EVIDENCE OF REVISION IN OTHELLO

by

Pervez Rizvi

[This article was published in Notes and Queries, vol. 45,
no. 3 (September 1998) and is reproduced here, with minor
changes, by permission of Oxford University Press. Numbers
in square brackets refer to end notes.]

Othello exists in two authoritative versions: the first
quarto (Q) published in 1622 and the Folio (F) of 1623.
Current scholarly opinion on the relationship between Q
and F is summarised thus in the Oxford Textual Companion
[1]:

"[Q] represents a scribal copy of foul papers.
F represents a scribal copy of Shakespeare's own revised
manuscript of the play.
F therefore brings us closer to Shakespeare's final text
than [Q].
[Q's] scribe obliterated fewer authorial characteristics
than F's."

This hypothesis places Othello in the same category as
Hamlet and King Lear; for both of these, scholars
generally agree that F prints Shakespeare's revised texts
[2].

There are two substantial difficulties with this. First,
the F versions of Hamlet and Lear omit several long
passages (in Lear, an entire scene) which do not
significantly advance the plot but whose omission produces
tighter, faster-paced dramas. In Othello, if we accept the
current hypothesis, precisely the opposite occurs. The
prime example is Emilia's defence of wives at the end of
the 'willow song' scene:

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
............................................
Then let them use us well, else let them know
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
(4.3.85-102) [3]

This, and similar passages in F, are best described by the
Oxford editors:

"Q is shorter than F, and most of the material present
only in F consists of static poetic elaboration which
slows up the dramatic pace. We find it easier to believe
that Shakespeare on reflection intelligently cut such
elaborations than that he so unintelligently padded out a
play already taxingly long." [4]

These comments were made about Richard III. Excepting that
Othello is not taxingly long, they apply to it with equal
force.

The other difficulty is that F contains many fewer stage
directions than Q. For example, at the climax of the play,
F does not tell us that Othello kisses the sleeping
Desdemona; that after murdering her, he falls on the bed
where she lies; that he runs at Iago when told the truth
about the handkerchief; that Iago stabs Emilia; or,
finally, that Othello stabs himself. For all of these
directions, and many others, Q is our only source. No one
has satisfactorily explained how it came about that the
revised text of the play contains so many fewer stage
directions, when the plot was essentially unaffected by
the revision. It seems unlikely that the Q-only directions
were added by the scribe who copied the play because, as
Greg noted [5], all of them give the impression of being
authorial. In particular, Q's 'Enter Montanio, Gouernor of
Cypres, with two other Gentlemen' (II.i.0) could only have
been written by Shakespeare, because the text nowhere
describes Montano as governor. To explain the absence of
such directions from F, we have to believe that either
Shakespeare or the scribe who copied his manuscript
deliberately deleted around twenty stage directions
(accidental omission of so many is hardly possible). This
is not a credible hypothesis.

In this note I provide textual evidence to support an
alternative hypothesis: that it is Q which represents
Shakespeare's revised text of Othello, F being the
original.

FALSE STARTS IN F

During the heat of composition, Shakespeare, like all
authors, could be expected to strike out certain words or
lines he had written and replace them with others he
considered better. That these 'false starts' were
sometimes not clearly marked in his manuscripts and could
find their way into printed texts is proved by, among
others, the well-known example from Romeo and Juliet (Q2):
'I will beleeue, / Shall I beleeue that vnsubstantiall
death is amorous' (5.3.102-3) where the compositor failed
to realise that 'I will beleeue' was a false start for
'Shall I beleeue'. There are several textual variants
between F and Q which are best explained as false starts
inadvertently printed in F.

