Iago. Demand me nothing: what you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word. Torments will ope your lips. Oth. O villain! Cas. Most heathenish, and most gross! Lod. Now, here's another discontented paper, Found in his pocket too; and this, it seems, Roderigo meant to have sent this damned villain: But that, belike, Iago in the interim Came in and satisfied him. Oth. O, the pernicious caitiff!How came you, Cassio, by that handkerchief, That was my wife's? Cas. I found it in my chamber; And he himself confess'd, but even now, That there he dropp'd it, for a special purpose, Oth. Lod. You must forsake this room, and go with us: Your power and your command is taken off, That can torment him much, and hold him long, 7 To the Venetian state.-Come; bring him away. Of one that lov'd, not wisely, but too well: Albeit unused to the melting mood, Lod. O bloody period! [Stabs himself. All that's spoke is marr'd. [Dies. Oth. I kiss'd thee, ere I kill'd thee :-no way but this, [Falling upon DESDEMONA. Killing myself, to die upon a kiss. Cas. This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon, For he was great of heart. Lod. O Spartan dog! More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea, Look on the tragic loading of this bed; [To IAGO. This is thy work: the object poisons sight; Let it be hid.-Gratiano, keep the house, And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor, For they succeed on you.-To you, lord governor, Remains the censure of his hellish villain; The time, the place, the torture:-O, enforce it! Myself will straight aboard, and to the state This heavy act with heavy heart relate. [Exeunt. ACT I.-SCENE I. "Enter RODERIGO and IAGO." ADMIRABLE is the preparation, so truly and peculiarly Shakespearian, in the introduction of Roderigo, as the dupe on whom Iago shall first exercise his art, and in so doing display his own character. Roderigo, without any fixed principle, but not without the moral notions and sympathies with honour, which his rank and connections had hung upon him, is already well fitted and predisposed for the purpose; for, very want of character and strength of passion, like wind loudest in an empty house, constitute his character. The first three lines happily state the nature and foundation of the friendship between him and Iago,-the purse,-as also the contrast of Roderigo's intemperance of mind with Iago's coolness,-the coolness of a preconceiving experimenter. The mere language of protestation If ever I did dream of such a matter, abhor me' cellences, and the more appropriately, because cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious of inward weakness;-but they act only by half, like music on an inattentive auditor, swelling the thoughts which prevent him from listening to it.-COLERIDGE. "OFF-CAPP'D to him"-So the folio; the quarto, oft capp'd. The latter has been adopted by the editors, and is used as an example of the antiquity of the academical phrase to-cap, meaning to take off the cap. We admit that the word cap is used in this sense by early English authors. But is oft capp'd supported by the context? As we read the passage, three great ones of the city wait upon Othello; they off-capp'd-they took cap-in-hand-in personal suit that he should make lago his lieutenant; but he evades them, &c. He has already chosen his officer. Here is a scene painted in a manner befitting both the dignity of the great ones of the city and of Othello. The audience was given, the solicitation was humbly made, the reasons for re which falling in with the associative link, determines fusing it assigned. But take the reading, oft capp'd; Roderigo's continuation of complaint "Thou toldst me, thou didst hold him in thy hate'elicits at length a true feeling of Iago's mind, the dread of contempt habitual to those, who encourage in themselves, and have their keenest pleasure in the expression of contempt for others. Observe Iago's high self-opinion, and the moral, that a wicked man will employ real feelings, as well as assume those most alien from his own, as instruments of his purposes :-and, by the faith of man, I know my price: I am worth no worse a place.' In what follows, let the reader feel how, by and through the glass of two passions, disappointed vanity and envy, the very vices of which he is complaining, are made to act upon him as if they were so many ex and then we have Othello perpetually haunted by the three great ones, capping to him, and repeating to him the same prayer, and he perpetually denying them with the same bombast circumstance.