I do confess the vices of my blood, So justly to your grave ears I'll present Duke. Say it, Othello. Oth. Her father loved me; oft invited me; I ran it through, even from my boyish days, Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach, And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, Wherein of antres 2 vast, and deserts wild,3 Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch It was my hint to speak, such was the process; The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. hear, 1 The first quarto reads:-- These things to "And with it all my travel's history." By "my portance in my travel's history," perhaps, is meant, my carriage or behavior in my travels, as described in my narration of them. Portance is thus used in Coriolanus. 2 i. e. caverns (from antrum, Lat.). 3 The quarto and first folio read, "desarts idle;" the second folio reads, “desarts wilde;" and this reading was adopted by Pope. "Mr. Malone taxes the editor of the second folio with ignorance of Shakspeare's meaning; and idle is triumphantly reinstated in the text It does not seem to have occurred to the commentators that wild mig. add a feature of some import, even to a desert; whereas idle, i. e. steru, leaves it just as it found it, and is (without a pun) the idlest epithet which could be applied. Mr. Pope, too, had an ear for rhythm; and as his reading has some touch of Shakspeare, which the other has not, and is, besides, better poetry, I should hope that it would one day resume its proper place in the text."-Gifford. Notes on Sejanus. Ben Jonsor's Works. According to the suggestion of Mr. Gifford, the reading of the second folio is here restored. 4 Nothing excited more universal attention than the accounts brought Would Desdemona seriously incline: But still the house affairs would draw her thence; She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: She swore 2-In faith, 'twas 2-In faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange; 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful; She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake Here comes the lady, let her witness it. 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. by sir Walter Raleigh, on his return from his celebrate voyage to Guiana, in 1595, of the cannibals, amazons, and especially of the nation See his Narrative in Hackluyt's Voyages, vol. iii. ed. 1600, fol. p 652, et seq. p. 677, &c. These extraordinary reports were universally credited. 1 Intention and attention were once synonymous. 2 To aver upon faith or honor was considered swearing. Men do their broken weapons rather use, 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; 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; How to respect you; you are the lord of duty; Bra. I here do give thee that with all my heart, Duke. Let me speak like yourself;1 and lay a sentence, 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. 1 i. e. “let me speak as yourself would speak, were you not too much heated with passion."-Sir J. Reynolds. 2 Grise. This word occurs again, in the same sense, in Timon of Athens What cannot be preserved when fortune takes, The robbed, that smiles, steals something from the thief He robs himself, that spends a bootless grief. Bra. So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile; He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears Being strong on both sides, are equivocal; Oth. The tyrant custom, most grave senators, I find in hardness; and do undertake These present wars against the Ottomites. Due reference of place, and exhibition,5 4 1 i. e. "that the wounds of sorrow were ever cured by the words of consolation." Pierced is here used for penetrated. 2 To slubber here means to obscure. 3 A driven bed is a bed for which the feathers have been selected by driving with a fan, which separates the light from the heavy. 4 To agnize is to acknowledge, confess, or avow. It sometimes signified "to know by some token, to admit, or allow." 5 "I desire that proper disposition be made for my wife, that she may have a fit place appointed for her residence, and such allowance, accommodation, and attendance, as befits her rank." Exhibition for allowance has already occurred in King Lear, and in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. |