Just before Othello's re-entry in the second half of the
great temptation scene, Iago in F says:

............ This may do something.
The Moore already changes with my poyson:
Dangerous conceites, are in their Natures poysons,
Which at the first are scarse found to distaste:
But with a little acte vpon the blood,
Burne like the Mines of Sulphure.
(3.3.328-33)

Line 329 occurs in F only. The near-repetition of 'poyson'
and 'poysons' in successive lines is clumsy. I suggest
that 'The Moore already changes......' was a false start,
which Shakespeare intended to replace by 'Dangerous
conceites.....', giving:

............ this may doe something,
Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
Which at the first are scarce found to distast.
[etc.]

This is the reading in Q.

After Roderigo has attacked Cassio at the start of the
final act, Iago says in F: 'He's almost slaine, and
Rodorigo quite dead.' (5.1.116) where 'He' refers to
Cassio. The description of Roderigo as 'quite dead' has
rightly been seen as unintentionally comical and most
editions based on F simply omit 'quite'. Wells and Taylor,
in 'Textual Companion' [6], quote Lawrence J. Ross's
edition of 1974 whose reading 'He's almost slain and
Roderigo quite. Dead.' they label 'ingenious'. I suggest
that 'quite' was another false start. Shakespeare first
wrote 'He's almost slain and Roderigo quite.' where
'quite' has the meaning 'requited'. Use of the word 'quit'
for 'requite' is paralleled by Hamlet, speaking of revenge
on Claudius, who says 'is't not perfect conscience / To
quit him with this arm?' (5.2.68-9). Having written
'quite', Shakespeare immediately altered it to the more
straightforward 'dead', giving: 'Hee's almost slaine, and
Roderigo dead.' which is the reading in Q.

Two other examples can be given, not as strong as the ones
above. When Othello arrives to break up the drunken brawl
which Iago has engineered in Act 2, Montano immediately
tells him, in F: 'I bleed still, I am hurt to th' death.
He dies.' (2.3.157). The phrase 'He dies' is not in Q.
Editors have noted that it is perhaps a stage direction
which was inadvertently printed as part of the dialogue.
The identical stage direction is given for the death of
Oswald in the first quarto (1608) of King Lear (4.5.242),
believed to have been printed from Shakespeare's foul
papers. Moreover, the second quarto (1630) of Othello, a
careful conflation of Q and F, prints the stage direction
'He faints' at this point, suggesting that its editor also
took 'He dies' to be a misplaced stage direction and
emended it in view of the fact that Montano does not die.

If 'He dies' was first written as a stage direction, it
was clearly a false start. Shakespeare perhaps intended to
have Montano die of his wounds (he plays a negligible part
in the play after this scene). Immediately on writing it,
Shakespeare realised that, with Montano dead, Cassio could
hardly escape with mere dismissal from his post. In a town
'brimful of fear' (2.3.207), Othello would be forced, at
the very least, to imprison him, making it much harder for
Iago's plot to proceed. So 'He dies' was marked as
cancelled, explaining its absence from Q.

In Desdemona and Emilia's 'willow song' scene, in a prose
passage which occurs only in F, Emilia says 'but for all
the whole world' (4.3.73-4) and goes on to say that she
would make her husband a cuckold for the whole world. It
is possible that Shakespeare was in two minds whether to
write 'but for all the world' or 'but for the whole world'
and in haste wrote a conflation of the two.

The presence of these false starts in F suggests strongly
that it represents Shakespeare's original text. There are
no false starts discernible in Q.

REVISION IN Q

There are several variants between Q and F which suggest
that it is Q which prints the revised text.

In the scene of confrontation between Othello and
Desdemona, after he has accused her directly of
infidelity, Emilia enters the stage. The motive and timing
of her entry differ significantly between F and Q. In F,
her entry appears to be a response to Othello's call for
her:

I tooke you for that cunning Whore of Venice,
That married with Othello. You Mistris,
[Enter Aemilia.]
That haue the office opposite to Saint Peter,
And keepes the gate of hell.
(4.2.93-6)

This presents a problem because later in the scene Emilia
reveals that she knows that Othello has called Desdemona
'whore': 'He called her whore. A beggar in his drink /
Could not have laid such terms upon his callet.' (4.2.119-
120). To explain how she knows this we have to suppose
either that her entry in the scene was wrongly placed at
line 94 by the F compositor or, extra-textually, that she
was listening outside the door before she entered. It is
more likely that the passage in F is as it was first
written by Shakespeare who, sensing the difficulty,
revised it. In Q, the revised version, Emilia enters 5
lines earlier, allowing her to be on stage to hear Othello
say 'cunning whore of Venice'.

