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I Soag in Shakespeare It Is Common to Talk of Celebrity I Soag in Shakespeare It is commonto talk of celebrity autobiographiesas being 'ghost-written' by a professional writsr. This is an appropriate rnetaphor, for it is not too difficult to imagine the voice of the writer hovering bchind the voice of the figure they are personating in this instance.This ghosttinessis presentin any act of prasopopoeia,a word which, 'person-maki*g'"' effmologically, means A song is a specialcase ofprosopopoeia. For" when a characterin a play voises a song,their words are not their own in a ur:ique and perhapsseemingly obvious way. In Act IV SceneIL af Othello, as Ernilia is dying, shemakes leference to the "Willow Songo'fhat Desdernoilagave voice to in Act IV SaeneXI: Whatdid thy songbode, lady? Hark,canst thou hear me? I will playthe swiu:s '$y'illow, And dis in music:[Sings] willow, willow"' Moor, shewas chaste; she loved thse, cruel Moor; Socome my soulto bliss,as I speaktrue ; Sospeaking as I think,I die,I die. In singing as shedies, Emilia echoesBarbary, whose song it was, aRdwho 'died singing it' as Desdemonatells us. Emilia is a prosopopoei4and the shadeof Barbary is speaking tluough her. The voices of both maidscoincide. Desdemona'$voice is also in Emilia's words, and moves the easycorrespondence between the voices of the two maids off centre.Despite her insistencethat shethe one speakingher words ('as I speaktrue; / So speakingas I think'), Desdemona'smaid's voic.sis not wholly her own at this point. This makeswhat Emilia herself would seeas her moment to set the record straight,in her own words, rather rnore complicated.A fi.rther complication arisesbecause 'I will play the swan / And die in music' is proverbial'. Emilia seemsto be a vehicle for the sort of collective, folk wisdom that is embodiedby the "Willow Songoo.In a sense,as Emilia 'she saysthings like was chaste;she loved thee, cruel Moor', the audienceis hearing not Emilia's voice,but Desdemona's.Even if this speechdidn"t refer backto Desdemona's song,arrd we hadjust thesewords, it would srill be possibleto think of Emilia as personatingDesdemona's voise. It is impossibleto hear Emilia expressinghow Desdemonafelt without also hearingDesdemona uttering thesesentiments herselfl "l was chaste;f loved thee". We cannot describesomeone slse"s subjective feelings withoul speakingfor them in someway. And in speakingfor them we becomea pro$opCIpoeiafor their words. In the patterningof the line 'Moor, shewas chaste:she loved thee, cruel Moor', there is not only the anguishof Emili4 but alsothe ten&mess of Desdemona.The symmetry of the line makesthe words appearimpersonal, and gives them ths ring of many voices which in anothercontext migt* be the ring of prophesy.Quite apart from the shadowy echoesof the personaeofBarbary and Desdemona,the sudden,ccnsiderEd patteming of I Gavin Alexander(ed.) p.9S ' Norman Sandersnote to 11.245-65,2. Athello (p.l8 1) 2 Emilia's speechcreates the sensethat she is spealcingwith a voice that is bigger than her own, as is often the casewhen Shakespeareancharacters speak just befoie their deaths. Hmilia's voice takeson the tone of a classicalchorus; all the more so becauseshe is passingjudgement upon Othello in theselines. Sarlier in this $coila,Emilia hts said 'twill "twill outo strf. trpeacelo This contributes to the impressicnthat sheis rnerely serving as conduit to someimpersannl voice of Judgomentor Tnrth. If this is the case,she *spersonating this voiceobut this personation does not take plnce without this voice being inllected by her own. It is not simply impersonal, or simply personatr,but both at the sametirne. The last words Emilia speaksaro nlsodaubledl oI die, I die,' The sffect achievedchanger considcrablydepending on whether or not 'I both phrases&re voiced in the ssnreway, Wore the secsnd die' or "twill outt voiced with s different volume, tone or emphasisnthis would prradoxically unify the tryo instancosof the repeated phrase. There woald be r srnse that a single persona was voicing both; that it was deciding to alter the sound of the secondversion as a reaction ts how the first version sounded. There would be a fceling of progrcssion *nd confinulty between arross the twn instances.This voicing woukl bc par{icularly csnducive to melodrarna, a$ the actor saying the wsrds might be tempt*d to over-ncf the seeondphrase, on the assuurption that the exact vocal ropetition of the phrase would make the semnntie rcpetition superfluous. Au actor thiuking along these lines would conclude that thc only acc*ptable reading was one in which the sounding of Jhesecond phraso was altered. Howeveroin Srmuel Beckettts Footfults,Beckett gives the direction oForgiveme again. fPawse,No louder,l Forgive me again' to lhe *ctor playiug V.If the repetitions in Shakospearewere voiced in this rnailner, it wnuld be far frorn clear that there was a unifuing voice behind the two identical