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'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:

She wish'd, she had not heard it; yet she wish'd That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd

me;

And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her. Upon this hint, I spake:
She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd;
And I lov'd her, that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have us'd;
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:
Men do their broken weapons rather use,
Than their bare hands.

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former occasion respecting the prophecies that induced the ruin of Macbeth,) the reader must be indebted to Mr. Whitaker's zealous and powerful Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots, Svo. vol. ii. p. 487, edit. 1790: "Let not the modern reader be hurt here and and in paragraph X. at a Lady, a Queen, and a Mary, swearing. To aver upon faith and honour, was then called swearing, equally with a solemn appeal to GoD; and considered as the same with it." This is plain from the passage immediately before us : I swear, --upon my faith and honour," she says expressly. She also says she does this" again;" thus referring to the commencement of this letter, where she "appeals to her God as witness." And thus Shakspeare makes Othello to represent Desdemona, as acting; in a passage that I have often condemned, before I saw this easy explanation of it, as one among many proofs of Shakspeare's inability to exhibit the delicate graces of female conversation :

"She swore," &c.

This remark, therefore, serves at once to justify Desdemona and Queen Mary, and to show what kind of swearing is used by both; not a bold and masculine oath put into the mouth of Desdemona, such as Elizabeth frequently used, but a more earnest affirmation upon her faith and honour, which she considered as the same with a solemn appeal to God. STEEvens.

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 hus-
band;

And so much duty as my mother show'd
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.

7 Destruction, &c.] The quartos read-Destruction light on me. STEEVENS.

8 -you are the lord of duty,] The first quarto reads-you are lord of all my duty. STEEVENS.

9 And so much duty as my mother show'd

To you, preferring you before her father, &c.] Perhaps Shakspeare had here in his thoughts the answer of the youngest daughter of Ina, King of the West Saxons, to her father, which he seems to have copied in King Lear. See the Preliminary Remarks on that play. MALONE.

Which, &c.] This line is omitted in the first quarto.

STEEVENS,

DUKE. Let me speak like yourself2; and lay a

sentence,

Which, as a grise, or step, may help these lovers
Into your favour1.

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended 5,
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 6.
What cannot be preserv'd when fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.

The robb'd, 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.

2 Let me speak like YOURSELF;] The Duke seems to mean, when he says he will speak like Brabantio, that he will speak sententiously. JOHNSON.

"Let me speak like yourself;

i. e. let me speak as yourself would speak, were you not too much heated with passion.

SIR J. REYNOlds. 3-as a GRISE,] Grize from degrees. A grize is a step. So,

in Timon:

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for every grize of fortune

"Is smooth'd by that below."

Ben Jonson, in his Sejanus, gives the original word:

"Whom when he saw lie spread on the degrees."

In the will of King Henry VI. where the dimensions of King's College chapel at Cambridge are set down, the word occurs, as spelt in some of the old editions of Shakspeare : provost's stall, unto the greece called Gradus Chori, 90 feet."

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- from the

STEEVENS.

4 Into your favour.] This is wanting in the folio, but found in the quarto. JOHNSON.

5 When remedies are past, the griefs are ended,] This our poet has elsewhere expressed [in Love's Labour's Lost, vol. iv. p. 405,] by a common proverbial sentence, "Past cure is still past care." MALONE.

6

NEW mischief on.] The quartos read-more mischief.

STEEVENS.

He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears
But the free comfort which from thence he hears 7:
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 bruis'd heart was pierced through the ear".

7 But the free comfort which from thence he hears:] But the moral precepts of consolation, which are liberally bestowed on occasion of the sentence. JOHNSON.

8 But words are words; I never yet did hear,

That the bruis'd heart was PIERCED through the ear.] The Duke had by sage sentences been exhorting Brabantio to patience, and to forget the grief of his daughter's stolen marriage, to which Brabantio is made very pertinently to reply to this effect: "My lord, I apprehend very well the wisdom of your advice; but though you would comfort me, words are but words; and the heart, already bruised, was never pierced, or wounded, through the ear." It is obvious that the text must be restored thus:

"That the bruis'd heart was pieced through the ear." i. e. that the wounds of sorrow were ever cured, or a man made heart-whole merely by the words of consolation. WARBURTON.

Shakspeare was continually changing his first expression for another, either stronger or more uncommon; so that very often the reader who has not the same continuity or succession of ideas, is at a loss for its meaning. Many of Shakspeare's uncouth strained epithets may be explained, by going back to the obvious and simple expression, which is most likely to occur to the mind in that state. I can imagine the first mode of expression that occurred to the poet was this:

"The troubled heart was never cured by words." To give it poetical force, he altered the phrase:

"The wounded heart was never reached through the ear." Wounded heart he changed to broken, and that to bruised, as a more common expression. Reached he altered to touched, and the transition is then easy to pierced, i. e. thoroughly touched. When the sentiment is brought to this state, the commentator, without this unravelling clue, expounds piercing the heart in its common acceptation wounding the heart, which making in this place nonsense, is corrected to pieced the heart, which is very stiff, and, as Polonius says, is a vile phrase. SIR J. REYNOLDS. Pierced may be right. The consequence of a bruise is some

I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state*.

* Quarto, beseech you now to the affairs of the state.

times matter collected, and this can no way be cured without piercing or letting it out. Thus, in Hamlet:

Again :

"It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
"Whiles rank corruption mining all within,
"Infects unseen."

"This is th' imposthume of much wealth and peace,
"That inward breaks, and shows no cause without,

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'Why the man dies."

Our author might have had in his memory the following quaint title of an old book: i. e. "A lytell treatyse called the dysputacyon, or the complaynte of the herte through perced with the lokynge of the eye. Imprynted at Londo in Fletestrete at ye sygne of the sonne by Wynkyn de Worde."

Again, in A newe and a mery Interlude concernyng Pleasure and Payne in Love, made by Ihon. Heywood: Fol. Rastal, 1534 : "Thorough myne erys dyrectly to myne harte

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Percyth his wordys evyn lyke as many sperys."

"But words are words; I never yet did hear,

STEEVENS.

"That the bruis'd heart was pierced through the ear." These moral precepts, says Brabantio, may perhaps be founded in wisdom, but they are of no avail. Words after all are but words; and I never yet heard that consolatory speeches could reach and penetrate the afflicted heart, through the medium of the ear.

Brabantio here expresses the same sentiment as the father of Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, when he derides the attempts of those comforters who in vain endeavour to

"Charm ache with air, and agony with words."

Our author has in various places shown a fondness for this antithesis between the heart and ear. Thus, in his Venus and Adonis :

"This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear,

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Through which it enters, to surprise her heart."

Again, in Much Ado About Nothing: "My cousin tells him in his ear, that he is in her heart."

Again, in Cymbeline :

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I have such a heart as both mine ears

"Must not in haste abuse."

Again, in his Rape of Lucrece:

"His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth
"No penetrable entrance to her plaining."

A doubt has been entertained concerning the word pierced,which

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