One of the many variants between Q and F occurs when
Othello is assuring the Senate that he will not scant
their 'serious and great business' if Desdemona
accompanies him to Cyprus. He concludes by saying that,
should he do so,

Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,
And all indign and base adversities
Make head against my estimation.
(1.3.272-4)

This is the F reading. Q prints 'reputation' instead of
'estimation'. Taken in isolation this change could be
taken as evidence of authorial revision either from F to Q
or vice versa. But 'reputation' is the key word in the
play, repeated again and again. Othello asks Montano:

What's the matter,
That you unlace your reputation thus,
And spend your rich opinion for the name
Of a night-brawler?
(2.3.186-9)

Cassio laments:

"Reputation, reputation, reputation - O, I ha'e lost my
reputation, I ha'e lost the immortal part of myself, and
what remains is bestial! My reputation, Iago, my
reputation." (2.3.256-9)

Iago reassures him:

"As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some
bodily wound. There is more sense in that than in
reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false
imposition, oft got without merit and lost without
deserving. You have lost no reputation at all unless you
repute yourself such a loser." (2.3.260-5)

This cumulative evidence suggests strongly that
Shakespeare changed F's reading 'estimation' to Q's
'reputation' at 1.3.274 to strengthen the use of the
keyword, not that he weakened it by the reverse change.

After recounting to the Senate how he told 'the story of
my life' at Brabantio's house, Othello says of Desdemona:
'My Storie being done, / She gaue me for my paines a world
of kisses:' (1.3.157-8). This, the F reading, is hard to
explain in view of the lines which immediately follow:

............ She thank'd me,
And bad me, if I had a Friend that lou'd her,
I should but teach him how to tell my Story,
And that would wooe her. Vpon this hint I spake,
(1.3.162-5. Q misprints 'heate' for 'hint')

That Desdemona should bestow a world of kisses on Othello
first and then proceed to drop hints is implausible. It
can be explained only by the extra-textual
characterisation of her as being 'impulsively
affectionate' [7]. I suggest that the F reading 'kisses'
was Shakespeare's first thought; in revising he realised
the implausibility of what he had written and changed it
to give the Q reading: 'She gaue me for my paines a world
of sighes'.

In the 'willow song' scene Desdemona remembers her maid
Barbary and says: 'She had a song of willow. / An old
thing 'twas, but it expressed her fortune, / And she died
singing it. That song tonight / Will not go from my mind.'
(4.3.27-30, both Q and F). In F only, there follows a
discussion of Lodovico's graces, and Desdemona sings the
song. F, but not Q, has Emilia recall the song in the
closing scene of the play: 'What did thy song bode, lady?
/ Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan, / And
die in music. (sings) Willow, willow, willow' (5.2.253-5).

Clearly, the song and Emilia's later reference to it were
either cut together from the F text or added together to
the Q text. In arguing that it is Q which represents the
revised text I admit that the revision, in this instance,
appears inept. If his intention was to omit the song, it
is surprising that Shakespeare did not also omit the lines
beginning 'She had a song of willow'. But scholars who
believe that the song was a later addition to the play
face a greater difficulty. They must suppose that
Shakespeare wrote the lines 'That song tonight / Will not
go from my mind' and then made no further mention of the
song. Later, he revised the play to add it. But why have
Desdemona speak of a song, raising the audience's
expectation that she is to sing it, and then fail to
provide either the song or any further reference to it?
It is more plausible that Shakespeare wrote the song in
the original text (F) and then cut it carelessly to
produce the Q text.

