Few of Shakespeare’s minor characters are more distinct than Emilia, and towards few do our feelings change so much within the course of a play.  Till close to the end she frequently sets one’s teeth on edge; and at the end one is ready to worship her.  She nowhere shows any sign of having a bad heart; but she is common, sometimes vulgar, in minor matters far from scrupulous, blunt in perception and feeling, and quite destitute of imagination.  She let Iago take the handkerchief though she knew how much its loss would distress Desdemona; and she said nothing about it though she saw that Othello was jealous.  We rightly resent her unkindness in permitting the theft, but—­it is an important point—­we are apt to misconstrue her subsequent silence, because we know that Othello’s jealousy was intimately connected with the loss of the handkerchief.  Emilia, however, certainly failed to perceive this; for otherwise, when Othello’s anger showed itself violently and she was really distressed for her mistress, she could not have failed to think of the handkerchief, and would, I believe, undoubtedly have told the truth about it.  But, in fact, she never thought of it, although she guessed that Othello was being deceived by some scoundrel.  Even after Desdemona’s death, nay, even when she knew that Iago had brought it about, she still did not remember the handkerchief; and when Othello at last mentions, as a proof of his wife’s guilt, that he had seen the handkerchief in Cassio’s hand, the truth falls on Emilia like a thunder-bolt.  ‘O God!’ she bursts out, ’O heavenly God!’[121] Her stupidity in this matter is gross, but it is stupidity and nothing worse.

But along with it goes a certain coarseness of nature.  The contrast between Emilia and Desdemona in their conversation about the infidelity of wives (IV. iii.) is too famous to need a word,—­unless it be a word of warning against critics who take her light talk too seriously.  But the contrast in the preceding scene is hardly less remarkable.  Othello, affecting to treat Emilia as the keeper of a brothel, sends her away, bidding her shut the door behind her; and then he proceeds to torture himself as well as Desdemona by accusations of adultery.  But, as a critic has pointed out, Emilia listens at the door, for we find, as soon as Othello is gone and Iago has been summoned, that she knows what Othello has said to Desdemona.  And what could better illustrate those defects of hers which make one wince, than her repeating again and again in Desdemona’s presence the word Desdemona could not repeat; than her talking before Desdemona of Iago’s suspicions regarding Othello and herself; than her speaking to Desdemona of husbands who strike their wives; than the expression of her honest indignation in the words,

     Has she forsook so many noble matches,
     Her father and her country and her friends,
     To be called whore?

If one were capable of laughing or even of smiling when this point in the play is reached, the difference between Desdemona’s anguish at the loss of Othello’s love, and Emilia’s recollection of the noble matches she might have secured, would be irresistibly ludicrous.