Internet Shakespeare Editions

Author: Jessica Slights
Peer Reviewed

Additional Notes on Othello

TLN 1903: keep a corner . . . uses.

That Othello's image is of adultery is clear, but its specifics are strange and disturbing. His language not only dehumanizes Desdemona by leaving her unnamed and then figuring her as a thing, a mere possession of her husband (a role to which early modern law reduced all women), but it also reifies her imagined role as adulteress by transforming her into a room or a building (perhaps some version of the dungeon of the previous line) whose dark corners might house illicit behavior inadvertently kept (= maintained; guarded) by Othello. Othello's language is also riddled with sexual slang: corner = vagina; thing = whore; use = sexual employment (Williams, Glossary 82; 307; 321).