Saturday 25 January 2014

Othello's ejective

I considered myself lucky when I watched a 1965 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello with Laurence Olivier as Othello and Maggie Smith as Desdemona, because I believed (maybe wrongly) to have found a renowned English actor using an ejective plosive in a Shakespearean drama.
Act V, Scene 2 contains a dialogue between the two actors with these lines:

OTHELLO
     By heaven, I saw my handkerchief in's hand.
     O perjured woman! thou dost stone my heart,
     And makest me call what I intend to do
     A murder, which I thought a sacrifice:
     I saw the handkerchief.
DESDEMONA
     He found it then;
     I never gave it him: send for him hither;
     Let him confess a truth.
OTHELLO
    He hath confess'd.
DESDEMONA
   What, my lord?
OTHELLO
   That he hath used thee.

Listen to the clip and concentrate on the last but one word:



Here's the word "used" with the word-final ejective (?) again:


What do you think? Ejective or no ejective?

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