Oth. I'll tear her all to pieces, 3 Iago. Nay, but be wife: yet we fee nothing done; She may be honeft yet. Tell me but this,- Oth. If it be that, Iago. If it be that, or any, if 'twas hers, It fpeaks against her, with the other proofs. Öth. O that the flave had forty thousands lives; One is too poor, too weak for my revenge! * Now do I fee 'tis true.-Look here, Iago; All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven: 'Tis gone. Arife, black vengeance, 3 from thy hollow cell! Yield -yet we fee nothing done ;] This is an oblique and fecret mock at Othello's faying, Give me the ocular proof. 4 Now do I fee 'tis true.-- Now do I fee 'tis time. WARBURTON, The old quarto reads, And this is Shakspeare's, and has in it much more force and fo lemnity, and preparation for what follows: as alluding to what he had faid before : No, Iago! I'll fee before I doubt, when I doubt, prove; This time was now come. WARBU. TON. 5-hollow hell!] This is a poor unmeaning epithet. The old quarto reads, Arife black vengeance, from thy hollow cell! Which the editors not knowing what to make of, altered it as a bove. It should be read thus: Arife, black vengeance, from the unhallow'd cell! Meaning the infernal regions. WARBURTON, The Yield up, O love, thy crown, and hearted throne, Totyrannous hate! 7 fwell, bofom, with thy fraught, For, 'tis of afpicks' tongues! Iago, Pray, be content. Oth, O, blood, Iago, blood! Iago. Patience, I fay; your mind, perhaps, may change. 8 Oth. Never, lago: [ Like to the Pontic fea, Whole icy current and compulfive course Ne'er The hollow bell is the reading of the folio. I do not perceive that the epithet hollow is at all unmeaning, when applied to hell, as it gives the idea of what Milton calls, the void profound "Of uncffential night." The very fame phrafe indeed occurs in Jafper Heywood's tranflation of Seneca's Thyeftes 1560, "Where molt prodigious ugly things the bollow hell doth ride." STEEVENS. Again, in Milton's Paradife Loft b. i. ver. 314: 6 "He call'd fo loud that all the hollow deep "Of bell refounded." H. T. W. hearted throne,] Hearted throne, is the heart on which thou waft enthroned. JOHNSON. Jago ufes the fame word, though with a meaning fomewhat different : My caufe is bearted. STEEVENS. A paffage in Twelfth Night fully fupports the reading of the text, and Dr. Johnion's explanation of it: It gives a very echo to the feat "Where Love is thron'd." MALONE. 7-fwell, bofom, &c.] i. e. fwell, becaufe the fraught is of poifon. WARBURTON. 8 --Like to the Pontic fea, &c.] This fimile is omitted in the first edition: I think it thould be so, as an unnatural excurfion in this place. POPE.. Like the Pontic fea.] Every reader will, I durft fay, abide by Mr. Pope's cenfure on this paffage. When Shakspeare grew acquainted with fuch particulars of knowledge, he made a difplay -of them as foon as opportunity offered. He found this in the Second Book and 97th Chapter of Pliny's Nat. Hift. as tranflated by Philemon Holland, 1601: "And the fea Pontus evermore Boweth and runneth out into Propontis, but the fea never retireth backe againe within Pontus." Mr. Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on Even fo my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, 'Till that a capable and wide revenge [He kneels Swallow them up.-Now, 'by yond' marble heaven,] Iago. Do not rife yet. १ [Lago kneels. Witnefs, you ever-burning lights above! 2 let him command, And Mr. Edwards, in his Mff. notes, conceives this fimile to allude to Sir Philip Sidney's device, whofe imprefs, Camden, in hist Remains, fays, was the Cafpian fea, with this motto, SINE REFLUXU. STEEVENS. 9 —a capable and wide revenge Capable] Ample; capacious. So, in As You Like It: The cicatrice and capable impreffure." So, in Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Devil, by Nashe, 159:: "Then belike, quoth 1, you make this word, Dæmon, a capable name, of gods, of men, and of devils." It may however mean judicious. In Hamlet the word is often ufed in the tense of intelligent. What Othello fays in another place feems to favour this latter interpretation: 3 Good; good;-the juftice of it pleases me. MALONE. -by yond marble heaven,] In Soliman and Perfeda, 1599, I find the fame expreffion : "Now by the marble face of the welkin," &c. STEEVENS. So, in Marston's Antonio and Melida, 1602; 3 "And pleas'd the marble heavens. MALONE. The execution - The first quarto reads excellency. -let him command, And to obey, fhall be in me