2 She Died Singing It

The WIlow Song

Substack Intro

I am conscious that the majority of my readers are Dylan aficionados and knowledgeable ones at that. Consequently, in this series of “ more true performing” articles on Shakespeare and Dylan, there will be a significant Shakespeare ‘front loading’ before I can turn to highlighting what I see as fruitful parallels to consider between balladry in the work of the two artists. I am, however, trying to restrict footnotes, at least comparatively to an academic paper, and I am saving the Bibliography until I reach the end of the series.

There will be new writing purely on Dylan, and articles, some updated, from the past as well, but for now - onward with balladry.

She Died Singing It

Having made various claims in my last post about Matty Groves and ballads in Shakespeare’s time, I now want to flesh them out with examples and connect them to Dylan and his use of the ballad form.

The first Shakespearean use of ballads I examine appears in a play that echoes the themes of many femicide ballads. In the tragedy, Othello, we once again witness the "boss" killing "his lady," just as in Matty Groves, Blackjack Davey, and other traditional ballads. This time, the "boss" is Othello, and the "lady" is Desdemona, who meets her fate, as later does maid, Emilia, shortly after singing “The Willow Song”.

A very quick recap of the main plot: Othello is a tragic tale driven by jealousy and deception. Desdemona, a Venetian noblewoman, falls in love with and marries Othello, a Moor and a celebrated general, defying both her father’s wishes and societal norms. Enter Iago, Othello’s ensign and a master manipulator, who skilfully plants doubts in Othello’s mind. Like a playwright orchestrating a performance, Iago stages Desdemona’s supposed betrayal, twisting perception into certainty and driving Othello into a violent rage. It is within this suffocating atmosphere of suspicion and impending doom that “The Willow Song” emerges.

The song is so significant that Act IV, Scene iii of Othello is often called the "Willow Song" scene. It offers a haunting commentary on the precarious position of women in Elizabethan society, and the ballad form itself becomes a powerful means of expression. Desdemona sings it in an intimate moment with her maid, Emilia, as she prepares for bed—aware, perhaps instinctively, that the end is near.

(Maggie Smith and Joyce Redman in Laurence Olivier's "Othello" (1965)

(This is from 1965, a film version which notoriously featured Laurence Olivier in blackface. There you have another link to Dylan themes from Time Out of Mind onwards and especially “Love and Theft” and the ever more prophetic seeming “Masked and Anonymous”.)

Traditionally, “The Willow Song” was sung by a man mourning the loss of his lover, his grief so profound that it ultimately led to his death[i]. Shakespeare reverses the genders in the song and gives the narrative voice to the woman. In the same way, in this scene, he reverses the male points of view that have dominated throughout and shows us female points of view. Up until now men have talked, mostly nonsensically, about women throughout and characterised them either as goddesses or strumpets, (recalling Joan Baez describing those disappointingly clichéd female roles in Renaldo and Clara). This moment shifts the perspective; suddenly we see real women enjoying some time together as people and not exaggerated abstractions.

For the song to have had its full effect, the audience must have recognized it, just as they must have done with “Matty Groves” in the Knight of the Burning Pestle and other ballads in other plays. Hearing Desdemona sing it forces us to reflect on how often women of the time, rather than men, suffered fatal consequences from love, infidelity, and betrayal. It also leaves no doubt that her death is imminent, a foreboding reinforced by her own words in the moments leading up to it.

EMILIA

I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed.

DESDEMONA

All's one. Good faith, how foolish are our minds!
If I do die before thee prithee, shroud me
In one of those same sheets.

The scene unfolds as an intimate conversation between Desdemona and Emilia, as Desdemona prepares for bed. Othello has ordered her there, his anger already apparent, and instructed her to dismiss Emilia before he arrives. This interlude with the two women serves as a pause for reflection, a mirror to the play’s central themes, an introduction of the female perspective, a foreshadowing of tragedy, and a direct expression of sorrow. It also highlights the abuses of patriarchal society, female solidarity, and the inextricable link between love, lust, and death.

