Enter DESDEMONA, IAGO, and Attendants.

DUKE. I think this tale would win my daughter too.

Good Brabantio,

Take up this mangled matter at the best:

Men do their broken weapons rather use

Than their bare hands.

BRA.

I pray you, hear her speak;

If she confess that she was half the wooer,

Destruction on my head, if my bad blame

Light on the man!-Come hither, gentle mistress:
Do you perceive in all this noble company

Where most you owe obedience?

DES.

I do perceive here a divided duty:

My noble father,

To you, I am bound for life and education;

My life and education both do learn me

How to respect you; you are the lord of duty,

I am hitherto your daughter: but here's my husband;
And so much duty as my mother show'd

To you, preferring you before her father,

So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor, my lord.

BRA.

God be with you!—I have done.

Please it your grace, on to the state affairs;—
I had rather to adopt a child than get it.—
Come hither, Moor:

I here do give thee that with all my heart,
Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart
I would keep from thee.-For your sake, jewel,
I am glad at soul I have no other child;

For thy escape would teach me tyranny,

To hang clogs on them.-I have done, my lord.

DUKE. Let me speak like yourself; and lay a sentence, Which, as a grise, or step, may help these lovers

Into your favour.*

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended

By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.

To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
What cannot be preserv'd, when Fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.

The robb'd that smiles, steals something from the thief;
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.

BRA. So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile,

We lose it not, so long as we can smile.

He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears

(*) First folio omits the words, Into your favour.

• Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart-] A line wanting in the earlier quarto.

Let me speak like yourself;] He perhaps means, sententiously.

But the free comfort which from thence he hears;
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow,
That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow.
These sentences, to sugar, or to gall,

Being strong on both sides, are equivocal:
But words are words; I never yet did hear

That the bruis'd heart was pierced through the ear.-
I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state.

*

DUKE. The Turk with a most mighty preparation makes for
Cyprus:-Othello, the fortitude of the place is best known to you;
and though we have there a substitute of most allowed sufficiency, yet
opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects, throws a more safer voice
on you: you must therefore be content to slubber the gloss of your
new fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous expedition.
OTH. The tyrant custom, most grave senators,

Hath made the flinty and steel couch† of war
My thrice-driven bed of down: I do agnize b
A natural and prompt alacrity

I find in hardness; and do undertake
These present wars against the Ottomites.
Most humbly, therefore, bending to your state,
I crave fit disposition for my wife;
Due reference of place and exhibition;
With such accommodation and besort

A's levels with her breeding.

DUKE.

Be't at her father's.
BRA.

OTH. Nor I.
DES.

If you please,

I'll not have it so.

Nor I; I would not there reside,d

To put my father in impatient thoughts
By being in his eye. Most gracious duke,
To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear;
And let me find a charter in your voice,

To assist my simpleness.

DUKE. What would you, Desdemona?

DES. That I did love the Moor to live with him,

(*) First folio inserts, more.

(†) First folio, Coach.

(1) Old text, This.

• That the bruis'd heart was pierced through the car.—] Following Warburton, some editors read pieced; but Brabantio is quoting a phrase of the age. Thus Spenser:

"Her words

Which passing through the eares would pierce the heart."

The Faerie Queene, B. IV. C. 8, Stanza xxvi.

So also Drayton, in the Baron's Warrs, Stanza xxxvi. :—

"Are not your hearts yet pierced through your Ears?"

4 Nor I; I would not there reside, &c.] In the folio,-"Nor would I there recide," &c.

t

*

My downright violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world: my heart's subdu'd
Even to the very quality of my lord:a

I saw Othello's visage in his mind;
And to his honours and his valiant parts
Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate.
So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites for which I love him are bereft me,
And I a heavy interim shall support

By his dear absence. Let me go with him.
ОтH. Let her have your voice.c

Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not,
To please the palate of my appetite;

Nor to comply with heat (the young affects
In met defunct) and proper satisfaction;
But to be free and bounteous to her mind:

And heaven defend your good souls, that you think
I will your serious and great business scant

For she is with me: no, when light-wing'd toys
Of feather'd Cupid seel with wanton dulness
My speculative and offic'd instruments,"

That my disports corrupt and taint my business,
Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,
And all indign and base adversities

Make head against my estimation!

