Fellow, commend my service to her beauty ; I go, my lord. [Exit. damas Hath heat down Menon : bastard Margarelon Hath Doreus prisoner, And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam, Upou the pashed corses of the kings 10 Epistrophus and Cedius : Polyxenes is slain, Amphimachus and Thoas deadly hurt, Patroclus ta'en or slain, and Palamedes Sore hurt and bruised: the dreadful Sagittary Appals our numbers : baste we, Diomed, To reinforcement, or we perish all. Enter NESTOR. Nest Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles; And bid the snail-paced Ajax arın for shame. There is a thousand Hectors in the field : Now here he tights on Galathe his horse, 20 And there lacks work ; anon he's there afoot, And there they fly or die, like scaled sculls Before the belching whale ; then is he yonder, And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge, Fall down before him, like the mower's swath: Here, there, and every where, he leaves and takes, Enter ULYSSES. 30 Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing ven geance: Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood, Together with his mangled Myrmidons, That poseless, handless, hack'd and chipp'd, come to him, Enter AJAX. Ay, there, there. Enter ACHILLES. Where is this Hector ? Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face; Know what it is to meet Achilles angry : Hector ! where's Hector ? I will none but Hector. (Exeunt. SCENE VI. Another part of the plains. Enter AJAX. Ajax. Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head ! Enter DIOMEDES. What wouldst thou ? have my office Ere that correction. Troilus, I say! what, Troilus ! Enter TROILUS. Tro. O traitor Diomed ! turn thy false faca. thou traitor, And pay thy life thou owest me for my horse! Dio. Ha, art thou there? 9 Dio. He is my prize ; I will not look upon. Tro. Come, both you cogging Greeks ; have at you both! [E.ceunt, jightiny. Enter HECTOR. llect. Yea, Troilus ? O, well fought, my youngest brother! Enter ACHILLES. Achil. Now do I see thee, ha ! have at thee, Hector ! llect. Pause, if thou wilt. Achil. I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Trojan : Be happy that my arms are out of use : My rest and negligence befriends thee now, But thoui anon shalt hear of me again ; Till when, go seek thy fortune. [Erit. Hect. Fare thee well: 19 I would have been much more a fresher man, Had I expected thee. How now, my brother ! Re-enter TROILUS. Tro. Ajax hatli ta'en Æneas : shall it be ? No, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven, He shall not carry him : I'll be ta’en too, Or bring him off : fate, hear me what I say ! I reck not though I end my life to-day. [Erit. Enter one in sumptuous armor. llect. Stand, stand, thou Greek ; thou art a goodly mark : No ? wilt thou not? I like thy armor well ; I'll frush it and unlock the rivets all, it I'll be master of it: wilt thou not, beast, abide ? 30 Why, then fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide. [Exeunt. SCENE VII. Another part of the plains. Enter ACHILLES, with Myrmidons. midons ; Mark what I say. Attend me where I wheel : My half-supp'd sword, that frankly would Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in have fed, breath : Pleased with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed. And when I have the bloody Hector found, [Sheathes his sword. Empale him with your weapons round about ; Come, tie his body to my horse's tail ; In fellest manner execute your aims. Along the field I will the Trojan trail. (Exeunt. Follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye : It is decreed Hector the great must die. SCENE IX. Another part of the plains. [Exeunt. Enter AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS, NESEnter MENELAUS and PARIS, fighting : then TOR, DIOMEDES, and others, marching. THERSITES. Shouts within. Ther. The cuckold and the cuckold-maker Agam. Hark! hark ! what shout is that? are at it. Now, bull! now, dog ! 'Loo, Paris, Nest. Peace, drums ! 'loo ! now my double-henned sparrow! 'loo, [Within] Achilles ! Achilles ! Hector's slain ! Paris, 'loo ! The bull has the game : ware Achilles. horns, ho ! [Exeunt Paris and Menelaus. Dio. The bruit is, Hector's slain, and by Achilles. Ajar. If it be so, yet bragless let it be ; Mar. Turn, slave, and fight. Great Hector was a man as good as he. Ther. What art thou ? Ayam. March patiently along : let one le Mar. A bastard son of Priam's. sent Ther. lam a bastard too ; I love bastards : To pray Achilles see us at our tent. I am a bastard begot, bastard instructed, bas- If in his death the gods have us befriended, 9 tard in mind, bastard in valor, in every thing Great Troy is ours, and our sharp wars are illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, ended. [Eseunt, marching. and wherefore should one bastard ? Take SCENE X. Another part of the plains heed, the quarrel's most ominous to us : is the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts Enter Æneas und Trojans judgment : farewell, bastard. (Ecit. Mar. The devil take thee, coward ! [Exit. Æne. Stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field : SCENE VILI. Another part of the plains. Never go here starve we out the night. Enter TROILUS, Tro. Hector is slain. AU. Hector! the gods forbid ! Thy goodly armor thus hath cost thy life. Tro. He's dead ; and at the murderer's Now is my day's work done ; I'll take good horse's tail, breath : In beastly sort, dragg'd through the shameful Rest, sword ; thou hast thy fill of blood and field. death. Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with [Puts of his helmet and hangs his shield speed behind him. Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at Enter Achilles and Myrmidons. Troy! I say, at once let your brief plagues be mercy, Achil. Look, Hector, how the sun begins to And linger not our sure destructions on! Æne. My lord, you do discomfort all the How ugly night comes breathing at his heels : host. 10 Even with the vail and darking of the sun, Tro. You understand me not that tell me so : To close the day up, Hector's life is done. I do not speak of flight, of fear, of death, Hect. I am unarm'd ; forego this vantage, But dare all imminence that gods and men Greek. Address their dangers in. Hector is gone : Achil. Strike, fellows, strike ; this is the Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba ? man I seek. [Hector falls. 10 Let him that will a screech-owlaye be call'd, So, Ilion, fall thou next ! now, Troy, sink Go in to Troy, and say there, Hector's dead: down! There is a word will Priam turn to stone ; Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone od Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives, On Myrmidons, and cry you ali amain, v Cold statues of the youth, and, in a word, 20 'Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.' ricare Troy out of itself. But, mareh away : (A retreat sounded. flector is dead ; there is no more to say. Hark! a retire upon our Grecian part. Stay yet. You vile abominable tents, Myr. The Trojan trumpets sound the like, This proudly pight upon our Phrygian plains, Let Titan rise as early as he dare, Achil. The dragon wing of night o'er- I'll through and through you! and, thou greate spreads the earth, sized coward, And, stickler-like, the armies separates. No space of earth shall sunder our two hates : set; my lord. I'll hannt thee like a wicked conscience still, That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy's thoughts. Strike a free march to Troy! with comfort go: Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe. 31 [Exeunt Æneas and Trojans. A8 TROILUS is going out, enter, from the other side, PANDARUS. Pan. But hear you, hear you ! Tro. Hence, broker-lackey | ignomy and shame Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name! [Exit. Pan. A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O world ! world! world! thus is the poor agent despised ! O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requites ! why should our endeavor be so loved and the performance so loathed ? what verse for it? what instance for it? Let me see : 41 Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing, Till he hath lost his honey and his sting ; And being once subdued in armed tail, Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail. Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloths. As many as be here of pander's hall, Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall; Or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans, Though not for me, yet for your aching bones. Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade, Some two months hence my will shall here be made : It should be now, but that my fear is this, Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss : Till then I'll sweat and seek about for eases, And at that time bequeathe you my diseases. (Exit OTHELLO. (WRITTEN ABOUT 1604.) INTRODUCTION. Othello.s the only play which appeared in quarto (in 1622) in the interval between Shakespeare's death and the publication of the first folio. We have no means, except by internal evidence, of ascertaining the date at wlich the play was written. Upon the strength of a supposed allusion to the armorial bearings of the new order of Baronet», instituted in 1611 (Act III., Sc. iv. L. 46-47), the play has been referred to a year not earlier than 1611 ; but the metrical tests confirm the impression produced by the general character and spirit of the tragedy, that it cannot belong to the same period as The Tempest, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale. li is evidently one of the group of tragedies of passion which includes Macbeth and Lear. The year 1604 has been accepted by several critics as a not improbable date for Othello. The original of the story is found in Cinthio's Hecatomithi, but it has been in a marvellous manner elevated and re-created by Shakespeare. Coleridge has justly said that the agonized doubt which lays bold of the Moor is not the jealousy of a man of naturally jealous temper, and he contrasts Othello with Leontes in The Winter's Tale, and Leonatus in Cymbe. line. A mean watchfulness or prying suspicion is the last thing that Othello could be guilty of. He is of a free and noble nature, naturally trustful, with a kind of grand innocence, retaining some of his barbaric simpleness of soul in midst of the subtle and astute politicians of Venice. He is great in simple heroic action, but unversed in the complex affairs of life, and a stranger to the malignant deceits of the debased Italian character. Nothing is more chivalrous, more romantie, than the love of Othello and Desdemona. The beautiful Italian girl is fascinated by the real strength and grandeur, and the tender protectiveness of the Moor. lle is charmed