This is thy work :—the object poisons sight; For they succeed on you.-To you, lord governor, [Exeunt. P. 375. (1) "Sblood, but you will not hear me :— So the quarto of 1622 verbatim. (What can Mr. Knight mean when he says that so "Steevens writes these lines"?)-The folio, and the quarto of 1630, have "But you'l not heare me," &c. So the quartos.-The folio has "Off-capt to him.”—“In support of the folio Antony and Cleopatra may be quoted, 'I've ever held my cap off to thy fortunes' [act ii. sc. 7]. This reading I once thought to be the true one. But a more intimate knowledge of the quarto copies has convinced me that. they ought not without very strong reason to be departed from." MALONE. -Mr. Grant White adheres to the reading of the folio, "because 'capped' seems to have meant to keep the cap on, not to take it off." But Coles has "To cap a person, coram aliquo caput aperire, nudare." Dict. “Qy. ‘purpose' [an early alteration]?" W. N. LETTSOM. "The first folio and the second quarto wrongly omit these words; but probably something has been lost before them." W. N. LETTSOM, Mr. Collier and Delius [1865, and Mr. Grant White] point with the old copies, "For certes,' says he," &c.,-Delius observing that "For certes” is here equivalent to "For certain," and that the modern editors are wrong in putting a comma between these words. But it appears to me that the "for" is not a portion of what Iago makes Othello say. (Compare The Tempest, act iii. sc. 3; "If I should say, I saw such islanders, For, certes, these are people of the island," &c.) P. 376. (6) “A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife;" Here Hanmer substituted "a fair phiz" (!) ; Capell, “a fair face ;" Tyrwhitt conjectured "a fair life;" and Mr. Grant White prints "a fair wise.”. The Rev. W. R. Arrowsmith gives the following explanation of the old reading, an explanation which, to me at least, is altogether forced and unsatisfactory; "The words are to be taken circumscriptly, not sent gadding after Bianca, or no one knows who; their meaning must be sought and found within the compass of the line in which they stand. Had Shakespeare written 'A fellow almost damned in a raw lad,' the dullest brain could scarcely have missed the imputation that Cassio's military abilities would be almost disallowed, condemned as hardly up to the mark in an inexperienced boy: or had the words run 'A fellow almost damned in an old maid,' then, though it might not be understood how an officer, after Iago's report, of Cassio's incapacity, should be almost damned in one of her sex and condition, she at any rate could not, like the 'fair wife,' have been discovered at Cyprus in a young courtezan. Or, not altering a syllable, with only a slight change in their order, let us place the words thus, 'A fellow in a fair wife almost damned;' by this disposition of them, the reader is pinned to their true construction: the alliance between Cassio and the fair wife is closer than the commentators suspected; they harp upon conjugal union, Iago speaks of virtual identity; they seek the coupling of two persons in wedlock, he contemplates an embodiment of the soldiership of the one in the condition of the other, 'and so incorporated he pronounces it to be 'in a fair wife' almost reproveable; adding, in the same vein, that it was no better than might be found in 'a spinster.' To dwell on this point longer would be to upbraid the reader's understanding." Shakespeare's Editors and Commentators, p. 39. So the quarto of 1622.-The folio, and the quarto of 1630, have "the Tongued Consuls;" which, according to Boswell, agrees better with the context "mere prattle," and which several editors adopt; though the folio has a similar error in Coriolanus, act ii. sc. 3, “ Why in this Wooluish tongue should I stand heere," &c. P. 378. (8) 66 "a gondolier," So the folio, and the quarto of 1630 (“gundelier"). But if the author did not write "gundeler" (" gondoler"), he certainly intended the word to be so pronounced. See Walker's Shakespeare's Versification, &c. p. 218.-Only the first line and the three concluding lines of this speech are in the quarto of 1622. Theobald reads "and bonneted."-Hanmer printed "e'en bonneted." P. 381. (10) 66 'you have been hotly call'd for; The quartos have "The Senate sent aboue three seuerall quests," &c.