knew how to love himself. Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a Guinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon. Rod. What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond; but it is not in my virtue to amend it. Iago. Virtue? a fig! 't is in ourselves that we are thus, or thus. Our bodies are our gardens; to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce; set hyssop, and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many; either to have it steril with idleness, or manured with industry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect or scion. Rod. It cannot be. Iago. It is merely a lust of the blood, and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: Drown thyself? drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness. I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be long that Desdemona should continue her love to the Moor,-put money in thy purse ;-nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement in her, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration; put but money in thy purse. These Moors are changeable in their wills;fill thy purse with money: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter a A sect. What we now call in horticulture a cutting. b Defeat thy favour-change thy countenance. as coloquintida. She must change for youth: when she is sated with his body she will find the errors of her choice. Therefore put money in thy purse.-If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst: If sanctimony and a frail vow, betwixt an erringa barbarian and super-subtle Venetian, be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy, than to be drowned and go without her. Rod. Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on the issue? Iago. Thou art sure of me;-Go, make money: I have told thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I hate the Moor: My cause is hearted; thine hath no less reason: Let us be conjunctive in our revenge against him if thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered. Traverse; go; provide thy money. We will have more of this tomorrow. Adieu. Rod. Where shall we meet i' the morning? Rod. I'll be with thee betimes. Iago. Go to; farewell. Do you hear, Roderigo? Iago. No more of drowning, do you hear. Rod. 1 am changed. I'll sell all my land. Iago. Go to; farewell! put money enough in your [Exit RODERIGO. purse. Thus do I ever make my fool my purse: For I mine own gain'd knowledge should profane, a Erring-used in the same sense as extravagant, in a previous scere. But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor; Will do, as if for surety. He holds me well; That thinks men honest that but seem to be so; I have 't;-it is engender'd :-Hell and night ACT II. SCENE I-A Sea-port Town in Cyprus. Enter MONTANO and Two Gentlemen. Mon. What from the cape can you discern at sea? 1 Gent. Nothing at all: it is a high-wrought flood; I cannot, 'twixt the heaven and the main, Descry a sail. Mon. Methinks, the wind hath spoke aloud at land; A fuller blast ne'er shook our battlements: If it hath ruffian'd so upon the sea, What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them, The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds; The wind-shak'd surge, with high and monstrous mane,b fa Mortise. The hole of one piece of timber fitted to receive the tenon of another. mane. b Mane. In the folio this word is spelt maine; in the quarto mayne. In each the spelling of main in the third line of this scene is the same. But we have ventured to reject this consistency of orthography, and for the first time to print the word For what is "high and monstrous main ?" We use the word main elliptically, for the main sea, the great sea, as Shakspere uses it in the passage "'twixt the heaven and the main." The main is the ocean. Substitute that word, and what can we make of the passage before us?" The wind-shak'd surge, with high and monstrous ocean." But adopt the word mane, and it appears to us that we have as fine an image as any in Shakspere. In the high and monstrous mane we have a picture which was probably suggested by the noble passage in Job: "Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" The horse of Job is the war-horse," who swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage" and when Shakspere pictured to himself his mane wildly streaming, "when the Scems to cast water on the burning bear, And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole : On th' enchafed flood. Mon. If that the Turkish fleet Be not enshelter'd and embay'd, they are drown'd; Enter a Third Gentleman. 3 Gent. News, lads! our wars are done : The desperate tempest hath so bang'd the Turks, That their designment halts: A noble ship of Venice Hath seen a grievous wrack and sufferance On most part of their fleet. Mon. How! is this true? 3 Gent. The ship is here put in, A Veronessa: Michael Cassio, Lieutenant to the warlike Moor, Othello, Mon. I am glad on 't; 't is a worthy governor. Touching the Turkish loss,-yet he looks sadly, Mon. quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield," he saw an image of the fury of "the wind-shak'd surge," and of its very form; and he painted it "with high and monstrous mane." a Wrack. Mr. Hunter has with great propriety suggested the restoration of the old word wrack to Shakspere's text, instead of wreck. He observes that we still use the familiar phrase "wrack and ruin." |