-KNIGHT. enough Italian to read it. On this passage he remarks, "Not one of the annotators has attempted to give a reason why Cassio, the Florentine, is called in derision 'a great arithmetician,' and 'a counter-caster,' with 'his debitor and creditor;' but there is a good reason. A soldier from Florence, famous for its bankers throughout Europe, and for its invention of bills of exchange, book-keeping, and every thing connected with a counting-house, might well be ridiculed for his promotion by an Iago in this manner." "A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife." This is one of the debateable grounds of annotators. Cassio, being a bachelor, several critics have rejected "wife" in the reading of all the old copies, and proposed to read, a fair face, or (with Hanmer) phyz, or guise, alluding to Cassio's style of dress; or, with Tyrwhitt, fair life. The last is ingeniously explained of Cassio's "daily beauty in his life" subjecting him to the scriptural curse as one "of whom all men speak well." Coleridge, taking it more literally, approves the reading as expressing "Iago's contempt for all that did not display intellectual power." The later editors have been satisfied with the original reading, and Stevens's interpretation of it—that Cassio is almost ruined by being nearly married to a frail beauty. In act iv., the report of Cassio's being about to marry Bianca is mentioned by Iago, and explained by Cassio. "Wherein the TONGUED"-So the folio, and the 1630 quarto; the first quarto reads toged, which is preferred by Collier and others, as referring to the toga or robe worn by the Venetian civil officers-men of the gown, not of the sword. "unless the bookish THEORIC"-"Theoric" is the same as theory, and the word was not uncommonly so used. "CHRISTEN'D and heathen,-must be BE-LEE'D and CALM'D."-In one quarto, Christian. Iago uses terms of navigation to express that Cassio had out-sailed him. "Whether I in any just term am affin'd." i. e. Do I stand within any such terms of propinquity to the Moor, as that I am bound to love him? The first quarto has assign'd. "What a FULL fortune"-The folio prints "full" fall; but both the quartos read "full." In CYMBELINE we have the expression "full fortune," and in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA "full fortun'd." Knight has thus defended the folio reading, and may be right in his preference. "If the Moor can carry it thus-appoint his own officer, in spite of the great ones of the city who capp'd to him, and, moreover, can secure Desdemona as his prize, he is so successful, that fortune owes him a heavy fall. To owe is used by Shakespeare not only in the ancient sense of to own, to possess, but in the modern sense of to be indebted to, to hold or possess for another. Fortune here owes the thick-lips a fall, in the same way that we say, 'He owes him a good or an evil turn.' This reading is much in Shakespeare's manner of throwing out a hint of coming calamities." "the thick-lips"-Othello's complexion and race have furnished a fruitful theme of discussion. Was he, as this phrase would indicate, a negro of the enslaved African race, or was he to be viewed as Coleridge and others have thought, as a "descendant of the proud Arabs who had borne sovereign sway in Europe (men 'of royal siege') and had filled an age of comparative darkness with their poetry and science?" "We do not think, (says Knight, summing up this view of the question,) that Shakespeare had any other intention than to paint Othello as one of the most noble and accomplished of the proud children of the Ommades and the Abbasides. The expression "thick-lips" from the mouth of Roderigo can only be received dramatically, as a nickname given to Othello by the folly and illnature of this coxcomb. Whatever may have been the practice of the stage, even in Shakespeare's time, the whole context of the play is against the notion." Coleridge has remarked with reference to the practice of making him a blackamoor, "Even if we supposed this an uninterrupted tradition of the theatre, and that Shakespeare himself, from the experience that nothing could be made too marked for the senses of his audience, had practically sanctioned it, would this prove aught concerning his own intention as a poet for all ages ?" On the other hand, actors and artists had familiarized England to an Othello of the unmixed African race; and this in former days furnished the ground to Rymer, (the learned editor of the Fadera, the great storehouse of English documentary history,) for a famous attack upon the utter improbability of the plot of OTHELLO. In our own days and country, a very original article of criticism, bearing the initials of a distinguished American statesman, (See American Monthly Mag., 1838,) while it renders the highest tribute to the Poet's skill and power, has transferred the attack to the character of Desdemona; the points of which he thus sums up : "First--That the passion of Desdemona is unnatural, solely and exclusively because of his colour. "Second-That her elopement to Othello, and secret marriage with him, indicate a personal character not only very deficient in delicacy, but totally regardless of filial duty, of female modesty, and of ingenuous shame. "Third-That her deficiency in delicacy is discernible in her conduct and discourse throughout the play. "The moral of the tragedy is, that the intermarriage of black and white blood is a violation of the law of nature. This is the lesson to be learned from the play." He adds, "That it does not need any laborious effort of the imagination to extend the moral precept resulting from the story to a salutary admonition against all ill-assorted, clandestine, and unnatural marriages." I should arm as Desdemona's champion against any assailant, even against this