Both “The Willow Song” and the surrounding, intimate conversation, act as a brief stillness in the rapidly escalating turmoil of the tragedy. This allows the audience, along with Desdemona herself, an opportunity to contemplate the unfolding events, absorb the emotional weight of Desdemona's situation, and anticipate the impending catastrophe.

By having Desdemona perform the mournful ballad, Shakespeare poignantly conveys her sense of foreboding, and the anguish of potential betrayal. Through song, Desdemona goes straight to the heart of all her sorrow and evokes a deep emotional response. Her inner turmoil takes on an almost universal quality, resonating deeply with the play’s central theme of betrayal.

Many traditional ballads focused on themes of love, loss, and tragedy. The original broadsheet ballad, and all its many known variants, on which “The Willow Song”, is based, was about a man betrayed by a woman. Shakespeare subverts this convention, transforming the lament into that of a woman betrayed by her lover, a shift that enables it to directly parallel Desdemona’s own fate.

As Desdemona sings, the heartbreak embedded in the ballad becomes ever more potent. It is no longer merely a song, but instead a chilling foreshadowing of her imminent betrayal, abandonment, and death. For Shakespeare as a dramatist, the ballad is an ideal device: it allows the audience to connect with Desdemona’s suffering on a deeply emotional level, making her impending fate all the more heartrending.

After the brief conversation about the wedding sheets - a detail to which we will return - Desdemona introduces “The Willow Song” by telling us:

My mother had a maid call'd Barbary:
She was in love, and he she loved proved mad
And did forsake her: she had a song of 'willow;'
An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune,
And she died singing it: that song to-night
Will not go from my mind; I have much to do,
But to go hang my head all at one side,
And sing it like poor Barbary. Prithee, dispatch

“An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune” is apt not just here but for so many of the ballads I am discussing. The ominous feeling in the scene is underscored once again, with the words “she died singing it” and the opening line’s ‘sycamore tree’, a traditional symbol for mourning. All of this adds to Desdemona’s name, which in its Greek origin, means “ill-starred”. Like Romeo and Juliet, she is a ‘star-crossed lover’ moving swiftly to her doom.

“The Willow Song” is a chain connecting generations of women. Desdemona’s mother’s maid died singing it and so soon shall her own maid, and she is just about to sing it and die herself. The alternate spelling for Barbara, ‘Barbary’, is deftly deployed to connect the ballad directly to Desdemona’s character recalling as it does, Iago calling Othello a “barbary horse”, (referring to Barbary Moors) .

Desdemona (sings):

The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow.
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee;
Sing willow, willow, willow.
The fresh streams ran by her, and murmured her moans;
Sing willow, willow, willow.
Her salt tears fell from her, and soften'd the stones;
Lay by these:--

Sing willow, willow, willow.

{Speaks}Prithee, hie thee; he'll come anon:--

{Singing}

Sing all a green willow must be my garland.
Let nobody blame him; his scorn I approve,-

{speaks}Nay, that's not next.--Hark! who is't that knocks?

EMILIA: It's the wind.

DESDEMONA:
[Sings]

I call'd my love ‘false love’; but what said he then?
Sing willow, willow, willow:
If I court more women, you'll couch with more men!

Let nobody blame him; his scorn I approve, Desdemona sings this line, then questions if she is correctly remembering the ballad. It is so true to Desdemona in the play; her love for Othello, even in the face of his harshness, "My love doth so approve him / That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns…have grace and favour in them," In addition to expressing her abiding love, this underscores the societal expectation for subordination of women to men within marriage and a deeply ingrained acceptance of male authority. The next lines of the original ballad are: “She was born to be false, and I to die for her love” which Desdemona would have to sing as: “He was born to be false, and I to die for his love”. While this would be true, you can see why she stumbles at the line.

