I would like to dedicate this next song, "I Hold Your Hand in Mine," to the lovely couple of the evening, Othello and Desdemona. Unfortunately, neither of them could make it tonight as they are both dead.
Who's that handsome genius? His name is Tom Lehrer, retired Harvard mathematician and satirical musician, and among his vast collection of approximately fifty songs (half of which I am more than willing to perform for anybody), he wrote a few love songs, one of which is entitled, "I Hold Your Hand in Mine."
After Othello smothered his loyal wife with a pillow because he thought she was doing the dance with no pants with Cassio, Emilia belatedly informed Othello that everything Iago told Othello about Desdemona and Cassio was a huge lie. Out of love for his deceased wife, Othello stabbed himself in the chest, lay next to Desdemona, kissed her, and breathed his last. Lehrer's love song amazingly parallels the events and themes within the final scene of Othello, although his version is marginally more morbid:
In this number, Tom Lehrer presents his cynical view that what we call "love" may be on the cusp of insanity (or well beyond that point). As the speaker within "I Hold Your Hand in Mine" kissed his dead lover's hand after he killed her, so too did Othello kiss Desdemona after he killed her. Shakespeare teaches that the human defects of jealousy and assumptions can get in the way of true love, and Lehrer teaches that other human defects -- mental instability, for instance -- are obstacles to true love.
A final important similarity is that even after the deaths of their lovers, both Othello and the speaker in "I Hold Your Hand in Mine" still love their partners (or at least claim that they do).
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