A few lines later, we find further evidence that material
was cut from the F version of this scene. In Q,
Desdemona's question 'Wouldst thou do such a deed for all
the world?' (4.3.62) is misleading because the only deed
to which it might refer is the forsaking of Barbary by her
love. But the subsequent dialogue reveals that the deed in
question is the infidelity of wives. In F, Desdemona's
question is preceded by 'Dost thou in conscience think -
tell me Emilia - / That there be women do abuse their
husbands / In such gross kind?' (4.3.59-61). These lines
make it clear to the audience that Desdemona's mind is on
the deed which Othello had accused her of committing, in
the previous scene. It seems more likely that Shakespeare
created the confused passage in Q by careless cutting than
that he wrote it as it stands.

MISCELLANEOUS TEXTUAL NOTES

When Iago first gives his reasons for hating Othello, he
says, in Q:

But he, as louing his owne pride and purposes,
Euades them, with a bumbast circumstance,
Horribly stuft with Epithites of warre:
And in conclusion,
Non-suits my mediators: ..........
(1.1.12-16)

In F the passage is the same (with variations in spelling
and punctuation), except that the half-line 'And in
conclusion' is missing. This is consistent with the F
scribe's evident dislike of half-lines [8]. Even in Q, the
half-line looks like something added afterwards, as if the
scribe could not decipher or understand the line which
stood in Shakespeare's manuscript and made up a linking
phrase in order to make tolerable sense of the passage. A
very similar form of editing can be observed in the
British Museum manuscript of Sir Thomas More (Addition II)
where Shakespeare wrote:

............ and your unreverent knees,
Make them your feet. To kneel to be forgiven
Is safer wars than ever you can make,
Whose discipline is riot.
In, in to your obedience! Why, even your hurly
Cannot proceed but by obedience.
What rebel captain,
As mut'nies are incident, by his name
Can still the rout?
(lines 122-30)

With the careful punctuation above, the passage makes
sense. Reading without the benefit of punctuation, which
Shakespeare did not provide, the scribe who incorporated
his addition into the play could not understand it. He
crossed out most of it and added 'Tell me but this', to
produce:

............ and your unreverent knees,
Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven.
Tell me but this, what rebel captain,
As mut'nies are incident, by his name
Can still the rout?

'And in conclusion' in Q Othello serves a similar purpose
as 'Tell me but this': it replaces an unintelligible
passage in the manuscript with an easy bridging phrase.

When delivering news of the likely Turkish invasion of
Cyprus, the Messenger tells the Duke that Montano 'With
his free duty recommends you thus, / And prays you to
believe him.' (1.3.42-3, both Q and F). The feeble
'believe' was first emended to 'relieve' by Capell but
most modern editions retain the original reading. Support
for the emendation comes from a passage in Antony and
Cleopatra. Sent by Caesar to offer 'comforts' to the
defeated Cleopatra, Proculeius tells her:

............ you shall find
A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness,
Where he for grace is kneeled to.
(5.2.26-8)

Just a few lines later, after Roman soldiers have taken
Cleopatra by surprise and she moves to stab herself,
Proculeius says:

Hold, worthy lady, hold!
Do not yourself such wrong, who are in this
Relieved but not betrayed.
(5.2.38-40)

This example is too slender to warrant the conclusion that
there was an association in Shakespeare's mind between
'pray' and 'relieve' but it does tend to support Capell's
emendation.

