I here do give thee that with all my heart
Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart
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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.
DUKE Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence
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Which as a grise or step may help these lovers
Into your favour.
When remedies are past the griefs are ended
By seeing the worst which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
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Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.
The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief,
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.
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BRABANTIO So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile,
We lose it not so long as we can smile;
He bears the sentence well that nothing bears
But the free comfort which from thence he hears.
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow
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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 bruised heart was pierced through the ear.
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I humbly beseech you, proceed to th’affairs of state.
DUKE The Turk with a most mighty preparation makes
for Cyprus. Othello, the fortitude of the place is best
known to you, and, though we have there a substitute
of most allowed sufficiency, yet opinion, a sovereign
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mistress of effects, throws a more safer voice on you.
You must therefore be content to slubber the gloss of
your new fortunes with this more stubborn and
boisterous expedition.
OTHELLO The tyrant custom, most grave senators,
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Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down. I do agnize
A natural and prompt alacrity
I find in hardness, and do undertake
This present war against the Ottomites.
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Most humbly therefore, bending to your state,
I crave fit disposition for my wife,
Due reverence of place, and exhibition,
With such accommodation and besort
As levels with her breeding.
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DUKE Why, at her father’s.
BRABANTIO I’ll not have it so.
OTHELLO Nor I.
DESDEMONA Nor would I there reside
To put my father in impatient thoughts
By being in his eye. Most gracious duke,
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To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear
And let me find a charter in your voice
T’assist my simpleness.
DUKE What would you, Desdemona?
DESDEMONA That I did love the Moor to live with him
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My downright violence and scorn of fortunes
May trumpet to the world. My heart’s subdued
Even to the very quality of my lord:
I saw Othello’s visage in his mind,
And to his honours and his valiant parts
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Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate,
So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites for which I love him are bereft me,
And I a heavy interim shall support
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By his dear absence. Let me go with him.
OTHELLO Let her have your voice.
Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not
To please the palate of my appetite,
Nor to comply with heat, the young affects
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In me defunct, and proper satisfaction,
But to be free and bounteous to her mind.
And heaven defend your good souls that you think
I will your serious and great business scant
When she is with me. No, when light-winged toys
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Of feathered Cupid seel with wanton dullness
My speculative and officed instrument,
That my disports corrupt and taint my business,
Let housewives make a skillet of my helm
And all indign and base adversities
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Make head against my estimation.
DUKE Be it as you shall privately determine,
Either for her stay or going: th’affair cries haste
And speed must answer it.
1 SENATOR You must away tonight.
DESDEMONA Tonight, my lord?
DUKE This night.
OTHELLO With all my heart.
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DUKE At nine i’th’ morning here we’ll meet again.
Othello, leave some officer behind
And he shall our commission bring to you,
And such things else of quality and respect
As doth import you.
OTHELLO So please your grace, my ancient:
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A man he is of honesty and trust.
To his conveyance I assign my wife,
With what else needful your good grace shall think
To be sent after me.
DUKE Let it be so.
Good-night to everyone. And, noble signior,
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If virtue no delighted beauty lack
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.
1 SENATOR Adieu, brave Moor, use Desdemona well.
BRABANTIO
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
She has deceived her father, and may thee.
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Exeunt Duke, Brabantio, Senators, officers.
OTHELLO My life upon her faith. Honest Iago,
My Desdemona must I leave to thee:
I prithee, let thy wife attend on her
And bring them after in the best advantage.
Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour
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Of love, of worldly matter and direction
To spend with thee. We must obey the time.
Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.
RODERIGO Iago!
IAGO What sayst thou, noble heart?
RODERIGO What will I do, think’st thou?
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IAGO Why, go to bed and sleep.
RODERIGO I will incontinently drown myself.
IAGO If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Why,
thou silly gentleman?
RODERIGO It is silliness to live when to live is torment;
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and then have we a prescription to die, when death is
our physician.
IAGO O villainous! I have looked upon the world for
four times seven years, and since I could distinguish
betwixt a benefit and an injury I never found a man
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that knew how to love himself. Ere I would say I would
drown myself for the love of a guinea-hen I would
change my humanity with a baboon.
RODERIGO What should I do? I confess it is my shame
to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it.
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IAGO Virtue? a fig! ’tis in ourselves that we are thus, or
thus. Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills
are gardeners. So that if we will plant nettles or sow
lettuce, set h
yssop and weed up thyme, supply it with
one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to
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have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry
– why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in
our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale
of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and
baseness of our natures would conduct us to most
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preposterous conclusions. But we have reason to cool
our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted
lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect
or scion.
RODERIGO It cannot be.
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IAGO It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of
the will. Come, be a man! drown thyself? drown cats
and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and
I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of
perdurable toughness. I could never better stead thee
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than now. Put money in thy purse, follow thou the
wars, defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say,
put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona
should long continue her love to the Moor – put
money in thy purse – nor he his to her. It was a violent
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commencement in her, and thou shalt see an
answerable sequestration – put but money in thy
purse. These Moors are changeable in their wills – fill
thy purse with money. The food that to him now is as
luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly acerb as
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coloquintida. She must change for youth; when she is
sated with his body she will find the error of her
choice: she must have change, she must. Therefore,
put money in thy purse. If thou wilt needs damn
thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning –
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make all the money thou canst. If sanctimony, and a
frail vow betwixt an erring Barbarian and a super-
subtle Venetian, be not too hard for my wits and all the
tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her – therefore make
money. A pox of drowning thyself, it is clean out of the
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way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy
joy than to be drowned and go without her.
RODERIGO Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on
the issue?
IAGO Thou art sure of me – go, make money. I have told
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thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I hate the
Moor. My cause is hearted, thine hath no less reason:
let us be conjunctive in our revenge against him. If
thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure,
me a sport. There are many events in the womb of
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time, which will be delivered. Traverse, go, provide thy
money: we will have more of this tomorrow. Adieu!
RODERIGO Where shall we meet i’th’ morning?
IAGO At my lodging.
RODERIGO I’ll be with thee betimes.
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IAGO Go to, farewell. – Do you hear, Roderigo?
RODERIGO What say you?
IAGO No more of drowning, do you hear?
RODERIGO I am changed. I’ll sell all my land. Exit.
IAGO Go to, farewell, put money enough in your purse.
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Thus do I ever make my fool my purse:
For I mine own gained knowledge should profane
If I would time expend with such a snipe
But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor
And it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets
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He’s done my office. I know not if ’t be true,
But I for mere suspicion in that kind
Will do as if for surety. He holds me well,
The better shall my purpose work on him.
Cassio’s a proper man: let me see now,
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To get his place, and to plume up my will
In double knavery. How? How? let’s see:
After some time to abuse Othello’s ear
That he is too familiar with his wife.
He hath a person and a smooth dispose
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To be suspected, framed to make women false.
The Moor is of a free and open nature
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by th’ nose
As asses are.
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I have’t, it is engendered! Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.
Exit.
2.1 Enter MONTANO and two Gentlemen.
MONTANO What from the cape can you discern at sea?
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 415
