Sonnet for Emilia

“As Desdemona takes her final breath,
I cry out as by shock and grief I’m wracked -
I, Emilia, rage at my mistress’ death.
With fiery tongue, I scathe Othello’s act.
His weapon turns on me, in his gripped hand,
For proving that my friend was not a whore -
Now fearlessly defiant will I stand
For her pure soul, for appetites before.
Yet horror grips me when I’m made to see
That cursed handkerchief I can’t give back -
That was the role I played in Iago’s scheme.
I’ll do my damnedest to set things on track.”
Nevermore to do her husband’s bidding,
Dies at his hand, to her dear friend lies singing.

(Since this was for a creative project assignment in my Shakespeare class, I'll also include my write up, in case you're interested:) While I enjoy trying my hand at all kinds of artistic skills, I identify as a poet more than anything else. I first studied sonnets when I was in middle school, but I didn’t get so much out of them then; they seemed stuffy, rigid, obsolete. Honestly, this semester was the first time it clicked just how beautiful and powerful Shakespeare’s sonnets are. My own writing consists mostly of free verse or some kind of pattern of my own design, so I thought writing a sonnet would be a fun challenge. I chose to write a sonnet for Emilia because she is my favorite character of all of the plays we read. There are other more complex characters or funnier characters, but Emilia is the one I identify with the most due to her fierce loyalty that is sometimes compromised by her desire to please everyone. I love the parts where she stands up for women in general, and then for Desdemona in particular, but I also sympathize with her betrayal with the handkerchief. I tried to pack a lot into this one sonnet, so I hope it is successful. I wrote a first draft as it came to me one night when I was trying to sleep, but later noticed that my rhyme scheme was incorrect; it was a little tricky to fix, but I think it still works. I liked the idea of letting Emilia speak for herself, but I thought the concluding couplet would be better spoken by a different narrator, so I put the bulk of the sonnet in quotes. In a way I’m responding to Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder’s “Whoso List To Hunt” by this reversal - in his sonnet, the quoted portion is the couplet, and the words are not even the woman/hind’s own voice. I also tried to only break the iambic pentameter when it would make sense for emphasis.