by the sweetness, the sympathy, the gentle disposition, the gracious womanliness of Desdemona. But neither quite rightly knows the other; there is none of that perfect equality and perfect knowledge between them which unite Bo fiawlessly Brutus and Portia. There is no character in Shakespeare's plays so full of serpentine power and serpentine poison as lago. He is envious of Cassio, and suspects that the Moor may have wronged his honor : but his malignancy is out of all proportion to even its alleged motives. Cassio, notwithstanding his moral weaknesses, is a chivalrous nature, possessed by enthusiastic admiration of his great general and the beautiful lady who is his wife. But Iago can see neither human virtue nor greatness. All things to him are common and unclean, and he is content that they should be He is not the sly, sneaking, and too manifest villain of some of the actors of his part. He is * honest Ingo," and passes for a rough yet shrewd critic of life, who is himself frank and candid. To ensnare the nobly guileless Othello was, therefore, no impossible task. Shakespeare does not allow lago to triumph ; his end is wretched as his life has been. And Othello, restored to love through such tragic calamity, dies once more reunited to his wife, and loyal, in spite of all his wrongs, to the city of his adoption. It is he who has sinned, and not she who was dearer to him than himself, and of his own wrongs and griefs he can make a sudden end. BO. ACT I. are 11 60 he, SCENE I. Venice. A street. Enter RODERIGO and IAGO. Rod. Tush ! never tell me; I take it much unkindly That thou, lago, who hast had my purse As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this, Iago. 'Sblood, but you will not hear me : If ever I did dream of such a matter, Abhor me. Rod. Thou told'st me thou didst hold him in thy hate. Iago. Despise me, if I do not. Three great ones of the city, In personal suit to make me his lieutenant, Off-capp'd to him : and, by the faith of man, I know my price, I am worth no worse a place: But he, as loving his own pride and purposes, Evades them, with a bombast circumstance Horribly stuff'd with epithets of war; And, in conclusion, Nonsuits my mediators ; for, ‘Certes,' says I have already chose my officer.' And what was he? Forsooth, a great arithmetician, Ine Michael Cassio, a Florentine, 20 A fellow almost damu'd in a fair wife ; That never set a squadron in the field, Nor the division of a battle knows More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric, Wherein the toged consuls can propose As masterly as he : mere prattle, without practice, Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election: And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof At Rhodes, at Cyprus and on other grounds Christian and heathen, inust be be-lee'd and calm'd 30 By debitor and creditor : this counter-caster, He, in good time, must his lieutenant be, Ind I-God bless the mark !--his Moorship's ancient. Rod. By heaven, I rather would have been his hangman. lago. Why, there's no remedy ; 'tis the curse of service, Preferment goes by letter and affection, And not by old gradation, where each second Stood heir to the first. Now, sir, be judge yourself, Whether I in any just term am affined To love the Moor. Rod. I would not follow him then. 40 Iago. O, sir, content you ; ( follow him to serve my turn upon him : We cannot all be masters, nor all masters Cannot be truly follow'd.' You shall mark Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave, Tbat, doting on his own obsequious bondage, Wears out his time, much like his master's ass, For nought but provender, and when he's old, cashier'd : Whip me such honest knaves. Others there Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, Keep yet their hearts attending on them. selves, 51 And, throwing but shows of service on their lords, Do well thrive by them and when they have lined their coats Do themselves homage : these fellows have some soul; And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir, It is as sure as you are Roderigo, Were I the Moor, I would not be lago : In following him, I follow but myself; Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so, for my peculiar end : For when my outward action doth demon strate The native act and figure of my heart In compliment extern, 'tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at : Iam not what I am. Rod. What a full fortune does the thick. lips owe, If he can carry't thus ! Iago. Call up her father, Rouse him : make after him, poison his de light, Proclaim him in the streets ; incense her kins men, And, though he in a fertile climate dwell, 70 Plague him with flies : though that his joy be joy, Yet throw such changes of vexation on't, As it may lose some color. Rod. Here is her father's house ; I'll call aloud. Iago. Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell As when, by night and negligence, the fire Is spied in populous cities. Rod. What, ho, Brabantio ! Signior Bra bantio, ho ! Iago Awake! what, ho, Brabantio ! thieves ! thieves ! thieves ! Look to your house, your daughter and your bags ! 80 Thieves ! thieves ! BRABANTIO appears above, at a window. Bra. What is the reason of this terrible summons ? Rod. Signior, is all your family within ? shame, put on your gown ; Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul; Even now, now, very now, an old black ram |