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Othelo. O, insupportable! O heavy hour!

Act V. Sc. 2.

It needs must wither:-I'll smell it on the tree

[Kissing her.

O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword!-One more, one more.-
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after:-One more, and this the last:
So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep,
But they are cruel tears: This sorrow's heavenly:
It strikes, where it doth love.

HIS CONFUSION AFTER THE MURDER.

Yes;-'tis Emelia:-by and by. She's dead 'Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio's death: The noise was high,-Ha! no more moving? Still as the grave. Shall she come in? Were't good? I think, she stirs again:-No.-What's the best? If she come in, she'll sure speak to my wife: My wife! my wife! what wife?-I have no wife: O, insupportable! O heavy hour!

Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse

Of sun and moon; and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.

Had she been true,

HIS LOVE.

If heaven would make me such another world
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,*

I'd not have sold her for it.

HIS REMORSE.

Behold! I have a weapon;

A better never did itself sustain

Upon a soldier's thigh: I have seen the day,
That, with this little arm, and this good sword,
I have made my way through more impediments
Than twenty times your stop:-But, O vain boast!
Who can control his fate? 'tis not so now.—
Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon'd;
Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea mark of my utmost sail.
Do you go back dismay'd? 'tis a lost fear,
Man but a rush against Othello's breast,

* A precious stone.

And he retires:-Where should Othello go?-
Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr'd wenc
Pale as thy smock! when we shall meet at compt*
This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven
And fiends will snatch at it cold. Cold, my girl?
Even like thy chastity.-

O cursed, cursed slave!-Whip me, ye devils,
From the possession of this heavenly sight!
Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep down gulfs of liquid fire!-
O Desdemona! Desdemona! jead?
Dead? O! O! O!

HIS SPEECH BE ORE HIS DEATH.

Soft you; a word or two, before you go.

I have done the state some service, and they know it,
No more of that:-I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one, that lov'd not wisely, but too well;

Of one, not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one, whose hand,
Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away,

Richer than all his tribe; cf one, whose subdu'd eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum: Set you down this:
And say, besides,-that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian, and traduc'd the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him-thus.

[Stabs himself.

ROMEO AND JULIET.

ACT I.

LOVE.

LOVE is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;

* Account.

Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,

A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

ON DREAMS.

O, then, I see, queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies* Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep. Her wagon-spokes made of long spinner's legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces of the smallest spider's web; The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams: Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film: Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid; Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut, Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love. On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight. O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees: O'er ladies' lips. who straight on kisses dream; Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:f And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice: Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear; at which he starts and wakes; And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, † A place in court.

* Atoms.

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