Jad Abumrad

And you'd go for much the same reasons.

In those days, if you're a convicted male felon, you are, you know, strung up, but you're not allowed to hang until you die.

You're cut down before then.

Warning, this next part's a little graphic.

then the executioner castrates you, cuts you open, and takes out your internal organs and then separates your head, which is put on a post.

But even with all that gore and horribleness, there was often a moment that people waited for.

And in a way, we wait for it still, even now.

We want what Elizabethans got at the scaffold, which was...

a confession.

Before the guy is cut to shreds, he's allowed to confess.

You know, I hardly, you know, regret the fact that I killed the young maiden or defamed the king, whatever it is.

The expectation is somebody is made to make his peace with his maker before he dies.

That's what you do.

And that's what Shakespeare did in all his plays.

He would give all his baddies at least one moment where they could be understood.

Except this one time.

Iago.

He is a soldier.

He works for a general.

The general's name is Othello.