I do repent me, that I put it to you.
You would be satisfied?

Отн.

Would? nay, I will.

LAGO. And may: But, how? how satisfied, my

lord?

Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on?
Behold her tupp'd'?

Отн.

Death and damnation! O!

LAGO. It were a tedious difficulty, I think,

To bring them to that prospect: Damn them then,
If ever mortal eyes do see them bolster,
More than their own! What then? how then?
What shall I say? Where's satisfaction?

It is impossible, you should see this,

Were they as prime as goats', as hot as monkeys,
As salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross
As ignorance made drunk. But yet, I say,
If imputation, and strong circumstances,-
Which lead directly to the door of truth,-
Will give you satisfaction, you may have it.
OTH. Give me a living reason that she's dis-

loyal.

2

9 Behold her TUPP'D?] A ram in Staffordshire and some other counties is called a tup. So, in the first Act:

"Is tupping your white ewe." STEEVENS.

The old copies have-topp'd. Mr. Theobald made the correction. MALONE.

Were they as PRIME as goats.] Prime is prompt, from the Celtick or British prim. HANMER.

From prim, forward; French. RITSON.

So, in The Vow-breaker, or the Faire Maide of Clifton, 1636: "More prime than goats or monkies in their prides."

Again, in Churchyard's Dreame, 1593:

"Colde fortune may torment me sore,

"And so may shifts some time:

"Not hatred troubles men much more

"Than Venus in her prime." STEEVENS.

"Venus in her prime," means, I apprehend, nothing more than "Venus in her youth, youthful beauty.' MALONE.

IAGO. I do not like the office :

But, sith I am enter'd in this cause so far,-
Prick'd to it by foolish honesty and love,—
I will go on. I lay with Cassio lately;
And, being troubled with a raging tooth,
I could not sleep.

There are a kind of men so loose of soul,
That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs;
One of this kind is Cassio:

In sleep I heard him say,-Sweet Desdemona,
Let us be wary, let us hide our loves!

And then, sir, would he gripe, and wring my hand,
Cry,-O, sweet creature! and then kiss me hard,
As if he pluck'd up kisses by the roots,
That grew upon my lips: then laid his leg
Over my thigh, and sigh'd, and kiss'd; and then
Cry'd,-Cursed fate! that gave thee to the Moor!

2 Give me a LIVING reason-] Living, for speaking, manifest. WARBURTON.

"Give me a living reason that she's disloyal." Thus the quarto 1622. The folio omits the word that, probably for the sake of the metre; but our poet often uses such words as reason, as a monosyllable.

A living reason is a reason founded on fact and experience, not on surmise or conjecture: a reason that convinces the understanding as perfectly as if the fact were exhibited to the life. MALONE. How such words as reason can be pronounced as monosyllables, I am yet to learn. STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens might as well have required to be taught how brother can be used as taking up the time of one syllable; how either, how neither, never, whether, cousin, every one of which is so used by Shakspeare. He has passed over without objection, In this very play, two instances of contraction, quite as harsh as that which I have here supposed. See Act IV. Se. II.:

"How have I been behaved, that he might stick

"The small'st opinion on my great'st abuse." MALONE. What Othello here demands is actual proof, arising from some positive FACT. HENLEY.

and sigh'd, and kiss'd; and then

Cry'd,] Thus the quarto 1622. The folio reads:

then lay'd his leg o'er my thigh,

‘And sigh, and kiss, and then cry, cursed fate," &c. Malone.

ОTH. O monstrous! monstrous !
IAGO.

4

;

Nay, this was but his dream. ОTн. But this denoted a foregone conclusion * 'Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream 5. LAGO. And this may help to thicken other proofs, That do demonstrate thinly.

Отн.

I'll tear her all to pieces. LAGO. Nay, but be wise: yet we see nothing

done";

She may be honest yet. Tell me but this,-
Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief,
Spotted with strawberries, in your wife's hand?
OTH. I gave her such a one; 'twas my first gift.
Отн.
LAGO. I know not that: but such a handkerchief,
(I am sure it was your wife's,) did I to-day

See Cassio wipe his beard with.

If it be that,

Отн.
LAGO. If it be that, or any that was hers",
It speaks against her with the other proofs.

4a foregone CONCLUSION;] Conclusion, for fact.

WARBURTON.

A conclusion in Shakspeare's time meant an experiment or trial. See the last speech in Antony and Cleopatra. MALONE.

5 'Tis a shrewd doubt, &c.] The old quarto gives this line, with the two following, to lago; and rightly. WARBURton.

