R[oyal].
D[rury]. L[ane]. P[rompt]. B[ook]. Marked by several, including John Willmott and George
Ellis. Folger Shakespeare Library, PROMPT Oth. 20, page 67. William Shakespeare, Othello,
The Moor of Venice. A Tragedy. Acting Edition, with Accurate Stage Directions, Hind’s English
Stage (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1838). Promptbook, transcription of Macready’s
500 Shakespeare quarterly
Phelps used for many years is carefully annotated for performance, but the
scene is also bracketed and shows a line struck through the center, indicating
that while it was rehearsed and probably performed when the promptbook was
first used, the scene was later cut from performance (Figure 3). Other books
show that even the abbreviated version of 4.3 was dropped early in the produc-
tion process. Edmund Kean’s promptbook from Drury Lane, for example, has
no blocking but has instead a marginal note that reads, “omitted by Mr. C.
Kean, and generally now” and the word “out” written at the top of the page.42
The promptbook belonging to the Tremont Theatre, used there between 1820
and 1840, shows the scene crossed out with no blocking notation.43
By the late nineteenth century, certain acting editions fail to print even the
shortened version of 4.3. Charles Fetcher’s edition of 1861, for instance, leaves
it out altogether, so that Iago and Roderigo exit only to reenter again for the
beginning of Act 5. However, Fetcher’s script calls for the “Song of Willow” to
be played in the distance as the last scene of the play opens.44 Edwin Booth’s
promptbook includes only the Willow Song and moves it to a point earlier in
the fourth act.45 Cutting the scene apparently became so entrenched in theater
practice that attempts to reinstate it in the early twentieth century were not
always successful. For example, Lewis Waller’s 1906 promptbook, which uses
the F text, shows blocking for the scene, but the stage manager crossed out the
dialogue; a marginal note reads, “at Lyric Theatre / this Scene rehearsed but
not played.”46 Othello 4.3 was not fully restored to its proper place and length

