ear they may take him to heaven;
and one remembers Shakespeare's irony, how he shows that those prayers
do _not_ go to heaven, and that the soul of this praying murderer is at
that moment as murderous as ever (see p. 171), just as here the soul of
the lying Desdemona is angelic _in_ its lie. Is it conceivable that in
both passages he was intentionally striking at conventional 'religious'
ideas; and, in particular, that the belief that a man's everlasting fate
is decided by the occupation of his last moment excited in him
indignation as well as contempt? I admit that this fancy seems
un-Shakespearean, and yet it comes back on me whenever I read this
passage. [The words 'I suppose so' (l. 3 above) gave my conclusion; but
I wish to withdraw the whole Note]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 267: He alludes to her cry, 'O falsely, falsely murder'd!']

NOTE P.

DID EMILIA SUSPECT IAGO?

I have answered No (p. 216), and have no doubt about the matter; but at
one time I was puzzled, as perhaps others have been, by a single phrase
of Emilia's. It occurs in the conversation between her and Iago and
Desdemona (IV. ii. 130 f.):

I will be hang'd if some eternal villain,
Some busy and insinuating rogue,
Some cogging, cozening slave, _to get some office_,
Have not devised this slander; I'll be hang'd else.

Emilia, it may be said, knew that Cassio was the suspected man, so that
she must be thinking of _his_ office, and must mean that Iago has
poisoned Othello's mind in order to prevent his reinstatement and to get
the lieutenancy for himself. And, it may be said, she speaks
indefinitely so that Iago alone may understand her (for Desdemona does
not know that Cassio is the suspected man). Hence too, it may be said,
when, at V. ii. 190, she exclaims,

Villany, villany, villany!
I think upon't, I think: I smell't: O villany!
_I thought so then:_--I'll kill myself for grief;

she refers in the words italicised to the occasion of the passage in IV.
ii., and is reproaching herself for not having taken steps on her
suspicion of Iago.

I have explained in the text why I think it impossible to suppose that
Emilia suspected her husband; and I do not think anyone who follows her
speeches in V. ii., and who realises that, if she did suspect him, she
must have been simply _pretending_ surprise when Othello told her that
Iago was his informant, will feel any doubt. Her idea in the lines at