utterance$.A sort of mirror-effect would result, ald the person,r of fimilia would fracture info two $!p*rats personae.It would be as though sn echowas operating within her voice; as though a conversationwas taking place betweentrvo voicegwithin a singlevoice. It would be impassibleto concludethat one of thesevoice$ wss Emiliats own voice: neither voice is entirely h*r own, and the fracturing of her voice croatcs the impression that she doesnot have one single, por$onal voice, but is rather a collocntion of differ*nt voicos.This voicing would be suggestiveof disintegrafion rather than unificntion, The secondmanner of voicing socmsto developmor& naturally out of the text. The symrnetrical doubling of utterances reralls the fact that characters too are doubled: Barbary, the rnaiel,is Emilia's shatlowy double, and Desdemona'srnother, whose maid BarbarT was, srem$ to correspond to Desdemonaas she appeers before the audience. ln Mueh Ado About Nothing, Balthasar'ssong actslike a choral voice in a similar way. It is worth recalling that the chorusesof classiealplays would havebeen sung.The first versoof fuissong is Sigh no more, ladies,sigh no more, Men were deceiversever, One foot in seaand one on shore, To one thing constantnever: J Thensigh not so,btrt let themgo, And beyou blitheand bonny, Convertingall your soundsof woe Into Hey nonny,nonny. What shikes an audiencefirst about this songis the questionof where the sentimentof 'Men wers deceiversever'" (togetherwith'The fraud of men was ever so' in the second verse)is comi*g from. It sesr]rslike an indictment of the rnalecharactex in the play, especiallyClaudio. The voice sesmsto address'ladies' in general,as folk songsare wont to do, but also more specifically female figures within the play, and we might think it is talking more to Hero th*n to anyoneelse. Balthasar cannot be consciousaf this, hut the song and its author are. As such,the song's voice is a voice frorn outsidethe play, a voice which we might be temptedto call authorial"When the voice of the song i$ personatedby Balthasar,araisonneur seemsto shimmerbriefly into beir:g o*stage.But Balthassrcanrlot serve this role, he can only give body to the voice. Becausethe raisonneur is not any characterin the play, but a voice, it is easierto imagine it as being outsideof the dramatisunity of the play, and we might more rsadily identify it with the voice of the author.Balthasar has }ittle role in the play beyand his role as a singcr. Whilst the voice of the song is surely not his own, his statusas singermeans that he can serveas an impersonalmouthpisce for it. Sy contrast,the "Willow Song" ifi Othello cannot simply speakthrough Desdemonaor tsmilia. trtis rather colouredby thoir personalities and over-Iayeredwith their voices as charastsrs. Ernilia and Barbary are not quite the sameperson. When Ernilia dies singing the "Willow Songo',it is not a caseof history repeatingitself. Emilia only mouths an incoherentsnatch of the song sheheard her lady sing earlier. Shedoes not hold the song in her memory: 'Willow, only the wards willow, willow' have stayedin her mind. It is not certain how far Emilia can be said to be singing the samesong as that which Desdemonasang at all. The songis not quite fixed; it is not somethingwhich will simply spill out of the mouths of maids in thesesituations. trt is shifting and mutable.Emilia is hardly reciting a song from rnemory. Sheis imperfectly remembering,and &is meilnsthat she is to a degree authoringher own song.F*rhaps Shakespeareis inviting us to look at the words 'Willow, willow, willow' not just in the conlext of the songwhieh inspired them, but rather in the context of Emilia's life and of her dying speech.Even Desdsmonacouldn't recall the songper&ctly, saying'Nay that's not next.' As Desdemonasays this line, the audiense might be rerninded that the body on the stagethat they think of as Desdemonais an actor speakinglines that they have committedto memory. An actor has had to memarisea line which effectively says'ol eannotremember". Who is perfonning at this moment? Desdemonaperforrning a song is at the sametime an actor perfcrming Desdemona perforrning a song. In Act I Scenell af Tfte Tempest,it is the song that is doing the rsmombering. Ferdinand exclaims'The ditty doesremernber my drowned father'. Here, remember meanssomething close to *commemorate". But the songis not simply * meriorial of Ferdinand's fathcr. The relatisn of personal selvesto songsis not nn 'An casy one, as fipparsntin Othello when besdemona sa:rsof the n'lVillow Songo': old thing ttwasl but it exprersedh*r furtnnet. In this line, {he *butt showsthnt songs 4 expres$the personal despite rather than becauseof their nnture. There is an elernent of wishfill thinking at w*rrk in both cases:it is comforting for Banbary and Ferdinand to irnagine that their soff$w has found *xpression in song, and hns even been felt before, many tirnes by otfoerpeople.
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