467-469. The meaning here, as explained by Mr. Joseph Crosby, is: "Let him command whatever bloody work he may, to perform it shall be with me a matter of conscience."

Scene IV.

24. I know not:-Objection has been made to the conduct of Emilia in this scene, as inconsistent with the spirit she afterwards shows. But it is not easy to discover any such inconsistency. Want of principle and strength of attachment are often thus seen united. Emilia loves her mistress deeply; but she has no moral repugnance to theft and falsehood, apprehends no fatal consequences from the Moor's passion, and has no soul to conceive the agony her mistress must suffer by the charge of infidelity; and it is but natural that when the result comes she should be the more spirited for the very remembrance of her own guilty part in the process. It is the seeing of the end that rouses such people, and rouses them all the more that they themselves have served

as means.

26. crusadoes:-It appears from Rider's Dictionary that there were three sorts of crusadoes; one with a long cross, one with a short cross, and the great crusado of Portugal. They were of gold, and differed in value from six shillings and eight pence to nine shillings.

47. new heraldry:-This "new heraldry" appears to be an allusion to the bloody hand borne on the arms of the new order of baronets, created by James I. in 1611. Malone, with much probability, quotes, in illustration of the text, the following from the Essays of Sir William Cornwallis, 1601: We of these later times, full of a nice curiositie, mislike all the performances of our forefathers; we say they were honest plaine men, but they want the capering wits of this ripe age. They had wont to give their hands and hearts together, but we think it a finer grace to looke asquint, our hand looking one way and our heart another." 57. a charmer :-Used for an enchanter in the Psalms. So in Perkins's Discourse of the damned Art of Witchcraft, 1610: “By witches we understand not only those which kill and torment, but all charmers, jugglers, all wizards, commonly called wise men and wise women."

65. To give it her:-Of course her refers to the noun implied in wive. In the last scene of the play, Othello speaks of the handkerchief as "an antique token my father gave my mother." This

has been thought an oversight; Steevens regards it as a fresh proof of the Poet's art. "The first account," says he, was purposely ostentatious, in order to alarm his wife the more. When he again mentions it, the truth was sufficient."

74. dyed in mummy:-The balsamic liquor running from mummies was formerly celebrated for its anti-epileptic virtues. It was much coveted by painters, as a transparent brown colour that threw a warmth into the shadows of a picture.

169. "What are you doing away from home?" We repeatedly meet with the same phraseology in Shakespeare.

173. A week away:-It would seem, by this, that seven days at least have elapsed since Cassio was cashiered; perhaps much more, as the "leaden thoughts" may have been kept off for some time by the hopes built upon Desdemona's promise of intercession, and brought on again by the unexpected delay.

180. Take me this work out:-Copy this work in another handkerchief. So in Middleton's Women beware Women: "She intends to take out other works in a new sampler." Again, in the Preface to Holland's Pliny, 1601: "Nicophanes gave his mind wholly to antique pictures, partly to exemplify and take out patterns, after that in long continuance of time they were decayed."

ACT FOURTH.

Scene I.

1. We must suppose that Iago had been applying cases of false comfort to Othello; as that, though the parties had been even found exchanging endearments, there might be no harm done: it might be only for trial of their virtue. In these pretended excusings Iago seeks only to intensify the sufferings which he professes to allay.

8. The devil tempts their virtue by stirring up their passions, and they tempt heaven by placing themselves in a situation which makes it scarcely possible to avoid falling by the gratification of them. Perhaps the story of St. Adhelm, related in Bale's Actes of Englysh Votaries, is referred to: "This Adhelmus never refused women, but wold have them commonly both at borde and bedde, to mocke the Devyll with."

21, 22. The raven was thought to be a bird of ill omen, given to hovering about houses infected with the plague.

28. Convinced:-Having either conquered her reluctance or complied with her wish. The proper meaning of convince is conquer or overcome.

41-43. Nature instruction:-This passage has called forth much critical discussion. As suggested by Johnson, Othello seems to say, "This passion, which spreads its clouds over me, is the effect of some agency more than the operation of words: it is one of those notices which men have of unseen calamities." Or the sense may be given, as by Sir J. Reynolds, something thus: "Nature would not in Cassio clothe herself in such shadowing passion, or would not give out such adumbrations of passion, without some former experience, or the instruction of some foregoing fact."

45. "The starts," says Warburton, "and broken reflections in this speech have something in them very terrible, and show the mind of the speaker to be in inexpressible agonies." The trance is thus justified by Sir J. Reynolds: Othello, in broken sen

tences and single words, all of which have a reference to the cause of his jealousy, shows that all the proofs are present at once to his mind, which so overpower it that he falls into a trance-the natural consequence."