In the folio this line is given to Othello. MAlone.

I think it more naturally spoken by Othello, who, by dwelling so long upon the proof, encouraged Iago to inforce it. JOHNSON. 6 -yet we SEE nothing done;] This is an oblique and secret mock at Othello's saying,-Give me the ocular proof.

WARBURTON.

7 -THAT was hers,] The only authentick copies, the quarto 1622, and the folio, read-or any, it was hers. For the emendation I am answerable. The mistake probably arose from yt only being written in the manuscript. The modern editors, following an amendment made by the editor of the second folio, readif 'twas hers. MALONE.

I prefer Mr. Malone's correction to that of the second folio, though the latter gives sense where it was certainly wanting.

STEEVENS.

8

OTH. O, that the slave had forty thousand lives; One is too poor, too weak for my revenge! Now do I see 'tis true .-Look here, Iago; All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven": "Tis gone.

Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow cell '!

8 Now do I see 'tis TRUE.]

The old quarto reads: "Now do I see 'tis time."

And this is Shakspeare's, and has in it much more force and solemnity, and preparation for what follows: as alluding to what he had said before:

No, Iago!

"I'll see before I doubt, when I doubt, prove;
"And, on the proof, there is no more but this,
Away at once with love or jealousy."

66

This time was now come. WARBURTON.

9 All my fond love thus do I BLOW TO HEAVEN :] So, in Marlowe's Lust's Dominion, 1657:

"Are these your fears? thus blow them into air."

Marlowe's idea was perhaps caught from Horace :

I

MALONE.

from thy HOLLOW CELL!] Thus the quarto 1622. The folio reads-from the hollow hell.

Hollow, Dr. Warburton consi

ders as "a poor unmeaning epithet." MALONE.

I do not perceive that the epithet hollow is at all unmeaning, when applied to hell, as it gives the idea of what Milton callsthe void profound

66

"Of unessential night,"

Or the inane profundum of Lucretius.

The same phrase indeed occurs in Jasper Heywood's translation of Seneca's Thyestes, 1560:

"Where most prodigious ugly things the hollow hell doth hide." Again, in Goulart's Admirable Histories, 1607, p. 626:

cast headlong into places under-ground that were wonderful hollow-where he had seen the persons of the wicked, their punishments," &c.

Again, in Arthur Hall's translation of the eighth Iliad :

"Into the hollow dreadful hole which Tartare men do tel."

STEEVENS. Again, in Paradise Lost, b. i. v. 314, the same epithet and subject occur:

Yield up, O love, thy crown, and hearted throne 2, To tyrannous hate! swell, bosom, with thy fraught 3, For 'tis of aspicks' tongues!

LAGO. Pray, be content.

Отн.

O, blood, Iago, blood!

LAGO. Patience, I say; your mind, perhaps, may

change.

Отн. Never, Iago'. Like to the Pontick sea Whose icy current and compulsive course

"He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep

"Of hell resounded." HOLT WHITE.

Milton was a great reader and copier of Shakspeare, and he undoubtedly read his plays in the folio, without thinking of examining the more ancient quartos. In the first book of Paradise Lost, we find :

66

66

the universal host up sent

A shout that tore hell's concave." MALONE. See Romeo and Juliet, vol. vi. p. 89. STEEVens.

2

HEARTED throne,] Hearted throne, is the heart on which thou wast enthroned. JOHNSON.

So, in Twelfth Night:

"It gives a very echo to the seat,

"Where love is thron'd."

See also Romeo and Juliet, vol. vi. p. 216. MALONE.

- swell, bosom, &c.] i. e. swell, because the fraught is of poison. WARBURTON.

4 Never, lago.] From the word Like, to marble heaven, inclusively, is not found in the quarto 1622. MALONE.

5 Like to the Pontick sea, &c.] This simile is omitted in the first edition: I think it should be so, as an unnatural excursion in this place. Pope.

Every reader will, I durst say, abide by Mr. Pope's censure on this passage. When Shakspeare grew acquainted with such particulars of knowledge, he made a display of them as soon as opportunity offered. He found this in the second book and 97th chapter of Pliny's Natural History, as translated by Philemon Holland, 1601: 66 And the sea Pontus evermore floweth and runneth out into Propontis, but the sea never retireth backe againe within Pontus."

Mr. Edwards, in his MS. notes, conceives this simile to allude to Sir Philip Sidney's device, whose impress, Camden, in his Remains, says, was the Caspian sea, with this motto, Sine refluxu.

STEEVENS.