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Unpinning Desdemona Author(S): Denise A George Washington University Unpinning Desdemona Author(s): Denise A. Walen Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Winter, 2007), pp. 487-508 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4625012 . Accessed: 22/03/2013 08:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Folger Shakespeare Library and George Washington University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Shakespeare Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 140.233.2.215 on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:40:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Unpinning Desdemona DENISEA. WALEN ONE OF THE MORE STRIKING DIFFERENCES betweenthe quarto(1622) and the FirstFolio (1623) texts of Othellois in the scene(4.3) thatpresages Desdemona'smurder as Emiliaundresses her and prepares her for bed. While F unfoldsthrough a leisurely112 linesthat include the WillowSong, Q clips alongwith only 62 lines,cutting the sceneby nearlyhalf.1 These two versions also differthematically. F presentsboth Desdemonaand Emiliaas complex characters.By delvingdeeply into her feelings,it portraysan activeand tragically nuancedDesdemona and raisesempathy for her with its psychologicalexpos6. F also containsa surprisinglyinsightful and impassionedEmilia, who defends the behaviorof wivesagainst the ill usagethey sufferat the handsof theirhus- bands.In contrast,Q, while it retainsthe narrativestructure of the longerF scene,significantly alters the characterizationof the womenby presentingboth as one-dimensional:Desdemona as thepatient Griselda and Emilia as theshal- low, saucymaid. This essayoffers a theoryto explainwhy the two versionsof thisscene differ so greatly. The excellentwork that debatesthe questionsposed by F and Qtexts focuseson their manydifferences and the complicatedtextual issues they raise. Lookingmore closely at a single difference-that occurringat the end of Act 4-raises intriguingpossibilities about the texts. Concentratingon the curiousissues of stagingin that sceneis evenmore enlightening, especially the questionsabout Emilia's"unpinning" of Desdemona.This essay will analyze Fundingto carryout this researchcame from a Mellon FacultyEnhancement Research Awarddistributed by VassarCollege. I thankthe staffof the FolgerShakespeare Library, espe- ciallyGeorgianna Ziegler, for assistancewith the promptbooksand othermaterial discussed in this essay.Thanks are also due to Alan C. Dessen for commentingon an earlyversion of this article,the anonymousreviewers for ShakespeareQuarterly for their thoughtfulcritiques, and my colleagueHolly Hummel.I must creditthe work of my seminarstudents in "Shakespeare in Performance"at VassarCollege during the springof 2006 for stimulatingmy interestwith excellentessays on the topic. 1 In this article,citations of Q followScott McMillin,ed., TheFirst Quarto of Othello(Cam- bridge:Cambridge UP, 2001); here,see esp. 130-33. Quotationsfrom the FirstFolio are from The NortonFacsimile: The FirstFolio of Shakespeare,Based on Foliosin the FolgerShakespeare LibraryCollection, prep. CharltonHinman, 2d ed. (New York:Norton, 1996), and are cited in the text by through-linenumber (TLN). For the Folio renditionof Othello4.3, see pages 841-42. This content downloaded from 140.233.2.215 on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:40:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 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 Othellois 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.2 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"3of 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 "scribalmishearings" 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.4However, 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 2 Thosewho arguein favorof expansioninclude Nevill Coghill, Shakespeare's Professional Skills(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1964), 164-202; John Kerrigan, "Shakespeare as Reviser;' in EnglishDrama to 1710, ed. Christopher Ricks (New York:Peter Bedrick Books, 1987), 255-75; JohnJones, Shakespeareat Work(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 249, 255-78; Norman Sand- ers, ed., Othello:Updated Edition (Cambridge:Cambridge UP, 2003), 203-215; Edward Pechter, "Crisisin Editing?"Shakespeare Survey 59 (2006): 20-38, esp.21-28; and Graceloppolo, Revis- ingShakespeare (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991), 154-59. W. W. Gregoffers a complex reading of the relationship between the texts in The ShakespeareFirst Folio, Its Bibliographical and Textual History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 357-71. E.A.J. Honigmann first argued for revision in his article "Shakespeare'sRevised Plays: King Lear and Othello;'The Library,ser. 6, 4 (1982):142-73, esp.156-73; he lateraccepted the possibilityof excisionin TheTexts of "Othello"and Shakespearian Revision (London: Routledge, 1996), 10-12, 101-2. Seealso Charl- ton Hinman,"The'Copy' for the SecondQuarto of Othello["inJoseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies,ed. James G. McManawayet al. (Washington, DC: FolgerShakespeare Library, 1948), 373-89; Thomas L. Berger,"The Second Quarto of Othelloand the Question of Textual Authority," in "Othello":New Perspectives,ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Kent Cartwright (Rutherford,NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1991), 26-47; andDavid Lake and Brian Vickers, "ScribalCopy for Q1 of Othello:A Reconsideration;'Notes & Queries48 (2001):284-87. 3 Alice Walker,Textual Problems of the FirstFolio (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1953), 138-61, esp. 140. See also AliceWalker,"The 1622 Quartoand the FirstFolio Texts of Othello," ShakespeareSurvey 5 (1952): 16-24; and Alice Walker and John Dover Wilson, eds., Othello (Cambridge:Cambridge UP, 1957), 121-35. 4 Scott McMillin, ed., First Quarto of "Othello,"1-44; and "The Mystery of the Early Othello Texts,' in "Othello":New CriticalEssays, ed. Philip C. Kolin (New York:Routledge, 2002), 401-24, esp. 414, on"scribal mishearings.' This content downloaded from 140.233.2.215 on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:40:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 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.5 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.6 I would argue that, in the case of 4.3, the F version of Othellooffers 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'stextual 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
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