tremendous veteran, terrible in every field of controversy; but I refrain, (partly it may be because "me terret Jupiler hostis" and I would not wantonly provoke him,) but mainly because Desdemona's appeal for herself from Iago's calumny, and the critics' wrong, is sustained by the pervading sentiment of all spectators and readers. I should add, too, that I have found whatever I could say better said, and with more authority, by a female critic, Mrs. Jameson. But it is of importance to the true understanding and feeling of this drama, that we should not mistake the author's own intention, and the understanding of his times, as to the relative social position of Othello and his bride. The truth here will be found, as truth so often is, half way between the two extreme opinions. The constant designation of Othello as the Moor, with the reference to Barbary as his native country, his royal descent, his education and experience as a soldier, mark him as descended from a civilized, mixed Arab and African race, then as well understood as now to be different from the other African races. This was a race that had met upon equal terms with the soldiers and nobles of Europe; and we may learn from history, poetry, and romance, how much the ordinary feeling towards them differed from that which has since arisen, from other causes, towards the African race. There was nothing in the Moor's descent so to affect his social position in the eyes of Cinthio's readers or Shakespeare's audience, as to surprise them at his being received on equal footing in the family of a Venetian noble, or attaining the highest military rank in the service of the republic. Yet it is equally clear that, in regard to Desdemona, his race and colour are not a matter of indifference; they are especially dwelt upon as one of the grounds of jealousy; they place between the Moor and the Venetian lady a natural barrier, which it requires "a downright violence and storm of fortune" to break down. It is the admiration of high intellect, of heroic qualities and achievements-such as has been sometimes known in real life to overcome most strange disparities of age, character, and external circumstances-which gives the lady to see Othello's visage only "in his mind." She does not lose her own social position by marriage with one under whom Italian and Cypriot nobles (Cassio, Iago, Montano) are ambitious to serve, and with whom the princes and rulers of the state associate as companions; yet her love to him would appear in itself strange and unaccountable, had not the Poet opened to us "the pure recesses of her mind," and showed us whence it sprung. Let us listen to Mrs. Jameson. "The love of Desdemona for Othello, appears at first such a violation of all probabilities, that her father at once imputes it to magic, to spells and mixtures powerful o'er the blood.' And the devilish malignity of lago, whose coarse mind cannot conceive an affection founded purely in sentiment, derives from her love itself a strong argument against her. Aye, there's the point; as to be bold with you, Of her own clime, complexion, and degree, Whereto, we see, in all things nature tends.' "Notwithstanding this disparity of age, character, country, complexion, we, who are admitted into the secret, see her love rise naturally, and necessarily out of the leading propensities of her nature. "At the period of the story, a spirit of wild adventure had seized all Europe. The discovery of both Indies was yet recent; over the shores of the western hemisphere still fable and mystery hung, with all their dim enchantments, visionary terrors, and golden promises; perilous expeditions and distant voyages were every day undertaken from hope of plunder, or mere love of enterprise; and from these the adventurers returned with tales of Antres vast and deserts wild, of cannibals that did each other eat, of anthropophagi, and men whose heads did grow beneath their shoulders.' With just such stories did Raleigh and Clifford, and their followers, return from the new world; and thus by their splendid or fearful exaggerations, which the imperfect knowledge of these times could not refute, was the passion for the romantic and marvellous nourished at home, particularly among the women. A cavalier of those days had no nearer, no surer way to his mistress' heart, than by entertaining her with these wondrous narratives. What was a general feature of his time, Shakespeare seized and adapted to his purpose with the most exquisite felicity of effect. Desdemona, leaving her household cares in haste, to hang breathless on Othello's tales, was doubtless a picture from the life; and her inexperience and her quick imagination lend it an added propriety; then her compassionate disposition is interested by all the disastrous chances, hair-breadth 'scapes, and moving accidents by flood and field, of which he has to tell; and her exceeding gentleness and timidity, and her domestic turn of mind, render her more easily captivated by the military renown, the valour, and lofty bearing of the noble Moor And to his honours and his valiant parts "The confession and the excuse for her love is well placed in the mouth of Desdemona, while