DUKE. Be it as you shall privately determine,

Either for her stay or going: the affair cries haste,
And speed must answer it.

1 SEN. You must away to-night.

Отн.

With all my heart.

DUKE. At nine i' the morning here we'll meet again.— Othello, leave some officer behind,

And he shall our commission bring to you;

"Quality here means profession. I am so much enamoured of Othello, that I am even willing to endure all the inconveniences incident to a military life, and to attend him to the wars.'"-MALONE.

11

dear absence.] See note (6), p. 495, Vol. V.

• Let her have your voice.] The folio lection; that of the quarto 1662 is,—

"Your voices lords: beseech you let her will
Have a free way."

4 My speculative and offic'd instruments,-] By "speculative and offic'd instruments" he probably means, the organs of sight and action.

You must away to-night. In the quartos, "You must hence to-night," which words are given to the Duke, and the dialogue proceeds as follows,—

"Des. To-night my lord?

Du. This night.

Oth. With all my heart."

With such things else of quality and respect
As doth import you.

Отн.

So please your grace, my ancient,

A man he is of honesty and trust,

To his conveyance I assign my wife,

With what else needful your good grace shall think
To be sent after me.

Good night to every one.-And, noble signior,
If virtue no delighteda beauty lack,

Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.

1 SEN. Adieu, brave Moor! use Desdemona well. BRA. Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see;b She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee.

[TO BRABANTIO.

[Exeunt DUKE, Senators, Officers, &c.

Отн. My life upon her faith!-Honest Iago,
My Desdemona must I leave to thee:
I pr'ythee, let thy wife attend on her;
And bring them after in the best advantage.—
Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour
Of love, of worldly matter, and direction,
To spend with thee: we must obey the time.

ROD. Iago,

[Exeunt OTHELLO and DESDEMONA.

IAGO. What say'st thou, noble heart?
ROD. What will I do, think'st thou ?
IAGO. Why, go to bed, and sleep.

ROD. I will incontinently drown myself.

IAGO. If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Why, thou silly gentleman!

ROD. It is silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die, when death is our physician.

IAGO. O, villanous! I have looked upon the world for four times seven years; and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself. Ere I would say, I would drown myself for the love of a Guinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon.

ROD. What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond; but it is not in my virtue to amend it.

IAGO. Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens; to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce; set hyssop, and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many; either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance† of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of

(*) First folio, And.

(†) First folio, braine.

- no delighted beauty lack,-] "Delighted" is here used for delighting; the passive participle for the active.

if thou hast eyes to see ;] The 1622 quarto reads, we think preferably,—“ have a quick eye to see," &c.

sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: but we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect or scion.

ROD. It cannot be.

IAGO. It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness. I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,b-put money in thy purse,-nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration ;put but money in thy purse.-These Moors are changeable in their wills;-fill thy purse with money: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. (5) She must change for youth: when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice: she must have change, she must: therefore put money in thy purse.-If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst: if sanctimony and a frail vow, betwixt an erring barbarian and a* super-subtle Venetian, be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy, than to be drowned and go without her.

ROD. Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on the issue? IAGO. Thou art sure of me ;-go, make money:-I have told thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I hate the Moor: my cause is hearted, thine hath no less reason; let us be conjunctive in our revenge against him. If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time, which will be delivered. Traverse! go; provide thy money. We will have more of this to-morrow. Adieu.

ROD. Where shall we meet i' the morning?

IAGO. At my lodging.

ROD. I'll be with thee betimes.

IAGO. Go to; farewell.

ROD. What say you?

Do you hear, Roderigo?

IAGO. No more of drowning, do you hear?

ROD. I am changed: I'll go sell all my land."

IAGO. Go to; farewell! put money enough in your purse.

(*) First folio omits, a.

[Exit RODERIGO.

defeat thy favour with an usurped beard ;] Change, or disfigure thy countenance by putting on a spurious beard.

It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,-] In the folio, "It cannot be long that Desdemona should continue," &c.

she must have change, she must;] These words are not in the folio.

d I'll go sell all my land.] The folio abbreviates the foregoing dialogue thus,—

"Do you hear, Roderigo?

Rod. Ile sell all my Land.

[Exit."