Another variant between Q and F occurs in Act 2 when,
viewing the storm from the cape, the Second Gentleman
tells Montano:

The winde-shak'd-Surge, with high & monstrous Maine
Seemes to cast water on the burning Beare,
And quench the Guards of th'euer-fixed Pole:
(2.1.13-15)

This is the F reading. In Q, the Pole is not 'euer-fixed'
but 'euer fired'. Even Ridley's edition, which is based on
Q, prints the F reading, apparently regarding 'euer fired'
as an error. That is the most likely explanation:
'fixed'/'fired' are easy to mistake and the Pole is
elsewhere in Shakespeare referred to as fixed; for
example, Caesar's description of himself in Julius Caesar:

But I am as constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
(3.1.60-2)

But it is possible that Q's 'euer fired' may be the true
reading. This is suggested by Lady Macbeth's 'What hath
quenched them hath given me fire.' (2.2.2) where it is
Duncan's guards who have been quenched, as the guards of
the Pole are in Othello. [E. A. J. Honigmann's new Arden
edition of Othello (1996), which I saw after writing this
article, prints 'ever-fired'.]

During the temptation scene, Iago asks Othello in F:
'Would you the super-vision grossely gape on? / Behold her
top'd?' (3.3.400-1). Modern editors are united in
regarding 'super-vision' as corrupt; they print the Q
reading 'superuisor' which makes easy sense. However, a
misreading of 'superuisor' as 'super-vision' is hard to
explain (a rare reading is not likely to be an error for a
common one). Moreover, the second quarto also prints
'superuision', evidently not regarding it as corrupt.
Honigmann's explanation [9], that its editor chose
'superuision' because he 'deferred' to Shakespeare's
'obscure' language, is contradicted by the instances where
that editor did reject both Q and F readings for ones of
his own.

I believe that the F reading is not corrupt. We are
accustomed to hear the managers of an enterprise described
as 'the management', so why should there be a difficulty
in hearing a supervisor described as 'the supervision'?
Had the F reading been printed more often in post-
seventeenth century editions, the phrase 'the supervision'
might have entered the language as easily as 'the
management' has done.

Interestingly, there are two other examples of similar
variants in Othello. When informed that 'The town is
empty. On the brow o'th'sea / Stand ranks of people, and
they cry "A sail!"' (2.1.54-5), Cassio, in expectation
that Othello's ship has been sighted, replies: 'My hopes
do shape him for the Gouernor.' (2.1.56). This is the F
reading. In Q, it is 'the guernement' whom Cassio hopes
for and, once again, the second quarto chooses to print
the rarer reading 'the gouernement'. As with
'supervisor'/'supervision', there is no difficulty with
Q's reading 'guernement'. In fact, F's 'Gouernor' may be
wrong anyway: the word occurs just a few lines earlier
when Montano says: 'I am glad on't; 'tis a worthy
governor.' (2.1.31). The F reading may simply be a
mistaken echo by the scribe or compositor, a mistake
corrected by the second quarto.

The third variant of this type occurs when Iago is
persuading Roderigo to undertake the murder of Cassio who,
Iago says in F, 'sups to night with a Harlotry' (4.2.238).
F's 'Harlotry' is replaced by the easier 'harlot' in Q.

One of the substantive Q/F variants affects stage business
in the scene in which Cassio is ambushed by Iago and
Roderigo. When Iago is questioning Bianca in the presence
of Lodovico and Gratiano, some attendants remove the
injured Cassio. At this point, F has Iago say: 'Stay you
good Gentlemen. Looke you pale, Mistris?' (5.1.107). No
stage direction is given in Q or F but the clear
indication is that Lodovico and Gratiano start to leave
with Cassio and are urged to stay by Iago. In Q the line
appears as: 'Stay you good Gentlewoman, looke you pale
mistrisse?'. Here, it is Bianca who tries to leave but is
restrained by Iago. Both Q and F readings are plausible;
but that F's 'Gentlemen' is an error for 'Gentlewoman' is
suggested by the occurrence of an almost identical error
in Much Ado About Nothing where the quarto (1600) gives
the stage direction: 'Enter Hero and two Gentlewomen,
Margaret, and Vrsley' (3.1.0) which is reprinted in the
Folio with 'Gentlewomen' wrongly replaced by 'Gentlemen'.