book made by George Ellis for Samuel Phelps and used by Phelps for years. Folger Shakespeare
Library PROMPT Oth. 24, page 60. (See Figure 3 below at page 501.)
42
  William Shakespeare, [Othello, the Moor of Venice, a Tragedy, revised by J. P. Kemble; and
now first published as it is acted at the Theater Royal in Covent Garden (London: T. N. Long-
man and O. Rees, 1804)] (title page is missing). Promptbook, marked in several hands, includ-
ing that of Charles Kean. Folger Shakespeare Library PROMPT Oth. 12, page 67. Page 67,
which contains the entire scene, was sealed with wax to page 66, apparently to ensure that the
prompter-stage manager would disregard it during performance.
43
  William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice, a tragedy; revised by J. P.
Kemble; and now published as it is Performed at the Theatres Royal in Covent Garden (London:
John Miller, 1814). Promptbook, Tremont Theater, Boston, Massachusetts, used for many years
by a prompter or a theater rather than an actor. Folger Shakespeare Library PROMPT Oth.
5, page 68.
44
  William Shakespeare, Shakspere. Charles Fechter’s Acting Edition. Othello. Five acts, 2d ed.
([London:] W. R. Sams, 1861). Folger Shakespeare Library PROMPT Oth. 6, page 99.
45
  William Shakespeare, Edwin Booth’s Prompt-book of Othello, ed. William Winter (New
York: Francis Hart & Company, 1878). Study book of Charles B. Hanford. Folger Shakespeare
Library PROMPT Oth. 9, pages 89–90.
46
  William Shakespeare, Othello (n.p.: n.p., n.d.). Promptbook (from middle of Act 3 only)
recording Lewis Waller’s production at the Lyric Theater, London. Folger Shakespeare Library
PROMPT Oth. 35, page 111.
Figure 3: Page 60 from the Samuel Phelps promptbook showing Othello, 4.3. Folger
Shakespeare Library PROMPT Oth. 24.
502 Shakespeare quarterly
in regular productions until after the 1930s, when Paul Robeson began playing
Othello.47
Once removed from the circumstances of the early Elizabethan playhouse,
the purpose of 4.3 within the larger dramatic structure of the play became
unclear, and critics found the scene offensive. Thomas Rymer, who was no
fan, thought that the piquant barbs of Emilia’s concluding speech were all that
saved spectators from the dangers of indigestion brought on by its unappetizing
melancholy.48 In 1770, Francis Gentleman offered a more balanced view of the
play, but he still found this moment extremely distasteful. He wrote, “If Des-
demona was to chaunt the lamentable ditty, and speak all that Shakespeare has
allotted for her in this scene, an audience . . . would not know whether to laugh
or cry.” He went on to say that Emilia’s “quibbling dissertation on cuckold-
making is contemptible to the last degree.” 49 When not deployed to relieve the
dramatic tension, the scene lost its power, and critics perceived or experienced
it as maudlin.
Cutting 4.3 has had disastrous consequences for both of the female charac-
ters, but especially for Desdemona. Helena Faucit, who never played the scene
in her productions of Othello and never saw it presented except in a German
production, found it “sad” that the “exigencies” of the nineteenth-century stage
“require[d] the omission” of such an “exquisite scene . . . a scene so important
for the development of her character.” 50 Contemporary critics blame the cuts
for diluting the character and causing an “unenthusiastic” response to her.51
Edward Pechter argues brilliantly that the theatrical and critical “interpretive
tradition” rendered Desdemona silent and submissive for centuries. To demon-
strate the silencing of Desdemona, he highlights 4.3 and points to both “ ‘the-
atrical exigencies’ ” and “cultural determinants,” such as the eighteenth-century
belief that “domestic female babble” would “diminish the dignity of tragedy.” 52
47
  See, for example, William Shakespeare, The Script of “Othello” as Produced at the Savoy The-
ater London, on Monday, May 19th 1930 (n.p.: n.p., n.d.). Souvenir promptbook of the Maurice
Browne-Ellen Van Volkenburg production with Paul Robeson, Browne, Peggy Ashcroft, and
Sybil Thorndike. Folger Shakespeare Library PROMPT Oth. Fo.2.
48
  Thomas Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy; its Original, Excellency, and Corruption. With
Some Reflections on Shakespear, and Other Practitioners for the Stage (London, 1693), sig. K4v.
49
  Francis Gentleman, The Dramatic Censor; or, Critical Companion, 2 vols. (London: J. Bell
and C. Etherington, 1770), 1:146.
50
  Helena Faucit Martin, On some of Shakespeare’s women by one who has impersonated
them (printed for private circulation, 1885; various paginations), “Desdemona,” 49–90, esp. 85.
51
  Potter, Shakespeare in Performance, 49; and Marvin Rosenberg, The Masks of Othello: The
Search for the Identity of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona by Three Centuries of Actors and Critics
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1961), 215.
52
  Edward Pechter, “Othello” and Interpretive Traditions (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1999),
113–31, esp. 114–16.
 unpinning desdemona 503
The cuts to and eventual elimination of 4.3 have clouded the response to
Desdemona because, as Cook and others have pointed out, the scene clarifies
the character in ways that do not exist elsewhere in the play.53 But as succes-
sive productions reduced and then eliminated 4.3, they created a character in
performance wholly at odds with the version that exists in the Folio. Cook
proposes that Shakespeare deliberately constructed Desdemona as morally
ambiguous early in the play so that spectators could sympathize with Othello
because, like him, they doubt Desdemona.54 According to Cook, and Marvin
Rosenberg as well, the Willow Song scene is essential to understanding Des-
demona because it clarifies the ambiguity in the character by presenting her
qualities of loving devotion, fidelity, and obedience.55

Conclusion

Shakespeare wrote, and F reflects, exactly the kind of scene that Othello
needed late in the fourth act at the Globe—a scene, as Bradley says, of great
pathos. No doubt, the domestic action of Emilia unpinning Desdemona pro-
vided a welcome pause from Iago’s plots and schemes. Indeed, it served as a
moment when the Globe audience could catch its breath and ready itself for
the denouement. At the Blackfriars, however, the scene must have appeared
awkward and artificial, slowing down the production too much and for too
long with Desdemona’s undressing just before the interval. Structurally, the
end of the act no longer suited the staging practices at the smaller theater
and did not fit a new style of drama that emphasized situation and action.
Therefore, the scene was shortened; gone was Desdemona’s touching song
and Emilia’s tirade. Shakespeare, or the company, excised the singing and the