—The folio has "The Senate hath sent about three seuerall Quests," &c. (and Mr. Collier erroneously states that the word "hath" is found also in the quartos). -In the first of these lines Mr. W. N. Lettsom would read "you had been," &c. "Read 'or.'" Walker's Crit. Exam. &c. vol. ii. p. 323. "To 'weaken motion'," says Ritson, "is to impair the faculties.”—Theobald substituted "That weaken notion ;" Hanmer, "That waken motion." P. 385. (13) "Have there injointed them with an after fleet." The quarto of 1622 omits “them.”—Walker (Crit. Exam. &c. vol. iii. p. 285) queries "injoint." P. 385. (14) 66 Qy. 'this'?" W. N. LETTSOM. P. 385. (15) "thus," "And prays you to believe him." "The Rev. H. Barry plausibly suggests to me, that we ought to read relieve for believe." COLLIER.-But that alteration had been suggested long ago. "An emendation not necessary of a word in the line before has a place in the same 'Readings;' put there more to shew it was thought of, than from any other inducement: Montano's message to the senate is worded with great politeness in all the parts of it: in this last, relief, the thing he stood in want of and wish'd, is only insinuated; knowing it would follow from them, was belief accorded him." Capell's Notes, &c. vol. ii. P. iii. p. 139.— "Believe' I think right, as Johnson takes it ['He entreats you not to doubt the truth of this intelligence']. 'Relieve' would mean send a successor." W. N. LETTSOM. The editor of the second folio added "with ;" not knowing that, according to the earlier phraseology, such an addition was unnecessary for the sense. So the quartos.-The folio has "main'd;" a reading which I do not mean to defend when I observe that in The Sec. Part of Henry VI, we have the provincialism "mained," i. e. lamed; see note 148, vol. v. p. 221. P. 387. (19) "And portance in my travels' history:" So the quarto of 1630.-The quarto of 1622 has "And with it all my trauells Historie.”—The folio reads “And portance in my Trauellours historie," which is given by Mr. Knight and Delius; the former remarking that "Othello modestly, and somewhat jocosely, calls his wonderful relations a [NOTES. traveller's history," though a personage less inclined to jocoseness than Othello cannot well be conceived.—Dr. Richardson suggests to me that the "Trauellours" of the folio is a misprint for "travellous" (or "travailous”), and adds that Wielif has "Jobs trauailous nights” and “the trareilous presoun of the Egipcians :" but, though the epithet is very properly applied to "nights" or to a "prison," can we speak of a "travailous history"?-(Fur• ther on in the present speech the folio has "But not instinctiuely," which Mr. Knight allows to be "a decided typographical error;" and, a little after that, "She gaue me for my paines a world of kisses” ! !) P. 389. (20) "For your sake, jewel,” "The sense, as well as the metre, requires 'For my own sake, jewel.'” W. N. LETTSOM. (Hanmer printed “And for your,” &c.) P. 390. (21) "I never yet did hear That the bruis'd heart was pierced through the ear." "A doubt has been entertained concerning the word 'pierced,' which Dr. Warburton supposed to mean wounded, and therefore substituted 'pieced' in its room. But 'pierced' is merely a figurative expression, and means not wounded but penetrated, in a metaphorical sense; thoroughly affected." MALONE,—who cites from Spenser's Faery Queene, B. iv, C. viii. st. 26, "Her words Which, passing through the cares, would pierce the hart;" and from the First Part of Marlowe's Tamburlaine, "Nor thee nor them, thrice noble Tamburlaine, So the quarto of 1630.-The quarto of 1622, and the folio, have "This present warres ;" and, no doubt, formerly the plural of that word was sometimes used as equivalent to the singular: but in the next page Desdemona, speaking of the same expedition, calls it "the war."- Malone printed "These present wars," 66 So the folio, and the quarto of 1630.-The quarto of 1622 has scorne of Fortunes," "which," says Johnson, "is perhaps the true reading."-1865. "Qy. 'scorn of Fortune,' i, e. setting Fortune at defiance." W. N. LETTSOM. P. 391. (23) "I therefore beg it not, To please the palate of my appetite; Nor to comply with heat-the young affects So the old copies, except that they have "In my defunct," &c.-There is a |