EMILIA

Iago's wife and Desdemona's woman. She has watched this marriage up close and holds fewer illusions about men than anyone else in the play.

1:24Dramatic30s–50sIntermediate

The speech150 words · 4 beats

0:00 / 1:24

Off-book

Let husbands know Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell And have their palates both for sweet and sour, As husbands have.

What is it that they do When they change us for others? Is it sport? I think it is: and doth affection breed it? I think it doth: is't frailty that thus errs? It is so too: and have not we affections, Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?

Then let them use us well: else let them know, The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.turn

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Speaking to: Desdemona, helping her to bed — but really to every woman who was ever told to behave.
What just happened: Desdemona, frightened by Othello's sudden cruelty, has wondered aloud whether any woman alive would betray her husband. Emilia decides to answer her honestly.
Objective: To hand Desdemona a harder, more useful truth than the one she was raised on.
The turn: 'Then let them use us well' — the explanation stops and becomes a warning.
Watch out for: The trap is playing it as bitter comedy. It is an argument, built by someone who has turned it over for years; the dryness is real but it is not the point.

Full work: Othello New to the vocabulary? What’s a beat? →

More from Othello1

IAGO1:22A passed-over soldier assembles a scheme out loud, testing each piece of it on the audience as he goes. He improvises his own evil and admires it forming.

EMILIA

Othello · William Shakespeare · 1:24 · 150 words

But I do think it is their husbands' faults If wives do fall. Say that they slack their duties, And pour our treasures into foreign laps, Or else break out in peevish jealousies, Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us, Or scant our former having in despite; Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace, Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell And have their palates both for sweet and sour, As husbands have. What is it that they do When they change us for others? Is it sport? I think it is: and doth affection breed it? I think it doth: is't frailty that thus errs? It is so too: and have not we affections, Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have? Then let them use us well: else let them know, The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

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