Shakespeare References in The Moon Is Always Female

Marge Piercy’s book of poetry The Moon Is Always Female contains a few Shakespeare references, and interestingly all of them are to Othello. The first is in a poem titled “Under red Aries.” Piercy writes, “You are impossible, you know it,/holy March hairiness, my green/eyed monster” (p. 30). That refers to Iago’s lines about jealousy, “It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on.” The second reference might be a bit of a stretch, and I wouldn’t have listed it here at all were it not for the other two Othello references. But, anyway, in the poem “Arofa,” Piercy writes, “you want a monogamous relationship/ with me. Othella, if you were/big as me you’d have nipped/my head off in a fit” (p. 68). The name seems to be the female version of Othello, and the poem seems to be about a jealous cat. The final reference comes in “Shadows of the burning,” in which Piercy writes “Death at the open end of a gun/from a jealous man, a vengeful man/Othello’s fingers, Henry’s ax” (p. 101).

The Moon Is Always Female was published in 1980 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.