'Soft you, a word or two before you lot become': and so begins Othello'south last major speech before he stabs himself. His terminal words, famously, are 'I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee'. But between these ii lines are a number of other noteworthy moments which call out for closer textual analysis. Let's go through Othello's speech, which can be establish in Act 5 Scene ii of Shakespeare'due south Othello, and offer a summary and analysis of his language and meaning as we become.

OTHELLO
Soft you, a give-and-take or ii earlier you go.
I have done the land some service, and they know't.

Lodovico has merely come up to arrest Othello for the murder of Desdemona. Just once Lodovico has allowable Othello to accompany him to prison, Othello tells him to wait a moment ('Soft you').

The oral communication that follows is marked by understatement: Othello only wants 'a word or ii', and he has done Venice 'some service', downplaying his important military part.

No more of that. I pray you, in your messages,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me every bit I am; nix extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of ane that loved not wisely but besides well;

Othello continues his modest understatement of his achievements ('No more than of that'), instead requesting of Lodovico that, when he records this sad business in his letters, he 'tells it like it is'. That is, he wants Lodovico not to 'extenuate' or tone down anything or let Othello off the hook where he deserves criticism, but at the same time, he doesn't desire Lodovico to exaggerate anything Othello has done out of malice or dislike of him. In brusk, be fair and true to the events.

If Lodovico does this, he will testify that Othello was someone who didn't love wisely, but loved too much, besides intensely. As E. A. J. Honigmann observes in his notes to the excellent Arden edition, Othello: Revised Edition (The Arden Shakespeare Tertiary Series), Othello is attempting a subtle course of deportation with that 'one' here: he is not speaking of his crimes using the more personal 'I' and 'me'.

Of one non easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose mitt,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe;

Othello maintains that he was non someone who was easily made jealous, but when he was worked ('wrought', i.e., by Iago) into a state of jealousy, he became bewildered and distracted to an extreme degree ('perplex'd' here means non only 'puzzled', the modern sense, merely also 'distracted': Othello became fixated on Desdemona's possible infidelity).

Othello says he was like a lowly Indian who, non realising that pearls are precious, threw it away as worthless. This is how Othello treated Desdemona.

However – and this isn't besides-known as it should be – there is some debate among Shakespeare scholars as to whether Othello talks of Indians or Judeans. The First Folio press of Othello in 1623 has 'Iudean', i.east., Judean, which may exist a misprint for 'Indean', i.e., Indian. Alternatively, Shakespeare may really have written 'Judean', to refer to Judas, the traitor who threw away Jesus' life by betraying him to the Romans. Indeed, 'Judean' would brand sense in light of 'base', which suggests chicken, cowardly, or immoral: all words which are applicative to Judas.

We would favour Judean over Indian, for these reasons, merely also because of 'Richer than all his tribe': 'the tribe of Judea' is a well-known Biblical phrase, whereas Indian tribe hither is far less precise or persuasive.

of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian copse
Their medicinal gum.

Othello describes his eyes equally 'subdued': non prone to crying or 'melting' in tears. But after he had thrown abroad Desdemona, his 'pearl' (and notation the colour connotations of whiteness here), he cried every bit chop-chop as the copse of Arabia drip their mucilage. (Honigmann suggests that Shakespeare, or Othello, has myrrh trees in mind here, given the utilise of 'Arabian' and 'medicinal'.)

Set you downwardly this;
And say besides, that in Aleppo one time,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised canis familiaris,
And smote him, thus.

Stabs himself

Othello tells Lodovico to write down everything Othello has just told him. And and so to add that, in Aleppo once, Othello once grabbed a Turk past the throat (a Turk who had beaten a Venetian) and hit him, much like this – and then Othello stabs himself. Note how, in this scenario, he is both himself (the man doing the smiting, as he was back in Aleppo) and the Turk (the homo who was smitten or struck). The intention is to contrast Othello's former noble behaviour (when he vanquished the enemies of Christian Europe) with his descent into self-destruction.

LODOVICO
O bloody period!

GRATIANO
All that'southward spoke is marr'd.

Lodovico and Gratiano react in daze to what they have seen and heard: Othello'south expiry ('flow' means 'stop' hither, i.e., the conclusion or terminate of a journey) and everything Othello has said to them ('marr'd' is 'bad' or 'awful').

OTHELLO
I kiss'd thee ere I impale'd thee: no way simply this;
Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

Falls on the bed, and dies

In his dying words, Othello addresses the dead Desdemona. In other words: 'I kissed you earlier I killed you lot, only like this. And now I kill myself, dying as I kiss you again.' (Although it isn't included in the stage directions, the implication is that Othello kisses Desdemona correct before he dies.)

'I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee': the line is memorable for a number of reasons. Kickoff, information technology contrasts what Freud would call Eros with Thanatos, beloved with murder, life with death, sex and the artistic urge with killing and the destructive urge. Second, of class, although kissing and killing are so markedly different as to be almost opposites, their sounds sync up hither, thanks to the alliteration of kiss'd and kill'd.

Just finally, if indeed Shakespeare meant 'Judean' rather than 'Indian' in that earlier spoken communication ('of one whose paw, / Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe'), the idea of kissing Desdemona before killing her mirrors Judas' osculation, whereby Judas betrayed Jesus to the Romans by identifying him in public past kissing him, leading to Jesus' arrest and execution.

Othello'due south 'I buss'd thee ere I impale'd thee' speech is one of his well-nigh famous, and one of the nigh celebrated dying speeches in all of Shakespeare. In his 1927 essay 'Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca', T. S. Eliot identified Othello's flair for cocky-dramatisation in this speech: he is trying to 'escape reality', as Eliot puts it, by taking refuge in his glorious by and tearing his mind from his horrendous crime (the killing of his innocent married woman). One of the most tragic things about Othello'southward last speech is his desperate desire to shore up something of his war machine reputation, even though he knows, in truth, that it is now in tatters.