Desdemona's distress at Othello's anger highlights the vulnerability of women to male ire and accusations. So dependent are they on their husbands' favour that they could be easily condemned based on suspicion. The "Willow Song" reflects the defenceless situation of women in the face of betrayal or broken promises. There is often, in ballads like “Matty Groves”, “Blackjack Davey”, an age as well as a power differential between ‘the boss’ and ‘the lady’ figures, with the former being older (thus encouraging the younger wife to seek a lover of her own years and vitality being the insinuation) and Othello, too, follows that traditional line. Desdemona is being attacked by a renowned warrior general, who is an older figure of authority. Like her father Brabantio before him, Othello is her Lord and master in every sense. Still, her devotion to him is unwavering and she is more than willing to accept this. “All husbands are good men, as all wives know”. As the ‘lady figure’ succinctly puts it in “Tin Angel”. Even as she dies, Desdemona speaks up for Othello, absolving him of guilt for her death. Her ‘reward’ for this when Emilia reports it to Othello, is: She’s like a liar gone to burning hell!/’Twas I that killed her.

Desdemona is understandably stunned when Othello asks her, Are you not a strumpet, not a whore. I took you for the cunning whore of Venice that married with Othello in the preceding scene to “The Willow Song” which highlights that the ballad scene is a pause in the face of an incoming fury, something that is in the forefront of our minds when we hear Desdemona’s sorrow expressed through her singing.

In traditional ballads, the singer is often a narrator recounting past events, however we hear Desdemona sing it not as a detached storyteller, but as someone potentially predicting her own fate. The actor playing Desdemona is both performer and participant-performer. They sing a song about betrayal and sorrow while acting the part of someone experiencing those very emotions. All of which makes the ballad’s effect even more poignant.

This short pause in the action that the singing of the ballad affords allows a counter-voice of female solidarity to emerge and empowers Emilia to eventually strike back and bring the truth to light. Shakespeare uses “The Willow Song” to amplify Desdemona’s tragedy and give voice to women’s experiences within a society that often sought to silence them, and the movement toward Emilia speaking truth to power first arises in her speech just after Desdemona sings “The Willow Song”.

“The Willow Song” and Emilia’s speech (Subtitles in modern English). CorkEnglish:

A significant turning point comes when Emilia describes a wife’s potential infidelity as “a small vice”. This is an arresting statement in the face of all the chaos, violence and impending death the play has thrown at us over that very issue. It is like a bucket of cold water, breaking the spell of the action preceding, and to succeed, the breathing space given to us by “The Willow Song”. Emilia’s comment compels the audience to question the disproportionate consequences faced by women, even those deemed ‘guilty’, far less the innocent Desdemona. This resonates with the themes prevalent in femicide ballads, where the male figure often fatally punishes the female for transgressions. Furthermore, it prompts reflection on the stark gender inequality inherent in such judgments, a point that Emilia explicitly addresses in her subsequent and remarkably progressive speech, which, despite its contemporary resonance as common sense, was remarkable in its time:

But I do think it is their husbands' faults
If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls{courage}, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is: and doth affection breed it?
I think it doth: is't frailty that thus errs?
It is so too: and have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

Note again here the use of ‘fall’, for when a woman gives in to temptation, with its connotations to Eve and ‘the Fall’ as in “The House Carpenter” and so many other ballads. [ii]

From a lament to a protest song

Emilia's argument that husbands often mistreat their wives and her critique of the sexual double standard provides a strong articulation of female agency . She later proves her assertion that women have "galls" (courage) by exposing her husband, Iago, and clearing Desdemona’s name. She does this in full knowledge of the likely consequences and then she too is killed, another uxoricide to add to the litany in plays and ballads in this subset of myriad femicide narratives. Before she dies, Emilia sings a snatch of “The Willow Song” thereby creating a connected sequence, from Barbary to Desdemona to Emilia, all betrayed by men and linked by the song.

