“I began to be very worried about Desdemona. We are given to understand that Othello’s courtship of her consisted almost entirely of stories beginning “When I was stationed among the Anthropophagi – ” or “I must tell you about a funny thing that happened during the siege of Rhodes.” The dramatist Shakespeare would have us believe that she not only put up with this but actually enjoyed it: can that great connoisseur of the human heart really have thought this possible?”
