Othello Page #4

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DUKE OF VENICE:

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.

BRABANTIO:

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?

DESDEMONA:

My noble father,

I do perceive here a divided duty:

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 husband,

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.

BRABANTIO:

God be wi' 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.

DUKE OF VENICE:

Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence,

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

Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

What cannot be preserved 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.

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

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.

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

DUKE OF VENICE:

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 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,

Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war

My thrice-driven bed of down: I do agnise

A natural and prompt alacrity

I find in hardness, and do undertake

These present wars against the Ottomites.

Most humbly therefore bending to your state,

I crave fit disposition for my wife.

Due reference of place and exhibition,

With such accommodation and besort

As levels with her breeding.

DUKE OF VENICE:

If you please,

Be't at her father's.

BRABANTIO:

I'll not have it so.

OTHELLO:

Nor I.

DESDEMONA:

Nor I; I would not there reside,

To put my father in impatient thoughts

By being in his eye. Most gracious duke,

To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear;

And let me find a charter in your voice,

To assist my simpleness.

DUKE OF VENICE:

What would You, Desdemona?

DESDEMONA:

That I did love the Moor to live with him,

My downright violence and storm 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 honour and his valiant parts

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

By his dear absence. Let me go with him.

OTHELLO:

Let her have your voices.

Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not,

To please the palate of my appetite,

Nor to comply with heat--the young affects

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

For she is with me: no, when light-wing'd toys

Of feather'd Cupid seal with wanton dullness

My speculative and officed instruments,

That my disports corrupt and taint my business,

Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,

And all indign and base adversities

Make head against my estimation!

DUKE OF VENICE:

Be it as you shall privately determine,

Either for her stay or going: the affair cries haste,

And speed must answer it.

First Senator

You must away to-night.

OTHELLO:

With all my heart.

DUKE OF VENICE:

At nine i' the morning here we'll meet again.

Othello, leave some officer behind,

And he shall our commission bring to you;

With such things else of quality and respect

As doth import you.

OTHELLO:

So please your grace, my ancient;

A man he is of honest and trust:

To his conveyance I assign my wife,

With what else needful your good grace shall think

To be sent after me.

DUKE OF VENICE:

Let it be so.

Good night to every one.

To BRABANTIO

And, noble signior,

If virtue no delighted beauty lack,

Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.

First 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.

Exeunt DUKE OF VENICE, Senators, Officers, & c

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

Of love, of worldly matters and direction,

To spend with thee: we must obey the time.

Exeunt OTHELLO and DESDEMONA

RODERIGO:

Iago,--

IAGO:

What say'st thou, noble heart?

RODERIGO:

What will I do, thinkest thou?

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; 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 man

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.

IAGO:

Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus

or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which

our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant

nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up

thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or

distract it with many, either to 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 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.

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 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 commencement, 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 as bitter as 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. Make all the money

thou canst:
if sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt

an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian 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 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

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 time which will be delivered.

Traverse! go, provide thy money. We will have more

of this to-morrow. Adieu.

RODERIGO:

Where shall we meet i' the morning?

IAGO:

At my lodging.

RODERIGO:

I'll be with thee betimes.

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 go sell all my land.

Exit

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