‘But that I loue the gentle Desdemona’

Abstract

In Shakespeare’s time, loue could have a long vowel as in Modem English ‘move’; and this pronunciation was especially common in verse for the purpose of rhyme. If this lengthy vowel is present here, in Othello’s unrhymed but high style, then loue can be made particularly to dominate the line by marking a definite caesura. With this emphasis on Othello’s emotional state — on what Spivack has called love’s ‘slow arrival, its high and permanent residence’ — the word gentle tends to take a lesser accent and to denote a conventional idea of the woman Othello has chosen for wife: she is ‘soft, tender’ (OED A adj., 5); and she is ‘amiable, lovely, full of endearing qualities’ (Schmidt adj., 2).¹

The word gentle has a rich ambiguity in Othello’s But that I loue the gentle Desdemona, I would not my vnhoused free condition Put into Circumscription, and Confine, For the Seas worth. (F229–32;1.ii.25–8)