"Here's a change indeed." "Indeed" this is not wanted. 463. "What's the matter, lady?" "Lady" is an interpolation that spoils the metre; Iago's question being as much to Emilia, who replies to it, as to Desdemona : Iag. "As true hearts cannot bear. Am I, Iago, "Tell me, I pray, that name?" What name, fair lady?" 464. "Why did he so?" More deficiency: perhaps, "Why did he so? alas! take comfort, madam.” Again: "Do not weep," &c. "Nay, do not weep, don't weep; alas, the day!" 467. "It is but so, I warrant you." Some words appear to have been lost; perhaps, "I do" might well be omitted: "Beseech you, sir, trouble yourself no further." "Your honour," &c. More metrical derangement: "Your honour is most welcome." Will you walk? "O Desdemonă !" Oth. Desd. " Oth. 66 My lord!" Get you to bed "On th' instant; I will be return'd forth with; "Dismiss your attendant there; look it be done." Desd. "I will, my lord." Emil. " How goes it, madam, now? "He looks a little gentler than he did." 472. "We must not now displease him." We might add : Pr'ythee go." "I would, you had never seen him." Perhaps we should read: "Alack! I would that you had never seen him." "Even his stubbornness, his checks, and frowns "Pr'ythee unpin me-have grace and favour in them.” A similar interruption and return to the broken sentence occurs in Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene Garden : If thou mean'st not well, "I do beseech thee-(Nurse calls) by and by, I come "To cease thy suit." It is highly dramatic. "And he, she lov'd, prov'd mad, Dr. Warburton's emendation appears to be just: "And he she lov'd forsook her, "And she prov'd mad." Mad, undoubtedly, does sometimes signify wild, irregular; but never, I believe, faithless, or inconstant in love. 473. "And sing it, like poor Barbara." Some regulation is wanting here: "And sing it, like poor Barbara; Emilia, "I pr'ythee now, dispatch." Emil. " Desd. " Madam, shall I Go fetch your night-gown?" 476. "Nor I neither by this heavenly light, We might restore the metre: "No, nor I neither, by this heavenly light, "But I as well might do it i' the dark. ACT V. SCENE II. 489. "It is the cause," &c. I am not satisfied with either Dr. Johnson's or Mr. Steevens's explanation of this passage; the meaning whereof I take to be this,-Othello is reflecting on the pain and perturbation of his mind, which cannot be composed or healed but by removing or destroying the cause of it; yet, says he, I'll not shed her blood, &c. Antigonus meditates, on a similar occasion, in a similar way: "Nor night, nor day, no rest-it is but weak ness To bear the matter thus, mere weakness; if "The cause were not in being;-part o' the cause; "She, the adultress-say that she were gone; "Given to the fire;-a moiety of my rest Might come to me again." Winter's Tale, Act 2, Scene 3. Or perhaps by cause is only meant, general principle, the cause of conjugal fidelity—it is not, says Othello, any motive of personal or peculiar resentment that urges me to her destruction, but the common cause of injured husbands"She must die, else she'll betray more men." 490. "Put out the light, and then put out the light." I am much surprised at the doubt expressed by Dr. Farmer, as to the truth of Dr. Warburton's explanation; it is the sense which, at the first view of it, the passage suggested to me, and which, till now, I should have thought, would strike every attentive reader of Shakspeare. 492. "That can thy light relume." To relume light is strange tautology, if not nonsense-the reading of the first quarto, return," appears to be the best: perhaps we should read "the" instead of "thy." "That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd thy rose." Again the reading of the first quarto is preferable," the rose."-When I have taken away the bloom and beauty of this plant, I cannot give it life again. This is not an address either to Desdemona or her beauty, but a reflection and argument respecting the act of her destruction; and the quarto, consistently with this sense, reads, not "I'll smell thee on the tree," but " I'll smell it on the tree."-Desdemona herself was the tree, her life and freshness the rose.-Still, however, the line is exuberant: perhaps it was written thus: "That can the light return once pluck'd, the rose, "I cannot give it vital grouth again, "It needs must wither; I'll smell it on the tree." 493. " "This sorrow's heavenly." I wish, with Dr. Johnson, that we might reject this passage; but what follows wants regulation-will this do? "It strikes where it does love-she wakes." Who's there?" Desd. " Desd. "And will you come to bed, my lord?" Oth. Desd. " Have you Pray'd to-night, Desdemona ?" "Solicit for it straight." We might add, to fill the verse, 2 |