69. Beds which really do not pertain to themselves alone; beds which are not peculiarly or specially their own, but are shared in common with others.

121. Othello calls Cassio Roman ironically, probably in allusion to his apparent elation, calling to Othello's mind the triumphs or triumphant career of the Romans.

247, 248. If that the earth crocodile-By the doctrine of equivocal generation new animals were supposed producible by new combinations of matter. Shakespeare here alludes to the fabulous accounts which make the crocodile the most deceitful of animals. In Bullokar's Expositor, 1616, occurs the following: "It is written that he will weep over a man's head when he hath devoured the body, and will then eat up the head too." Wherefore in Latin there is a proverb, "Crocodili lachrymæ, crocodiles teares, to signifie such teares as are feigned, and spent only with intent to deceive or do harm."

265. Goats and monkeys!-In this exclamation Shakespeare has shown great art. Iago in Act III. Sc. iii., being urged to give some ocular proof of the guilt of Cassio and Desdemona, tells the Moor it were impossible to have ocular demonstration of it, were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys." These words

66

still ring in the ears of Othello, who, being now fully convinced of his wife's infidelity, explodes with this involuntary exclamation.

Scene II.

54, 55. A fixed figure finger at!-Much has been written upon this famous passage, and various changes proposed. "The time of scorn" probably means, as Knight says, the age of scorn, that is, the whole period during which scorn may be said to live. The "fixed figure" is simply the speaker himself, and not, as been so much supposed, a figure on a dial. As to "slow unmoving," the sense of it can be better felt than expressed: we can see the sneer darting from the inexorable finger, ever slowly moving with the object, never moving from it; but we cannot speak it in any words but Shakespeare's, as they stand in the text. 74. make very forges of my cheeks:-Othello has already, when with Iago, spoken Desdemona's imputed deeds very plainly; and would Shakespeare have forgotten that Othello's cheeks were too dark to show a blush? or still more, would he have referred the blush in such a case to the countenance of the man when the woman was present? In Titus Andronicus, IV. ii., Aaron, the Moor, when Chiron says, "I blush to think upon this ignomy' (of his mother's having a mulatto child), replies:

"Why, there's the privilege your beauty bears:

Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing
The close enacts and counsels of the heart!
Here's a young lad framed of another leer."

88. I cry you mercy:-That is, "I ask your pardon."

91. The office opposed to Saint Peter; alluding, evidently, to "the power of the keys," which was given to the Apostles generally, and especially to Saint Peter as representing them. So that the opposition is between Emilia as keeper of the gate of Hell and Saint Peter as keeper of the gate of Heaven. The sense, therefore, requires that the special emphasis, if there be any, should be laid on opposite.

104. go by water:-Be expressed by tears. A similar conceit is found in Hamlet, IV. vii. 186, 187:

"Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,

And therefore I forbid my tears."

144. Speak within door:-Do not clamour so as to be heard beyond the house.

167. he does chide with you:—This was the phraseology of the time. So Baret: "To complaine, to make a quarrel, to chide with one for a thing. Expostulare et queri.” So too in the Poet's CXIth Sonnet: “O, for my sake do you with fortune chide." 212, 213. I grant judgement:-" Shakespeare," says Malone, "knew well that most men like to be flattered on account of those endowments in which they are most deficient. Hence Iago's compliment to this snipe on his sagacity and shrewdness." 226.. goes into Mauritania:-This passage proves, so far as anything said by Iago may be believed, that Othello was not meant to be a negro, as has been represented, both on the stage and off, but a veritable Moor. His kindred, the Mauritanians-from whose "men of royal siege he fetched his life and being," and among whom he was about to retire-though apt enough to be confounded with the negroes, were as different from them, externally, as brown is from black; internally, in mind and character, the difference was far greater.

236. He sups to-night with a harlotry:-See "a peevish selfwill'd harlotry," 1 King Henry IV., III. i., and the very same phrase in Romeo and Juliet, IV. ii.

Scene III.

II. Hazlitt calls this "one of those side intimations of the fluctuations of passion, which we seldom meet with but in Shakespeare. He has here put into half a line what some authors would have spun out into ten set speeches."

55-57. [Singing.] These lines sung by Desdemona are from an old ballad, entitled A Lover's Complaint, being forsaken of his Love. The ballad may be found entire in Percy's Reliques. It is there the lament of a man: Shakespeare adapted it to the sex of poor Barbara." Subjoined are the stanzas from which he borrowed:

A poore soule sat sighing under a sicamore tree;
O willow, willow, willow!

With his hand on his bosom, his head on his knee:
O willow, willow, willow!

Sing, O the greene willow shall be my garland.