That's She That Was Myself: Not-So-Famous Last Words and Some Ends of Othello | Thomas Clayton, University of Minnesota
'That's She That Was Myself': Not-So-Famous Last Words and Some Ends of Othello
Thomas Clayton, University of Minnesota
I
To those for whom Shakespeare's plays still have value as works of dramatic and poetic art that move and enlighten the receptive, the last words of his tragic protagonists and other major characters should be of special interest and importance as momentous and definitive, because they evidently were for Shakespeare, whether composing or revising, and beginning quite early on, in Richard III and Richard II, for example; but they seem to take on special resonance and significance in the later tragedies, notably A. C. Bradley's Big Four, and also Antony and Cleopatra and Timon of Athens.1
II
Shakespeare constructed the ending of Othello in such a way that Desdemona and Othello both expire on the terminal note of a single heroic couplet, each concerned...
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