Desdemona

[Chross]

Paula Vogel’s Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief is a play by Paula Vogel from 1987 that tells the story of what happens in the interstices of Shakespeare’s Othello, showing what that play’s three women get up to in the household laundry while the Shakespeare plot takes place offstage elsewhere as Harry of Vanilla Spanking describes it so nicely.

BIANCA: Get up on the table with your tail-end up. Right now, I’ll just take a strap ’ere, an’ I’ll just brush you wi’ it – but when I lets go, you move yer tail up. All right?
DESDEMONA: I… I think so. It’s rather like coming to the trot on a horse.
BIANCA: Right, then. One – up. Two – down. All right now. One.
(Desdemona moves up.)
Two.
(Lightly straps Desdemona as she moves down.)
One.
(Desdemona moves up.)
Two.
(Desdemona moves down; a strap.)
Does it hurt?
DESDEMONA: No … no, it doesn’t really.
BIANCA: Right, then. Let’s have some sound effects. One. Two.
(Desdemona screams. Emilia clutches her rosary.)
NO! Not that loud! The bobbies would be in on you so fast you wouldn’t get your panties up. Just a moan enough to get him excited. Now: one – two – one – two – one – two – one – two – one – two – one – two!!

Here are some selected examples on stage...