This is some token from a newer friend. Cas. Woman, go to!3 Throw your vile guesses in the devil's teeth, From whence you have them. You are jealous now; That this is from some mistress, some remembrance: No, in good troth, Bianca. Bian. Why, whose is it? Cas. I know not, sweet: I found it in my chamber. I like the work well; ere it be demanded, (As like enough, it will,) I 'd have it copied: Take it, and do 't; and leave me for this time. Bian. Leave you! wherefore? Cas. I do attend here on the general; And think it no addition, nor my wish, Bian. Cas. Not that I love you not. Why, I pray you?4 But that you do not love me. I pray you, bring me on the way a little; Bian. 'Tis very good; I must be circumstanc'd.5 3 Woman, go to !] Old copies, unmetrically— 4 Go to, woman! Steevens. [Exeunt. Why, I pray you?] This and the following speech are wanting in the first quarto. Steevens. 5 I must be circumstanc'd.] i. e. your civility is now grown conditional. Warburton. Rather, I must give way to circumstances. M. Muson. Particular circumstances and your own convenience have, I see, more weight with you than Bianca has. I must be postponed to these considerations. Malone. Iago. Or to be naked with her friend abed, An hour, or more, not meaning any harm? Oth. Naked abed, Iago, and not mean harm? It is hypocrisy against the devil: They that mean virtuously, and yet do so, The devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven." 6 Naked abed, Iago, and not mean harm? It is hypocrisy against the devil:] This observation seems strangely abrupt and unoccasioned. We must suppose that lago had, before they appeared in this scene, been applying cases of false comfort to Othello; as that though the parties had been even found in bed together, there might be no harm done; it might be only for the trial of their virtue; as was reported of the Romish saint, Robert D'Arbrissel and his nuns: To this we must suppose Othello here replies; and like a good protestant. For so the sentiment does but suit the character of the speaker, Shakspeare little heeds how these sentiments are circumstanced. Warburton. Hypocrisy against the devil, means hypocrisy to cheat the devil. As common hypocrites cheat men, by seeming good, and yet living wickedly, these men would cheat the devil, by giving him flattering hopes, and at last avoiding the crime which he thinks them ready to commit. Johnson. 7 The devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven.] The true key to the explanation of this passage may be found in St. Matthew, iv, 7. The poet's idea is, that the devil tempts their virtues, by stirring up their passions, and they tempt heaven, by placing themselves in such a situation as makes it scarcely possible to avoid falling by the gratification of them. Henley. As the devil makes a trial of their virtue by often throwing temptation in their way, so they presumptuously make a trial whether the divine goodness will enable them to resist a temptation which they have voluntarily created for themselves, or abandon them to the government of their passions. Malone. Shakspeare had probably in view a very popular book of his time, The Beehive of the Roman Church: "There was an old wife, called Julia, which would take the young men and maides, Iago. So they do nothing, 'tis a venial slip: But if I give my wife a handkerchief, Oth. What then? Iago. Why, then 'tis hers, my lord; and, being hers, She may, I think, bestow 't on any man. Oth. She is protectress of her honour too; May she give that? Iago. Her honour is an essence that 's not seen; They have it very oft, that have it not: But, for the handkerchief, Oth. By heaven, I would most gladly have forgot it :Thou said'st,-O, it comes o'er my memory, As doth the raven o'er the infected house, Boding to all,8-he had my handkerchief. Oth. That's not so good, now. and lay them together in a bed. And for that they should not one byte another, nor kicke backewardes with their heeles, she did lay a crucifix between them." Farmer. More probably from Fabian's Chronicle, Part IV, ch. 141:"Of hym [Bishop Adhelme] it is wrytten that when he was styred by his gostly enemy to the synne of the fleshe, he to do the more tormente to hym selfe and of his body, wolde holde within his bedde by him a fayre mayden, by so longe tyme as he myght say over the hole sauter, albeit that suche holynes is no artycle of saynte Bennetis lore, nor yet for dyverse inconvenyence mooste alowed by holye doctours." Again, and yet more appositely, in Bale's Actes of Englysh Votaryes, 1548: "This Adhelmus never refused women, but wold have them commonly both at borde and at bedde, to mocke the devyll with," &c.-" he layed by hym naked the fayrest mayde he coude get" &c. Steevens. 