IAGO. Long live she so! and long live you to think so! ОTH. And yet, how nature erring from itself,LAGO. Ay, there's the point :-As,-to be bold with you, Not to affect many proposed matches, Of her own clime, complexion, and degree; Отн. Farewell, farewell: If more thou dost perceive, let me know more; Set on thy wife to observe: Leave me, Iago. LAGO. My lord, I take my leave. [Going. ОTH. Why did I marry?—This honest creature, doubtless, Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds. IAGO. My lord, I would, I might entreat your honour To scan this thing no further; leave it to time: * Quarto, Fie. + First folio, Although 'tis fit. 5 4 — a WILL most rank,] Will, is for wilfulness. It is so used by Ascham. A rank will, is self-will overgrown and exuberant. JOHNSON. 5 You shall by that perceive him and his MEANS:] You shall discover whether he thinks his best means, his most powerful interest, is by the solicitation of your lady. JOHNSON. Note, if your lady strain his entertainment" IAGO. I once more take my leave. [Exit. OTH. This fellow's of exceeding honesty, And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit3, Of human dealings: If I do prove her haggard, 6 -strain his ENTERTAINMENT] Press hard his re-admission to his pay and office. Entertainment was the military term for admission of soldiers. JOHNSON. So, in Coriolanus: " - the centurions, and their charges, distinctly billeted, and already in the entertainment." STEEVENS. 7 Fear not my government.] Do not distrust my ability to contain my passion. JOHNSON. 8 with a LEARNED spirit,] Learned, for experienced. WARBURTON. The construction is, He knows with a learned spirit all qualities of human dealings. JOHNSON. 9- If I do prove her HAGGARD,] A haggard hawk, is a wild hawk, a hawk unreclaimed, or irreclaimable. JOHNSON. A haggard is a particular species of hawk. It is difficult to be reclaimed, but not irreclaimable. From a passage in The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, 1612, it appears that haggard was a term of reproach sometimes applied to a wanton: "Is this your perch, you haggard? fly to the stews." Turbervile says, that "haggart falcons are the most excellent birds of all other falcons." Latham gives to the haggart only the second place in the valued file. In Holland's Leaguer, a comedy, by Shakerly Marmyon, 1633, is the following illustrative passage: Again: "Before these courtiers lick their lips at her, “For she is ticklish as any haggard, "And quickly lost." Again, in Two Wise Men, and All the Rest Fools, 1619: the admirable conquest the faulconer maketh in a hawk's na Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings', ture; bringing the wild haggard, having all the earth and seas to Scour over uncontroulably, to attend and obey," &c. Haggard, however, had a popular sense, and was used for wild by those who thought not on the language of falconers. STEEVENS. I Though that her JESSES were my dear heart-strings,] Jesses are short straps of leather tied about the foot of a hawk, by which she is held on the fist. HANMER. In Heywood's comedy, called, A Woman Killed With Kindness, 1617, a number of these terms relative to hawking occur together: "Now she hath seiz'd the fowl, and 'gins to plume her; "Rebeck her not; rather stand still and check her. "So: seize her gets, her jesses, and her bells." STEEVENS. 2 I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind, To prey at fortune.] The falconers always let fly the hawk against the wind; if she flies with the wind behind her, she seldom returns. If therefore a hawk was for any reason to be dismissed, she was let down the wind, and from that time shifted for herself, and preyed at fortune. This was told me by the late Mr. Clark. JOHNSON. This passage may possibly receive illustration from a similar one in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 2, sect. i. mem. 3: “As a long-winged hawke, when he is first whistled off the fist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure fetcheth many a circuit in the ayre, still soaring higher and higher, till he comes to his full pitch, and in the end, when the game is sprung, comes down amaine, and stoupes upon a sudden.' PERCY. Again, in The Spanish Gipsie, 1653, by Middleton and Rowley: That young lannerd, "Whom you have such a mind to; if you can whistle her "To come to fist, make trial, play the young falconer.” A lannerd is a species of a hawk. Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Bonduca : 3 66 he that basely "Whistled his honour off to the wind," &c. STEEVENS. "Have you not seen, when whistled from the fist, 66 66 'Straight flies at check, and clips it down the wind." Dryden. Ann. Mirabil. BLAKEWAY. PARTS of conversation-] Parts seem here to be syno 4 That chamberers have: Or, for I am declin'd Must be to loath her. O curse of marriage, For others' uses. Yet, 'tis the plague of great ones; "Tis destiny unshunnable, like death; nymous with arts, as in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Act II. speaking of singing and musick : 4 They are parts I love." REED. chamberers] i. e. men of intrigue. So, in the Countess of Pembroke's Antonius, 1590 : "Fal'n from a souldier to a chamberer." Again, in Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, v. 4935 : "Only through youth the chamberere." Thus, in the French Poem: Par la jeunesse la chambriere. STEEVENS. Chambering and wantonness are mentioned together in the sacred writings. MALONE. "not The sense of chamberers may be ascertained from Rom. xiii. 13. where μη KOITAI is rendered, in the common version, in chambering." HENLEY. 5 Prerogativ'd are they LESS than the base ;] In asserting that the base have more prerogative in this respect than the great, that is, that the base or poor are less likely to endure this forked plague, our poet has maintained a doctrine contrary to that laid down in As You Like It :-" Horns? even so.-Poor men alone? No, no: the noblest deer has them as huge as the rascal." Here we find all mankind are placed on a level in this respect, and that it is destiny unshunnable, like death." 66 66 66 Shakspeare would have been more consistent if he had written: 'Prerogativ'd are they more than the base?" Othello would then have answered his own question : [No:] 'Tis destiny, &c. MALONE. Allowance must be made to the present state of Othello's mind: passion is seldom correct in its effusions. STEEVENS. 6 'Tis destiny unshunnable, like death;] To be consistent, Othello must mean, that it is destiny unshunnable by great ones, not by all mankind. MALONE. Even then this forked plague' is fated to us, Enter DESDEMONA and EMILIA. 8 If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itselfo !— I'll not believe it. 7 forked plague-] In allusion to a barbed or forked arrow, which, once infixed, cannot be extracted. JOHNSON. Or rather, the forked plague is the cuckold's horns. PERCY. Dr. Johnson may be right. I meet with the same thought in Middleton's comedy of A Mad World my Masters, 1608: "While the broad arrow, with the forked head, "Misses his brows but narrowly." Again, in King Lear : though the fork invade "The region of my heart." STEEVENS. I have no doubt that Dr. Percy's interpretation is the true one. Let our poet speak for himself. 66 Quoth she," says Pandarus. in Troilus and Cressida, "which of these hairs is Paris, my husband? The forked one," quoth he; "pluck it out, and give it him." Again, in The Winter's Tale : 66 66 - but the old o'er head and ears a fork'd one." So, in Tarleton's News cut of Purgatorie: squire, knight of the forked order-." One of Sir John Harrington's Epigrams, in which our poet's very expression is found, puts the matter beyond a doubt: 8 "Actæon guiltless unawares espying "Naked Diana bathing in her bowre, "Was plagu'd with hornes; his dogs did him devoure; MALONE. - Desdemona comes :] Thus the quartos. The folio reads -Look where she comes. STEEVENS. 9 If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself!] i. e. renders its own labours fruitless, by forming so beautiful a creature as Desdemona, and suffering the elegance of her person to be disgraced and sullied by the impurity of her mind.-Such, I think, is the meaning.-The construction, however, may be different. If she be false, O, then even heaven itself cheats us with "unreal mockeries," with false and specious appearances, intended only to deceive. MALone. The first of the foregoing explanations, is, I believe, the true "If she be false, heaven disgraces itself by creating woman one.-" |