BRA. What tell'st thou me of robbing? this is Venice; My house is not a grange.a ROD. Most grave Brabantio, In simple and pure soul I come to you. IAGO. Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not serve God, if the devil bid you. Because we come to do you service, and you think we are ruffians, you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse; you'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll have coursers for cousins, and gennets for germans. BRA. What profane wretch art thou? IAGO. I am one, sir, that comes to tell you, your daughter and the Moor are now† making the beast with two backs. beseech you, If 't be your pleasure and most wise consent Do not believe That, from the sense of all civility, I thus would play and trifle with your reverence: Your daughter, if you have not given her leave,I say again, hath made a gross revolt; Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes, e f In an extravagant and wheeling stranger Let loose on me the justice of the state For thus deluding you. g IAGO. [Exit from above. Farewell; for I must leave you: It seems not meet, nor wholesome to my place, I must show out a flag and sign of love, Lead to the Sagittary (1) the raised search; [Exit. Enter, below, BRABANTIO, and Servants with torches. BRA. It is too true an evil: gone she is! And what's to come of my despised time Is nought but bitterness.-Now, Roderigo, Where didst thou see her?-O, unhappy girl!With the Moor, say'st thou ?-Who would be a father! How didst thou know 't was she?-0, she deceives me Past thought-What said she to you?-Get more tapers; Raise all my kindred.—Are they married, think you? ROD. Truly, I think they are. BRA. O, heaven!-How got she out?-O, treason of the blood! Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters' minds By what you see them act.-Are there not charms Grange, Warton remarks, is strictly and properly the farm of a monastery. But in Lincolnshire, and in other northern counties, they call every lone house, or farm which stands solitary, a grange. What Brabantio means, then, is,-I am in a populous city, not in a place where robbery can be easily committed. ruffians, Here ruffian is employed in its secondary sense of roisterer, swash-buckler, and the like, though its primary meaning undoubtedly was, pander; the Latin, leno," the Italian, "rothiano." e Transported,] That is, transported herself. Capell, however, inserts Be before transported. d from the sense-] Contrary, or opposed to the sense, &c. extravagant-] Vagabond. e f wheeling-] Mr. Collier's annotator proposes, wheedling we should much prefer to read,— "an extravagant and whirling stranger Of here and everywhere." g Straight satisfy yourself:] This line and the sixteen preceding lines are not in the quarto 1622. ROD. I think I can discover him, if you please I may command at most;-Get weapons, ho! SCENE II.-The same. Another Street. Enter OTHELLO, IAGO, and Attendants with torches. IAGO. Though in the trade of war I have slain men, Yet do I hold it very stuff o' the conscience, Отн. 'Tis better as it is. Nay, but he prated, And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms Against your honour, That, with the little godliness I have, I did full hard forbear him. But, I pray you, sir, As double as the duke's: he will divorce you ; Отн. Let him do his spite: Which, when I know that boasting is an honour, May speak, unbonneted, to as proud a fortune Demerit now signifies only ill desert; in Shakespeare's day it was used indiscriminately for good or ill deserving. In the present instance it is apparently employed in the good sense, for Othello could hardly mean that his blemishes might stand without concealment beside the dignity he had achieved. The import we take to be,-my services when revealed (unbonneted), may aspire or lay claim to (may speak to) as proud a fortune as this which I have attained. Mr. Fuseli, however, has given another explanation, founded on the fact that at Venice the bonnet has always been a badge of patrician honours :-I am his equal or superior in rank; and were it not so, such are my demerits, that, unbonneted, without the addition of patrician or senatorial dignity, they may speak to as proud a fortune, &c. But here, too, it is indispensable for the integrity of the passage that "speak to " be understood in the sense just mentioned of aspire, or lay claim to. ca land-carack;] A carack was a ship of large burden, like the Spanish galleon; but the compound in the text appears to have been a dissolute expression, the meaning of which may be gathered from the following: "Here to his Land-Friggat hee's ferried by Charon, BRA. O, thou foul thief, where hast thou stow'd my daughter? b Damn'd as thou art, thou hast enchanted her ; "Tis probable, and palpable to thinking. I therefore apprehend and do attach theed Отн. Hold your hands! Отн. 1 OFF. "T is true, most worthy signior, The duke's in council, and your noble self, I am sure is sent for. BRA. Cannot but feel this wrong as 't were their own ; (*) First folio, Whether. (†) First folio omits, I. If she in chains of magic were not bound,-] A line not found in the quarto 1622. bcurled darlings-] "Curled" was an epithet characteristic of gentility. Thus D'Avenant, in "The Just Italian," Act III. Sc. 1, "the curl'd and silken Nobles of the Town." The folio reads, "dearlings." That waken motion:-] So Hanmer; the original having, "That weakens motion," &c. The upholders of the old reading contend that Brabantio's accusation is that the Moor, by magical devices and the administering of drugs or minerals, had weakened those natural impulses of youth and maidhood in his daughter, which, uncontrolled, would have inclined to those of her own clime, complexion, and degree; but this is expressly contradicted by what he has himself just said, "a maid so tender, fair, and happy, So opposite to marriage, that she shunn'd The wealthy curled darlings of our nation." We therefore readily accept the easy emendation Hanmer offers. Brabantio's grievance, it is plain, was not that Othello had, by charms and medicines, abated the motions of Desdemona's sense, but that he had aroused and stimulated them. d and do attach thee-] The passage beginning,-"Judge me the world," to the above words inclusive, is not in the quarto 1622. e-where the aim reports,-] To aim is to conjecture or surmise. f I do not so secure me in the error,-] I do not so over-confidently build on the discrepancy, but that, &c. g So may he with more facile question bear it.-] The remainder of the speech, after this line, is found only in the follo 1623 and the quarto 1630. |