remorse, STEEVENS. What bloody burness ever.] Thus all the old copies, to manifeft depravation of the poet's fenfe. Mr. Pope has attempted an emendation, but with his old luck and dexterity: Not And to obey fhall be in me remorse, Not to obey, Shall be in me remorse, &c. I read, with the change only of a fingle letter: What i. e. Let your commands be ever fo bloody, remorse and compaffion fhall not restrain me from obeying them. THEOBALD Let him command, And to obey, shall be in me remorse, What bloody bufinefs ever.] Thus the old copies read, but evidently wrong. Some editions read, Not to obey; on which the editor Mr. Theobald takes occafion to alter it to, Nor to obey; and thought he had much mended matters. But he mistook the found end of the line for the corrupt; and fo by his emendation, the deep defigning lago is foolishly made to throw off his mask, when he had moft occation for it; and without any provocation, and before his captain a villain confeffed; at a time, when, for the carrying on his plot, he fhould make the leaft fhow of it. For thus Mr. Theobald forces him to fay, I shall have no remorse to obey your commands how bloody foever the business be. But this is not Shakspeare's way of preferving the unity of character. Iago, till now, pretended to be one, who, though in the trade of war he had flain men, yet held it the very stuff of the confcience to do no con trived murder; when, of a fudden, without caufe or occafion, he owns himfelf a ruffian without remorse. Shakspeare wrote and pointed the paffage thus ; Let him command, What bloody business ever. REMORD i.e. however the bufinefs he fets me upon may fhock my honour and humanity, yet I promife to go through with it, and obey without referve. Here lago fpeaks in character, while the feqte and grammar are made better by it. So Skelton; "And if fo him fortune to write and plaine, And again: "Squire, knight, and lord, "Thus the churche remorde." WARBURTON. Ofthefe two emendations, I believe, Theobald's will have the greater number of fuffrages; it has at least mine. The objection against the propriety of the declaration in Iago, is a cavil; he does not fay that he has no principle of remorfe, but that it fhall not o perate against Othello's commands. To obey shall be in me, for F will obey you, is a mode of expreffion not worth the pains here taken to introduce it; and the word remorde has not in the quotation ३ What bloody work foever + 669 Othe tation the meaning of withhold, or make reluctant, but of reprove, ot cenfure; nor do I know that it is used by any of the contem poraries of Shakspeare. I will offer an interpretation, which, if it be received, will make alteration unneceffary, but it is very harth and violent. Iago devotes himself to wronged Othello, and fays, Let him command whatever bloody bufinefs, and in me it shall be an act, not of cruelty, but of tenderness, to obey him; not of malice to others, but of fendernefs for him. If this fenfe be thought too violent, I fee no thing better than to follow Pope's reading, as it is improved by Theobald. JOHNSON. -Let him command, ferv. p. 2co, propofes to read: Mr. Upton, in his Critic. Ob And to obey all be in me no remorse. This reading the author of The Revifal approves ; and Mr. Edwards feems to acquiefce in that of Theobald. The different emendations of different commentators are laid before the public for its determination on theirmerits; and I believe the prefent one, who is to throw in his conjecture with the reft, may fay at last with Deiphobus, explebo numerum, réddarque tenebris.. me in Iago offers, in the most folemn manner, to rifque himself for the fervice of Othello. Let him command, fays he, whatever bloody bufinefs, and the remorse that follows the perpetration of fuch a deed fhall be entirely my own. It fhall be remorse in me alone. I not only undertake to execute the bloody part of the bafinefs, but likewife to take upon myself the horrors of remorse infeparable from the action. Iago makes ufe of this fpecious argument, the better to prevail on Othello to entraft the murder to his hands. After all, I believe Dr. Johnson's interpretation to be the best;/ and can only claim the merit of fupporting his fenfe of the word remorfe, i. e. pity, by the following inftances. In Lord Surrey's Tranflation of the 4th neid, Dido says to her fifter: "Sifter I crave thou have remorse of me." Again, 4 What bloody work foever.] So the quartos. The folio: What bloody bafiness ever. STEEVENS. |