Emilia:

“What did thy song bode, lady?
Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan.
And die in music.
[Singing]
Willow, willow, willow —
Moor, she was chaste; she loved thee, cruel Moor;
So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true;
So speaking as I think, I die, I die.”
[Dies]

By reclaiming “The Willow Song” with her last breaths, Emilia transforms it. Not only is it a sorrowful lament but it is now also a symbol of female solidarity and resistance, across time and class barriers, a protest song, if you will.

No song in Shakespeare has inspired more composers to write their own music to it than “The Willow Song”. Additionally, new productions of the play often feature new musical arrangements, such as here.

In a reciprocal cycle of creativity with Broadside ballads, Desdemona’s version of the old ballad spawned a generation of new ballads from a female-as-victim perspective.

Photo from Study.com

Entwined symbols: Handkerchief and Ballad

Shakespeare further employs the ballad by entwining its connotations with the central symbol of the play, the infamous handkerchief. Just as “The Willow Song” links women, so too, does this piece of linen, which becomes ‘proof’ of Desdemona’s infidelity after Iago ensures it escapes her possession. This is no ordinary handkerchief; its history is rich and its significance layered and complex. However, here I want to look at one aspect and that is the one first written about fifty years ago by Lynda E Boose in Othello's Handkerchief: "The Recognizance and Pledge of Love" . Boose’s thesis centres on Elizabethan marriage customs, as this extract from the abstract reads:

“Othello is a play about a marriage, and the meaning of the highly visual "strawberry spotted handkerchief" lies buried in marriage customs still apprehended within the ritual consciousness of the Elizabethan audience. Depending on his audience to understand the traditional connections between strawberries and virginity, Shakespeare pointedly created a visual reduction of Othello's wedding sheets, the emblem of marital consummation so important to our understanding of this tragedy. The display of stained wedding sheets as proof of consummation has a long history in folk custom”[iii]

In losing the symbolic handkerchief, Desdemona has also loses the proof of her purity. The handkerchief symbolises the white sheets of the wedding bed and before singing “The Willow Song” Desdemona asks Emilia to put her wedding sheets on the bed. This might seem strange, given it is not their wedding night, but the white sheets are, in many critics eyes as yet unstained with red because the marriage has yet to be, and never is, consummated. In that reading, the reason Desdemona asks for her wedding sheets is clear, that is, that tonight will be the night they finally consummate their relationship[iv]. My first reaction to this theory was one of instinctive disbelief and some critics still feel that way. There is evidence to make a compelling argument for it, however, not least that the only two nights they have spent together as husband and wife have been interrupted by riotous behaviour which Othello has to leave the bed to go and quell like the military leader he is. In modern parlance we could say that Othello ‘is a fighter not a lover’.

Ultimately, Shakespeare leaves the question of whether or not the marriage has been consummated unresolved. This ambiguity is yet another example of what Emma Smith calls Shakespeare’s “gappiness”, which I discuss near the conclusion of my previous post on “Graley Herren and Time Out of Mind.” Describing someone as being ‘so good with words and at keeping things vague’, as Joan Baez so memorably sang, is more telling a comment on the nature of Dylan’s genius than it first appears, as it would be if applied to Shakespeare. By now there are so many questions in the audience’s minds, and ambiguity adds to the unsettling feelings we have as Othello drops deeper and deeper into violent madness.

Even as he is about to kill his wife the imagery of red blood on white still haunts Othello and so he decides to strangle her:

Yet I’ll not shed her blood,
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.

Shakespeare presents us with another disturbing image a few lines later when Othello conflates murder with deflowering:

When I have pluck’d thy rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again.
It must needs wither:

This combination of sex and violence, with the recurrent imagery of blood on the sheets becomes the tangible representation of Othello’s twisted perception. Intertwining the acts of consummation and killing is also a theme of femicide ballads; it is the brutal end game for those who view women as objects to be possessed and dominated. As such, it is present in the minds of ‘sickos disguised as Romeos’ as Graley Herren put it. In that earlier post, here, I quote Herren at one point writing: “Woe to the woman being pursued by this jilted lover, stalking her through streets that are dead with blood in his eyes.” On reading this, my friend Steve Jones wrote to say: “I felt some murderous intent in “Blood In My Eyes”, not just sexual lust.” Certainly, Steve’s view of the World Gone Wrong track would be a fitting representation of Othello’s mind as he kills Desdemona and I’ll always take any excuse to include a link to the video.

