Willow song


The Willow song is an anonymous Elizabethan or earlier folk song used in the penultimate act of Shakespeare's Othello. The earliest record of The Willow Song is in a book of lute music from 1583, while Shakespeare's play was not written until 20 years later in 1604. The song in Shakespeare's play is sung by Desdemona, Othello's wife, when she has begun to fear her jealous husband.

Selected recordings