Enter DESDEMONA, attended. Look, if my gentle love be not rais'd up ;— DES. What's the matter, dear? OTн. All's well now, sweeting 7; Come away to bed. Sir, for your hurts, Myself will be your surgeon: Lead him off. [TO MONTANO, who is led off. Iago, look with care about the town ; And silence those whom this vile brawl distracted.Come, Desdemona; 'tis the soldiers' life, To have their balmy slumbers wak'd with strife. [Exeunt all but LAGO and CASSIO. IAGO. What, are you hurt, lieutenant ? CAS. Ay, past all surgery. IAGO. Marry, heaven forbid! CAS. Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part, sir, of myself, and what remains is bestial.My reputation, Iago, my reputation. LAGO. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more offence in that, than in reputation. Reputation is an idle 7 - sweeting ;] This surfeiting vulgar term of fondness originates from the name of an apple distinguished only by its insipid sweetness. STEEVENS. Shakspeare seems to have thought very differently of these terms of endearment. We have before, " honey, you shall be well desired in Cyprus ;" and a multitude of other passages of a similar nature might be produced. 8 Lead him off.] I am persuaded, these words were originally a marginal direction. In our old plays all the stage-directions were couched in imperative terms:-Play musick-Ring the Bell-Lead him off. MALONE. 9 there is more OFFENCE, &c.] Thus the quartos. The folio reads-there is more sense, &c. STEEVENS. and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving: You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man! there are ways to recover the general again: You are but now cast in his mood', a punishment more in policy than in malice; even so as one would beat his offenceless dog, to affright an imperious lion: sue to him again, and he's yours. CAS. I will rather sue to be despised, than to deceive so good a commander, with so slight2, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow ?-O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee--devil! IAGO. What was he that you followed with your sword? What had he done to you? CAS. I know not. IAGO. Is it possible? CAS. I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore.-O, that men should put an enemy in their mouths, to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, I 2 cast in his mood,] Ejected in his anger. JOHNSON. SO SLIGHT,] Thus the folio. The quarto 1622 reads -so light. MALONE. 3 and SPEAK PARROT?] A phrase signifying to act foolishly and childishly. So Skelton : 66 66 These maidens full mekely with many a divers flour, Freshly they dress and make sweete my boure, "With spake parrot I pray you full courteously thei saye." So, in Lyly's Woman in the Moon, 1597: "Thou pretty parrot, speak a while." WARBURTON. These lines are wanting in the first quarto. STEEVENS. From Drunk, &c. to shadow, inclusively, is wanting in the quarto 1622. By speak parrot," surely the poet meant, "talk idly," and not, as Dr. Warburton supposes, "act foolishly." MALONE revel, pleasure, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts! LAGO. Why, but you are now well enough: How came you thus recovered? CAS. It hath pleased the devil, drunkenness, to give place to the devil, wrath: one unperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself. LAGO. Come, you are too severe a moraler: As the time, the place, and the condition of this country stands, I could heartily wish this had not befallen; but, since it is as it is, mend it for your own good. CAS. I will ask him for my place again; he shall tell me, I am a drunkard! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! O strange!-Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil. LAGO. Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used; exclaim no more against it. And, good lieutenant, I think, you think I love you. CAS. I have well approved it, sir.-I drunk! IAGO. You, or any man living, may be drunk at some time, man. I'll tell you what you shall do. Our general's wife is now the general;-I may say so in this respect, for that he hath devoted and given up himself to the contemplation, mark, and denotement of her parts and graces*:-confess 4 for that he hath devoted and given up himself to the contemplation, mark, and DENOTEMENT of her parts and graces:] [Old copies-devotement.] I remember, it is said of Antony, in the beginning of his tragedy, that he who used to fix his eyes altogether on the dreadful ranges of war: 66 now bends, now turns, "The office and devotion of their view yourself freely to her; importune her; she'll help to put you in your place again: she is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, that she holds it a vice in her goodness, not to do more than she is requested: This broken joint", between you and her husband, entreat her to splinter; and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger than it was before. CAS. You advise me well. 6 IAGO. I protest, in the sincerity of love, and honest kindness. CAS. I think it freely; and, betimes in the morning, I will beseech the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me: I am desperate of my fortunes, if they check me here. IAGO. You are in the right. tenant; I must to the watch. CAS. Good night, honest Iago. Good night, lieu [Exit CASSIO. IAGO. And what's he then, that says,-I play the villain ? When this advice is free" I give, and honest, 8 Probal to thinking, and (indeed) the course This is finely expressed; but I cannot persuade myself that our poet would ever have said, any one devoted himself to the devotement of any thing. All the copies agree; but the mistake certainly arose from a single letter being turned upside down at press. THEObald. A similar mistake has happened in Hamlet, and in several other places. See p. 176. MALONE. 5 This BROKEN JOINT,] Thus the folio. reads-This brawl. MALONE. 6 any LAY] i. e. any bet, any wager. So, in Cymbeline: "I will have it no lay." The original copy RITSON. 7 this advice is free,] This counsel has an appearance of honest openness, of frank good-will. JOHNSON. Rather gratis, not paid for, as his advice to Roderigo was. HENLEY. 8 Probal-] Thus the old editions. There may be such a contraction of the word probable, but I have not met with it in any To win the Moor again? For 'tis most easy The inclining Desdemona to subdue 9 In any honest suit; she's fram'd as fruitful1 As the free elements 2. And then for her To win the Moor,-were't to renounce his baptism, All seals and symbols of redeemed sin, His soul is so enfetter'd to her love, That she may make, unmake, do what she list, 3 With his weak function. How am I then a villain, 4 When devils will their blackest sins put on, other book. Yet abbreviations as violent occur in our ancient writers, and especially in the works of Churchyard. STEEVENS. 9 The INCLINING Desdemona-] Inclining here signifies compliant. MALONE. 1-fruitful-] Corresponding to benignus, apdovos. 2 as fruitful HENLEY. As the free elements.] Liberal, bountiful, as the elements, out of which all things are produced. JOHNSON. 3 -to this PARALLEL course,] Parallel, for even; because parallel lines run even and equidistant. WARBURTON. So, in our author's 70th Sonnet : "Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, "And delves the parallels in beauty's brow." MALONE. Parallel course; i. e. course level, and even with his design. JOHNSON. 4 When devils will their blackest sins PUT ON, They do SUGGEST] When devils mean to instigate men to commit the most atrocious crimes. So, in Hamlet: "Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause." To put on has already occurred twice in the present play, in this To suggest in old language is to tempt. sense. See vol. iv. p. 50, n. 7. MALONE. |