8 As doth the raven o'er the infected house, Boding to all,] So, in King John: confusion waits, "As doth the raven on a sick-fallen beast, -" Steevens. boding to all --] Thus all the old copies. The moderns ungrammatically Boding to ill Johnson. The raven was thought to be a constant attendant on a house in which there was infection. So, in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, 1633: "Thus like the sad presaging raven, that tolls "The sick man's passport in her hollow beak, "Does shake contagion from her sable wing." Malone. VOL. XVI. Ii Iago. What, if I had said, I had seen him do you wrong? Or heard him say,-As knaves be such abroad, Convinced or supplied them, cannot choose Oth. Hath he said any thing? Iago. He hath, my lord; but be you well assur'd, No more than he 'll unswear. Oth. What hath he said? Iago. 'Faith, that he did, I know not what he did.1 9 Convinced or supplied them,] I cannot understand the vulgar reading. I read-convinc'd or suppled. My emendation makes the sense of the passage easy and intelligible: that there are some such long-tongued knaves in the world, who, if they through the force of importunity extort a favour from their mistress, or if through her own fondness they make her pliant to their desires, cannot help boasting of their success. To convince, here, is not, as in the common acceptation, to make sensible of the truth of any thing by reasons and arguments; but to overcome, get the better of, &c. Theobald. "Will I, with wine and wassel so convince." Again, in the same play: 66 their malady convinces "The great assay of art." Dr. Farmer is of opinion that supplied has here the same meaning as supplicated. Steevens. Theobald's emendation evidently hurts, instead of improving, the sense; for what is suppled, but convinced, i. e. subdued. Supplied relates to the words "voluntary dotage," as convinced does to "their own importunate suit." Having by their importunacy conquered the resistance of a mistress, or, in compliance with her own request, and in consequence of her unsolicited fondness, gratified her desires. Malone. Supplied is certainly the true reading, and with a sense that may be collected from the following passage in Measure for Measure: "And did supply thee at the garden-house." Or, rather, as may be inferred from the following sentence in Sir R. Cotton's View of the Raigne of Henry III, 1627: "Denials from Princes must bee supplyed with gracious usage, that though they cure not the sore, yet they may abate the sence of it." P. 12. Supplied is the old spelling of suppled, i. e. softened. Steevens. Oth. What? what? Iago. Lie Oth. Iago. With her? With her, on her; what you will. Oth. Lie with her! lie on her!-We say, lie on her, when they belie her: Lie with her! that 's fulsome.→ Handkerchief-confessions,-handkerchief.—To confess, and be hanged for his labour.-First, to be hanged, and then to confess:-I tremble at it. Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion,3 without some instruction. It is not words, that shake me thus: 1'Faith, that he did, I know not what he did.] I believe that the line should be pointed thus: he did. M. Mason. 'Faith, that he did I know not what; 2 To confess, and be hanged —] This is a proverbial saying. It is used by Marlowe, in his Jew of Malta, 1633: "Blame us not, but the proverb-Confess, and be hang'd.” It occurs again, in The Travels of the Three English Brothers, 1607: And in one of the old collections of small poems there is an epigram on it. All that remains of this speech, including the words to confess, is wanting in the first quarto. Steevens. 3 shadowing passion,] The modern editions have left out passion. Johnson. 4 without some instruction.] The starts and broken reflections in this speech have something very terrible, and show the mind of the speaker to be in inexpressible agonies. But the words we are upon, when set right, have a sublime in them that can never be enough admired. The ridiculous blunder of writing instruction for induction (for so it should be read) has indeed sunk it into arrant nonsense. Othello is just going to fall into a swoon; and as is common for people in that circumstance, feels an unusual mist and darkness, accompanied with horror, coming upon him. This, with vast sublimity of thought, is compared to the season of the sun's eclipse, at which time the earth becomes shadowed by the induction or bringing over of the moon between it and the sun. This being the allusion, the reasoning stands thus: "My nature could never be thus overshadowed, and falling, as it were, into dissolution, for no cause. There must be an induction of something: there must be a real cause. My jealousy cannot be merely imaginary. Ideas, words only, could not shake me thus, and raise all this disorder. My jealousy therefore must be grounded on matter of fact." Shakspeare uses this word in the same sense in King Richard III: "A dire induction am I witness to." Marston seems to have read it thus in some copy, and to allude to it in these words of his Fame: "Plots ha' you laid? inductions dangerous!" Warburton. This is a noble conjecture, and whether right or wrong does |