Play video

From “Pretty Polly” to “Murder Most Foul”, 59 years later and arguably on through Shadow Kingdom and The Philosophy Modern Song, (see outro to last post), murder ballads feature throughout Dylan’s canon. From Time Out Of Mind onwards, though, the emphasis has been on those ‘sickos disguised as Romeos’. For lengthy explorations of these, see my In The True Performing of It[v] and Graley Herren’s Dreams and Dialogues[vi]. In my book, I concentrate on “Moonlight” and “Soon After Midnight” in the context of looking at Shakespeare and Dylan together.

Herren begins his discussion of the murder ballad theme in Time Out of Mind by tracing a path from World Gone Wrong. The latter contains probably my favourite Dylan ‘femicide’ cover song, the incomparable “Delia” where the title character is shot ‘down with a cruel forty-four’. Dylan repeatedly reminds us Delia’s buried, “Delia's in the graveyard, boys, six feet out of sight”. However, by the time the song ends, I cannot help but feel Delia’s spirit is still fighting its way back, doing her damndest to get out, adding a touch of the supernatural, to the already intoxicating ballad brew of sex and death: Delia back to life to replay the old story one more time. Granted that is just a personal reaction to the song. And I have no idea if anyone else hears it the same way. One of the many attractions of the subjectivity of responses to performing arts.

Herren’s connection between World Gone Wrong and Time Out of Mind’s (and later) murder ballads may have been strengthened by a non-musical source. I have always maintained that Dylan’s interviews need to be heard, seen is even better, to be properly understood. I used to go to considerable lengths to obtain recordings of them. One I got of the 1997 interview, to promote Time out of Mind, with Newsweek’s David Gates, came with the unexpected bonus: the microphone was left on during a coffee break. While I hesitate to relay off-the-record remarks, one comment stands out as too interesting to ignore and involves nothing I view as improper to share. It comes when Dylan casually mentions having recently read and enjoyed two books: Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain and Larry Brown’s Father and Son.

Both books appear to me to have left an impression on Dylan’s work in the following years. Cold Mountain shares imagery and themes with Time Out of Mind: an alienated character who is love-sick and endlessly walking. The novel’s preoccupation with the past and its place in the present similarly resonates with Dylan’s work. Most striking, however, are its connections to Homer’s Odyssey, which Richard Thomas has explored so fruitfully in regard to Dylan’s later career[vii]. Cold Mountain is an adventure tale of a long homeward journey from war. The warrior is attempting to return to his love, and as such The Odyssey would spring to mind even if Frazier had not made the link explicit, as he does.

The other novel, Father and Son by Larry Brown, brings us back to psycho killers. It is a brutal tale, featuring, among other violence, the harrowing rape of a young woman whose virginity is gloatingly taken by her mocking assailant (who later goes on to rape the mother of his half-brother).

Dylan is reportedly a great admirer of Larry Brown’s writing[viii], once being quoted that he had read every word Brown ever wrote. A line from Brown's 1988 short story "Kubuku Rides (This Is It)" from his collection Facing the Music bears a striking resemblance in a similar context (alcohol) to a line fromDylan’s "Sugar Baby."

In "Kubuku Rides (This Is It)", we read: “Angel not drinking anything. Don't mean she don't have nothing. Just can't have it right now. He awake now. Later he be asleep. He think the house clean. House ain't clean. Lots of places to hide things, you want to hide them bad enough. Ain't like Easter eggs, like Christmas presents. Like life and death.”