the history of the rise of that love, and of his course of wooing, is, with the most graceful propriety, as far as she is concerned, spoken by Othello, and in her absence. The last two lines summing up the whole 'She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them,' comprise whole volumes of sentiment and metaphysics. "Desdemona displays at times a transient energy, arising from the power of affection, but gentleness gives the prevailing tone to the character-gentleness in its excess gentleness verging on passiveness-gentleness which not only cannot resent, but cannot resist." "Yet throw such CHANGES"-The folio has chances ; both the quartos "changes." "My house is not a grange"-That is, we are in a populous city, not in a lone house where robbery might easily be committed. A grange is, strictly, the farm of a monastery; but in the northern counties of England every lone house or farm which stands solitary is called a grange.-WARTON. - you'll have your NEPHEWS neigh to you” —The word nephews was formerly used to signify a grandson, or any lineal descendant. In RICHARD III., the Duchess of York calls her grand-daughter niece. Nephew here is the Latin nepos. "At this ODD-EVEN and dull watch o' the night.""Odd-even of the night" is explained to be the interval between twelve at night and one in the morning. "In an extravagant and wheeling stranger.”—The word "in" is here used in the sense of "to." This is one of the many obsolete peculiarities of ancient phraseology. "Extravagant" has its Latin signification of "wandering." As in HAMLET :-"The extravagant and erring spirit." "O, she deceives me past thought."-One quarto reads, "Thou deceiv'st me." SCENE II. "Yet do I hold it very stuff o' the conscience.”—The very stuff of the conscience, is the very substance of the conscience. "As double as the duke's."-Some editors give this a literal construction, supposing that Shakespeare adopted the popular though incorrect notion, that the doge had two voices in the senate. It is clear that Shakespeare did not take the phrase in a literal sense; for, if he had supposed that the duke had a double voice as the duke, he would not have assigned the same privilege to the senator Brabantio. It means, as much above others-as powerful. "From men of royal siege; and my demerits May speak, unbonneted, to as proud a fortune,” etc. The quartos read "royal height." "Men of royal siege" signifies men who have sat upon royal seats or thrones. "Siege" is used for "seat" by many writers. "Demerits" has here the signification of "merits." As in CORIOLANUS: 'Opinion, that so sticks on Martius, may Of his demerits rob Cominus.' Mereo and demereo had the same meaning in the Latin. Fuseli has given the best explanation of "unbonneted:"-"I am his equal or superior in rank: and were it not so, such are my merits, that unbonneted, without the addition of patrician or senatorial dignity, they may speak to as proud a fortune," &c. At Venice, the bonnet was a badge of aristocratic honours. "I would not my UNHOUSED free condition"—“ Unhoused"-free from domestic cares; a thought natural to an adventurer, says Johnson. Whalley says that Othello, talking as a soldier, means that he has no settled habitation. "For the sea's worth."-So in HENRY V., act i. scene ii. as rich with praise Pliny, whom Shakespeare may have read in Holland's translation, if not in Latin, has a chapter on "The Riches of the Seas." "Faith, he to-night hath boarded a land carack.”"Carack," a vessel of heavy burden. "-weaken motion"-The old editions agree in this reading, and the sense must be-drugs that impair the faculties, and deaden those natural inclinations which would have led to the choice of younger and more suitable lovers. Yet there is probability in Hanmer's conjecture of an early error of the press of weaken for waken; and that "motion" is used in the sense of "the wanton stings and motions of the senses." SCENE III. "As in these cases, where the AIM REPORTS."-" Aim” is used in the sense of conjecture, as in THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA :— 'But fearing lest my jealous aim might err.' And in JULIUS CESAR : "What you would wish me to, I have some aim.' The quartos read, "Thus aim reports," which Johnson prefers, as meaning "when men report by conjecture." "Valiant Othello, we must straight employ you Against the general enemy Ottoman." It was part of the policy of the Venetian state never to entrust the command of an army to a native. "By land (says Thomas), they are served of strangers, both for generals, for captains, and for all other men of war; because their law permitteth not any Venetian to be captain over an army by land: fearing, I think, Cæsar's example." "Stood in your ACTION”. '-"Action" in its legal sense-even were it my own son against whom you bring your suit. "I won his daughter WITH."