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I do confess the vices of my blood,

So justly to your grave ears I'll present
How I did thrive in this fair lady's love,
And she in mine.

Duke. Say it, Othello.

Oth. Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still questioned me the story of my life,
From year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it.
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents, by flood, and field;

Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe,

And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence,
And portance1 in my travel's history:

Wherein of antres 2 vast, and deserts wild,3

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch
heaven,

It was my hint to speak, such was the process;
And of the cannibals that each other eat,

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;
Which ever as she could with haste despatch,
She'd come again, and with a greedy ear,
Devour up my discourse; which I, observing,
Took once a pliant hour; and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart,
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively. I did consent;
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke,
That my youth suffered. My story being done,

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
That Heaven had made her such a man: she thanked me;

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
She loved me for the dangers I had passed;
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used ;

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

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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,
Than their bare hands.

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;
Do you perceive in all this noble company,

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;
My life and education both do learn me

How to respect you; you are the lord of duty;
I am hitherto your daughter. But here's my husband;
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor, my lord.

Bra.
God be with you!--I have done.-
Please it your grace, on to the state affairs;
I had rather to adopt a child, than get it.-
Come hither, Moor.

I here do give thee that with all my heart,
Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart
I would keep from thee.-For your sake, jewel,
I am glad at soul I have no other child;
For thy escape would teach me tyranny,
To hang clogs on them.-I have done, my lord.

Duke. Let me speak like yourself;1 and lay a sentence,
Which has a grise, or step, may help these lovers
Into your favor.

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

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What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.

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;
We lose it not, so long as we can smile.

He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears
But the free comfort which from thence he hears;
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow,
That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow.
These sentences, to sugar, or to gall,

Being strong on both sides, are equivocal;
But words are words; I never yet did hear
That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.1
I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state.
Duke. The Turk with a most mighty preparation
makes for Cyprus.-Othello, the fortitude of the place
is best known to you; and though we have there a
substitute of most allowed sufficiency, yet opinion, a
sovereign mistress of effects, throws a more safer voice
on you; you must therefore be content to slubber2 the
gloss of your new fortunes with this more stubborn
and boisterous expedition.

Oth. The tyrant custom, most grave senators,
Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down.3 I do agnize
A natural and prompt alacrity,

I find in hardness; and do undertake

These present wars against the Ottomites.
Most humbly therefore bending to your state,
I crave fit disposition for my wife;

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.

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