SUMMARY

The differences between the F and Q texts are of two
kinds: variants between single words or phrases, whether
substantive or not; and those passages which occur only in
F. There is a small number of lines present only in Q, but
all of these are best explained as accidental omissions
from F.

Considering the single word or phrase variants, many are
almost certainly due to printing error; for example, the
'Doues'/'Dawes' variant at 1.1.65. For the rest, it is
possible to construct, on literary grounds, a theory of
revision either from Q to F or vice versa. I have already
argued above that 'estimation' in F at 1.3.274 was revised
to 'reputation' in Q; but one could no doubt find
arguments to support the contrary hypothesis.

Nevill Coghill regarded the F-only passages as later
additions, evidence of Shakespeare's professional skill as
a dramatist. Honigmann discusses this view [10] and shows
that regarding the passages as cuts from the original text
need not affect our judgement of Shakespeare's skill. In
fact, most F-only passages are much better explained as
cuts than as additions. Emilia's speech in defence of
wives, quoted at the start of this note, is correctly
described by Ridley as 'an undramatic disquisition' [11];
it is hard to imagine that Shakespeare *added* this speech
to the play.

I believe that the readiness of scholars to see Q as the
original text stems from the many undisputed examples it
gives of being close to Shakespeare's own manuscript.
Since Q could not have been derived from a prompt-book (as
the 'Textual Companion' notes [12], it contains an
incorrect entry for Desdemona at 1.3.46) it is natural to
believe that it must derive from foul papers. This in turn
necessitates the belief that F must be the revised text.

My hypothesis is that it is F which represents a
transcript of foul papers. F lacks the inconsistencies in
the names of characters and stage directions which we
should expect of foul papers because these were
'obliterated' [13] by the scribe. Q represents a
transcript of Shakespeare's fair copy [14], with cuts,
revision of many words and phrases and the elimination of
false starts.

NOTES

1. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor with John Jowett and
William Montgomery, 'William Shakespeare: A Textual
Companion' (Oxford, 1987; Norton, 1997), 477-8.

2. Professor Donald Foster, in a posting to the Shaksper
discussion group on the internet in July 1995, indicated
that his lexical analysis of the Shakespeare canon
suggests that Q is a revised text. Publication of his data
is expected in 1999.

3. Most quotations of Shakespeare's works are taken from
the edited modern-spelling text in 'William Shakespeare:
The Complete Works', general editors Stanley Wells and
Gary Taylor (Oxford, 1986). Where quotations from the
original texts are required, I quote Q and F from the
transcriptions available from the electronic Oxford Text
Archive
(http://firth.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ota/public/index.shtml), in
both cases citing the corresponding line numbers from the
modern-spelling edition. The OTA transcriptions are not
without errors and I have corrected them in a couple of
instances, from other sources.

4. Textual Companion, 228.

5. W. W. Greg, 'The Shakespeare First Folio: Its
Bibliographical and Textual History' (Oxford, 1955), 360.

6. p.481.

7. Textual Companion, 479.

8. Othello, ed. M. R. Ridley (London, 1958), xxii. Ridley
noted that five of the nine Q-only passages are half-
lines.

9. E. A. J. Honigmann, 'The Texts of 'Othello' and
Shakespearian Revision' (London, 1996), 101-2.

10. The Texts of 'Othello', chapter 2.

11. Othello, 201.

12. p.476.

13. Textual Companion, 478, quoted at the start of this
note.

14. Q contains 'permissive' stage directions; for example,
'Enter Desdemona, Iago, and the rest' (1.3.168). It is not
necessary to believe that such directions can exist only
in a first draft. Nahum Tate's adaptation of King Lear
(1681), printed from a carefully prepared manuscript,
contains the direction 'Enter Two or Three Gentlemen'
(p.49 of the University of Pennsylvania facsimile
available on the internet at
http://www.library.upenn.edu/etext/furness/leartate).

END