-The last word is not in the oldest editions, and Malone and those editors who follow his text also omit it, maintaining this to be the elliptical phraseology of Shakespeare's age. But as it is added in the second folio, 1632, this would show that such an omission was as harsh then as now, and was considered as an error of the press; and so it has been considered by Johnson and Stevens and the majority of editors. "Send for the lady to the SAGITTARY"-" Sagittary" was the name applied to a fictitious being, compounded of man and horse. As used in the text, it was formerly supposed to be the sign of an inn; but later inquiry shows that it was the residence of the commanding officers of the republic's army and navy: it is said that the figure of an archer, over the gate, still indicates the spot. "And portance in my TRAVEL'S HISTORY."-Thus the quarto. The folio reading is traveller's history, which Knight thus supports: "Othello modestly, and somewhat jocosely, calls his wonderful relations a traveller's history-a term by which the marvellous stories of the Lithgows and Coryats were wont to be designated in Shakespeare's day." — and deserts IDLE"-Thus all the old copies until the second folio, (1632,) which reads "desarts wilde." This Pope adopted. Johnson marvels that Pope should have rejected a word "so poetically beautiful" as idle; while Gifford, in his notes on Ben Jonson, supports the emendation, because "wilde adds a feature of some import even to a desert, whereas idle leaves it just where it first found it." He holds Pope's emendation to be better poetry as well as better rhythm, and it is certain that the typographical error of idle for wilde would be an easy one. Yet idle strikes my ear as more in Shakespeare's manner of describing the qualities of natural objects in language drawn from similar qualities of living persons-a half personification. To my judgment, the old editions need no emendation, though the weight of authority is the other way. "The anthropophagi," etc.-Shakespeare did not mean that Othello should win his bride (as Iago accuses him) by telling "fantastical lies." He took as true Sir Walter Raleigh's report of what he had heard and vouched as his "own belief," in his Voyage to Guiana. Extracts from Raleigh, and copies of some of the old plates in his narrations, are given in several of the English editions of SHAKESPEARE. "But not INTENTIVELY"-i. e. attentively; for so the word was used in Shakespeare's time. "She swore"-The modern reader is likely to be shocked at the lady's swearing; for that word now, when not taken in its legal sense, conveys the idea of coarse profanity. But it was formerly used in a larger sense for any strong asseveration, as the context shows here, that her swearing was "in faith, 'twas strange." Thus, Whitaker, in his Vindication of Queen Mary, says of Mary :-" To aver upon faith and honour, was then called swearing, equally with a solemn appeal to God; and considered as the same with it. This is plain from the passage immediately before us: 'I swear-upon my faith and honour,' she says expressly. She also says she does this again;' thus referring to the commencement of this letter, where she appeals to her God as witness.'" 6 yet she wish'd That heaven had made her such a man." Tieck says that Eschenburg has fallen into a mistake of translating this passage into German as if Desdemona had wished that heaven had made such a man for her, instead of wishing that heaven had created her as brave as the hero to whose story she had given "a world of sighs." Knight is not sure that Eschenburg is wrong. "She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd." Rymer, the learned historian, and Lord Shaftesbury, in other days a high authority both in philosophy and in taste, had sneered at this, on which Johnson thus comments:-" "Whoever ridicules this account of the progress of love, shows his ignorance, not only of history but of nature and manners. It is no wonder that in any age, or in any nation, a lady, recluse, timorous, and delicate, should desire to hear of events and scenes which she could never see, and should admire the man who had endured dangers, and performed actions which, however great, were magnified by her timidity.” “—a grise, or step”—The word "grise" is explained by "step," which follows it. So, in TIMON- every grise of fortune.' "—was PIERCED through the ear"-Warburton suggested that "we" ought to read pieced; but "pierced," as Malone remarked, means penetrated or reached; and in Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," 1590, we have the expression "my heart to be with gladness pierc'd." "Slubber the gloss."-Modern use has confined slubber or slobber to the nursery; but it originally meant, to take off the gloss or brightness of any thing; as, in an old poet, "The evening slubbers day." 661 I do AGNIZE❞—i. e. acknowledge or recognise. "The young affects in ME defunct."-This passage has given rise to pages of controversial commentary and critical conjecture; and yet Stevens predicts that it will "be a lasting source of doubt and controversy." The old copies all read, and the two quartos punctuate thus 'Not to comply with heat, the young affects In my defunct, and proper satisfaction.' The general intent of this is evident enough; but it is difficult to extract a precise meaning from the words, so that editors have had recourse to conjecture. Dr. Johnson's is preferred in the text of this edition, (as it has been in that of Singer and some others,) as giving |