LAGO. 'Faith, that was not so well; Yet 'would I knew, That stroke would prove the worst. LOD. Is it his use? Or did the letters work upon his blood, IAGO. Alas, alas! It is not honesty in me, to speak What I have seen and known. You shall observe him; And his own courses will denote him so, That I may save my speech: Do but go after, And mark how he continues. LOD. I am sorry, that I am deceiv'd in him. SCENE II. A Room in the Castle *. Enter OTHELLO and EMILIA. OTH. You have seen nothing then? [Exeunt. EMIL. Nor ever heard; nor ever did suspect. 66 4 A Room in the Castle.] There are great difficulties in ascertaining the place of this scene. Near the close of it, Iago says to Desdemona, Go in, and weep not," which would lead us to place it in the court before Othello's castle. These words may indeed be explained to mean, "Go into the supper-room (though I do not think that the meaning); but immediately afterwards Roderigo enters, and converses with Iago, which decisively ascertains the scene not to be in Othello's house for Roderigo, who had given the first intelligence to Brabantio of his daughter's flight, and had shortly afterwards drawn his sword on Othello and his partisans, certainly would not take the liberty of walking into his house at pleasure. On the other hand, what Othello says early in the scene to Emilia "Leave procreants alone, and shut the door;" Отн. Yes, you have seen Cassio and she toge ther. EMIL. But then I saw no harm; and then I heard Each syllable, that breath made up between them. Never, my lord OTH. Nor send you out o'the way? Never. OTH. To fetch her fan, her gloves, her mask, nor nothing? EMIL. Never, my lord. Отн. That's strange. EMIL. I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest, Lay down my soul at stake: if you think other, Remove your thought; it doth abuse your bosom. If any wretch hath put this in your head, Let heaven requite it with the serpent's curse! Отн. Bid her come hither:-go.[Exit EMILIA, She says enough ;-yet she's a simple bawd, That cannot say as much. This is a subtle whore, A closet-lock-and-key of villainous secrets : and his subsequent address to her as he goes out, as decisively point out a room in Othello's castle as the place of the scene; and compel us to place the several interlocutors there, however inconsistent with Roderigo's entry, and Iago's address to Desde mona. The truth is, that our poet and his audience, in this instance, as in many others, were content, from want of scenery, to consider the very same spot, at one and at the same time, as the outside and inside of a house. See The Historical Account of the English Stage, &c. vol. iii. MALONE. 5 of their wives-] reads-of her sex. Thus the folio. The quarto 1622 MALONE. And yet she'll kneel, and pray; I have seen her do't. Re-enter EMILIA, with DEsdemona. DES. My lord, what is your will? Отн. Pray, chuck, come hither. Let me see your eyes; DES. What is your pleasure? Отн. Look in my face. DES. [TO EMILIA. Leave procreants alone, and shut the door; [Exit EMILIA. DES. Upon my knees, what doth your speech import ? I understand a fury in your words, But not the words". Отн. Why, what art thou ? DES. And loyal wife. Отн. Your wife, my lord; your true Come, swear it, damn thyself; Lest, being like one of heaven, the devils them OTH. Heaven truly knows, that thou art false as hell. DES. To whom, my lord? with whom? How am I false ? 6 But not the words.] This line is added out of the first edition. РОРЕ. OTH. O Desdemona!-away! away! away 1 DES. Alas, the heavy day!-Why do you weep? Am I the occasion of these tears, my lord? If, haply, you my father do suspect, An instrument of this your calling back, Lay not your blame on me; if you have lost him, Why, I have lost him too. Отн. Had it pleas'd heaven To try me with affliction; had he rain'd All kinds of sores, and shames, on my bare head; Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes; 7-TIME of Scorn, &c.] The reading of both the eldest quartos and the folio is Mr. Rowe reads-hand of scorn; and succeeding editors have silently followed him. I would (though in opposition to so many great authorities in favour of the change) continue to read with the old copy: 66 the time of scorn." We call the hour in which we are to die, the hour of deaththe time when we are to be judged-the day of judgment-the instant when we suffer calamity-the moment of evil; and why may we not distinguish the time which brings contempt along with it, by the title of the time of scorn? Thus, in King Richard III. : "Had you such leisure in the time of death? Again, in King Henry VI. Part III. : "To help king Edward in his time of storm?" Again, in Soliman and Perseda, 1,599 : "So sings the mariner upon the shore, "When he hath past the dangerous time of storms." Again, in Marston's Insatiate Countess, 1613: "I'll poison thee; with murder curbe thy paths, Othello takes his idea from a clock. To make me (says he) a fixed figure (on the dial of the world) for the hour of scorn to point and make a full stop at ! By slow unmoving finger our poet could have meant only To point his slow unmoving finger at, O! O! so slow that its motion was imperceptible. Thus, in Antony and Cleopatra the Messenger, describing the gait of the demure Octavia, says she creeps; "Her motion and her station are as one: i. e. she moved so slowly, that she appeared as if she stood still. STEEVENS. Might not Shakspeare have written: 66 -for the scorn of time "To point his slow unmoving finger at―," i. e. the marked object for the contempt of all ages and all time. So, in Hamlet: "For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?" However, in support of the reading of the old copies, it may be observed, that our author has personified scorn in his 88th Sonnet : "When thou shalt be dispos'd to set me light," "And place my merit in the eye of scorn-." The epithet unmoving may likewise derive some support from Shakspeare's 104th Sonnet, in which this very thought is expressed: "Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, 66 Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd; "So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd." In the clocks of the last age there was, I think, in the middle of the dial-plate a figure of time, which, I believe, was in our poet's thoughts, when he wrote the passage in the text. [See Richard II. Act V. Sc. V.] STEEVENS. The finger of the dial was the technical phrase. So, in Albovine King of the Lombards, by D'Avenant, 1629: "Even as the slow finger of the dial "Doth in its motion circular remove "To distant figures—.” D'Avenant was a great reader of Shakspeare, and probably had read his plays, according to the fashion of the time, in the folio, without troubling himself to look into the quarto copies. Unmoving is the reading of the quarto 1622. The folio reads -and moving; and this certainly agrees with the image presented and its counterpart, better than unmoving, which can be applied to a clock, only by licence of poetry, (not appearing to move,) and as applied to scorn, has but little force: to say nothing of the superfluous epithet slow; for there needs no ghost to tells us, that that which is unmoving is slow. Slow implies some |