53
  Cook argues that 4.3 is one of two “little islands” in the play where Desdemona’s “character
is illuminated”; the other scene is Desdemona’s conversation with Iago in Act 2, upon his arrival
in Cyprus (194). Ronk asserts that the Willow Song is the only point where “the audience is
able to ‘see’ her and to know her ‘inwardly’ ” (52–72, esp. 62, 65). According to Ernest Brennecke,
the Willow Song alone “gives us a surprising flash of insight into the recesses of the heroine’s
character”; see “ ‘Nay, That’s Not Next!’: The Significance of Desdemona’s ‘Willow Song,’ ” Shake-
speare Quarterly 4 (1953): 35–38, esp. 35. Evelyn Gajowski emphasizes how important the
Willow Song scene is to representing the “reality of women” against the “fragmented notions of
them held by men” in the play; see “The Female Perspective in Othello,” in “Othello”: New Perspec-
tives (see n. 2 above), 97–114, esp. 97. Finally, Linda Phyllis Austern shows how Desdemona
“transcends . . . Othello’s earlier accusations” and “becomes an object of pity and noble feminin-
ity” when she sings; see “ ‘No women are indeed’: the boy actor as vocal seductress in late
sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English drama,” in Embodied Voices: Representing
Female Vocality in Western Culture, ed. Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 1994), 83–102, esp. 102.
54
  Cook, 194.
55
  Cook, 194–95; Rosenberg, 215.
Figure 4: Henry Singleton (1766–1839), Desdemona, n.p, n.d. Folger Shakespeare Library.
Figure 5: Richard Redgrave (1804–88), The Song of Poor Barbara, n.p., n.d. Folger Shakespeare
Library.
Figure 6: Théodore Chassériau (1819–56), Othello, Plate 9 (1844). The Baltimore Museum of
Art: The George A. Lucas Collection, purchased with funds from the State of Maryland and
the Laurence and Stella Bendann Fund and contributions from individuals, foundations, and
corporations throughout the Baltimore community. BMA 1996.48.12479.
Figure 7: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Desdemona’s Death-Song (1875/1880). Image courtesy of the
Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; purchased through the New
Century Fund and the Paul Mellon Fund.
508 Shakespeare quarterly
long speech in favor of the quicker, snappier dialogue in order to move the
action into the break at a brisk clip, and in doing so produced the version that
became Q. Later generations had little opportunity to experience the scene in
its original state and lost sight of its effect; they began to find it sentimental,
even mawkish (Figures 4–7), and it was further cut until it disappeared from
production. Performative and textual disruptions to the scene eliminated the
sense of pathos this scene provided, which caused more textual interference.
These changes greatly influenced the way critics interpreted Desdemona. The
troubled, fragmented stage history of Othello 4.3 indicates the value of exam-
ining Shakespeare’s texts with sensitivity to the performance conditions that
governed his writing.
Unfortunately, the performance history of Othello 4.3 also reveals an incli-
nation to suppress and restrain female agency. While staging prompted the
initial edits, later deletions were perhaps made easier by the scene’s content:
its failure to advance the plot, the troublesome business of the undressing, its
focus on minor characters, the fact that those characters are women and that
they discuss female infidelity.56 Certainly, successive generations express little
compunction at sacrificing Desdemona and Emilia. The history of this scene
in performance shows an unnerving disposition to still the female voice, which
makes it all the more remarkable that Shakespeare wrote the scene at all.

56
  Recently, Lois Potter argued that Shakespeare or the company cut 4.3 because it “was an
embarrassment” for two women to discuss men and adultery on the public stage; see “Editing
Desdemona,” in In Arden: Editing Shakespeare, Essays in Honour of Richard Proudfoot, ed. Ann
Thompson and Gordon McMullan (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2003), 81–94, esp. 91. Potter
offers a plausible and historically significant interpretation of the relationship between F and Q
and demonstrates the way gender prejudice works in modern textual editing.