In “Sugar Baby”, we hear:

Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff
Plenty of places to hide things here if you wanna hide ’em bad enough

It is a common enough phrase for this to be no more than a coincidence but the overall connection brings me back to Graley Herren’s murder ballad critique in Time Out Of Mind. Brown’s work explores the dark undercurrent of life, where alcohol and violence seem ever present. The explosive and disturbing violence that erupts, not only in murder ballads, but also in surprising places, in Dylan’s twenty-first century output is the constant feature in the brutal promotional video for “Beyond Here Lies Nothing”:

Bob Dylan - Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (Explicit) (Official HD Video)

Although there is not, somewhat miraculously, death for the female protagonist in the video, as a song, it may or may not fit into the femicide category. Again, that ‘gappiness’ appears in the closing lines, but when I hear them sung, I fear the worst:

Listen to me pretty baby
Lay your hand upon my head
Beyond here lies nothin'
Nothin' done and nothin' said

And there’s yet another Larry Brown connection. “Beyond Here Lies Nothing” opens Together Through Life (2009), an album whose cover features the same photograph as the paperback edition of Brown’s short story collection Big Bad Love. A small detail, perhaps, but one that suggests the ties between their work run deep.

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Substack Outro

I am beginning to stray from my main thread here, and so I end with a reminder that Shakespeare’s adaptation of a traditional ballad, “A Lover’s Complaint” as Desdemona’s “The Willow Song” in Othello serves not only to heighten the emotional impact and foreshadow the tragic conclusion but also to provide a poignant commentary on the social position and shared experiences of women in his time, exploring themes of love, betrayal, and the vulnerabilities women faced in a patriarchal society. This observation was followed by connections with Dylan and murder ballads, as discussed at the conclusion to the previous post, “Our Wells Run Deep”. You may wish to consider Dylan songs that present a feminine point of view. Two stand-outs for me are the original song “North Country Blues”, from Carnegie Hall ’63’ and his magnificent renditions of the traditional “Wagoner’s Lad”. Here’s a personal favourite, its live debut, 1988, Upper Darby:

Oh hard is the fortune of all womankind
They're always controlled, they're always confined
Controlled by their parents until they are wives
Then slaves to their husbands the rest of their lives

Next time in this series, we look at another doomed Shakespearean heroine and the importance of the ballads she sings. It is quite likely a posting in another category will precede this as my Substack site takes shape.

© Andrew Muir, 2025

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[i] Shakespeare's Saddest Song

[ii] One of the enduring mysteries around the printing of Othello is that neither “The Willow Song” nor this speech of Emilia’s are in the Quarto edition, though both are in the posthumously published First Folio. Shakespeare himself was not in charge of either publication and so speculation as to motives quickly becomes tenuous. The main question is whether they were cut from the Quarto printing or later additions for the Folio. For “The Willow Song” and Emilia’s proto-feminist speech I am in the “they were cut” camp. The Quarto still has Desdemona’s introductory remarks to the song which suggests it was always supposed to be present, and Desdemona’s immediate response to the speech answers Emilia’s closing remark,“ Then let them use us well” with “God me such uses send”. That answer is still present in the Quarto, suggesting that the speech, like the song, was originally there but has been omitted from the Quarto.

There are many theories as to what happened and why. It is not uncommon for there to be a practical reason, for example, if the Quarto was based on a performance and that night the boy actor could not sing for one reason or another, voice breaking amongst the leading contenders.

[iii] Othello's Handkerchief: "The Recognizance and Pledge of Love" | WorldCat.org

[iv] This is something that Desdemona is anticipating with relish, back at the beginning of the play in the Quarto version. This is downplayed, by a change of expression, in the Folio Version.

[v] Andrew Muir Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It Red Planet (2019 and 2020)

[vi] Graley Herren Dreams and Dialogues in Dylan’s "Time Out of Mind (Anthem Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2021)

[vii] Richard F Thomas Why Dylan Matters Dey Street Books; Reprint edition (5 Mar. 2019)

[viii] http://www.swampland.com/posts/view/title:bob_dylans_admiration_for_mississippi_writer_larry_brown (This is the only link, though it comes with a security warning.)