I did not fee you; welcome, gentle fignior; [To BRABANTIO.

We lack'd your counfel and your help to-night.

BRA. So did I yours: Good your grace, pardon me; Neither my place, nor aught I heard of business, Hath rais'd me from my bed; nor doth the general

care"

Take hold on me; for my particular grief

native. "To exclude, therefore, (fays Contareno, as tranflated by Lewkenor, 4to. 1599,) out of our eftate the danger or occafion of any fuch ambitious enterprifes, our ancestors held it a better course to defend the dominions on the continent with foreign mercenary foldiers, than with their homebred citizens." Again: "Their charges and yearly occafions of difbursement are likewife very great; for alwaies they do entertain in honourable fort with great provifion a captaine generall, who alwaies is a franger borne."

MALONE.

It was usual for the Venetians to employ ftrangers and even Moors in their wars. See The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, Act V. fc. i. See alfo Howell's Letters, B. I. S. 1. Letter xxviii. REED.

6

-general care-] The word care, which encumbers the verfe, was probably added by the players. Shakspeare uses the general as a fubftantive, though, I think, not in this fenfe. JOHNSON.

The word general, when used by Shakspeare as a fubftantive, always implies the populace, not the publick: and if it were used here as an adjective, without the word care, it must refer to grief in the following line, a word which may properly denote a private forrow, but not the alarm which a nation is fuppofed to feel on the approach of a formidable enemy. M. MASON.

I fuppofe the author wrote

and not

Rais'd me from bed; nor doth the general care

Hath rais'd me from my bed; &c.

The words in the Roman character I regard as playhouse interpolations, by which the metre of this tragedy is too frequently deranged. STEEVENS.

7 Take bold-] The first quarto reads--Take any hold.

STEEVENS.

Is of fo flood-gate and o'er-bearing nature,
That it engluts and swallows other sorrows,
And it is ftill itself.

DUKE.

Why, what's the matter?

BRA. My daughter! O, my daughter!

SEN.

BRA.

Dead?

Ay, to me;

She is abus'd, ftol'n from me, and corrupted
By fpells and medicines bought of mountebanks:
For nature fo prepofterously to err,

Being not deficient, blind, or lame of fenfe,s
Sans witchcraft could not "-

By fpells and medicines bought of mountebanks :] Rymer has ridiculed this circumftance as unbecoming (both for its weakness and fuperftition,) the gravity of the accufer, and the dignity of the tribunal but his criticifm only expofes his own ignorance. The circumftance was not only exactly in character, but urged with the greatest addrefs, as the thing chiefly to be infifted on. For, by the Venetian law, the giving love potions was very criminal, as Shakfpeare, without queftion well understood. Thus the law, De i

maleficii et herbarie, cap. xvii. of the code, intitled, "Della promiffion del maleficio." "Statuimo etiamdio, che-fe alcun homo, o femina, harra fatto maleficii, iquali fe dimandano vulgarmente amatorie, o veramente alcuni altri maleficii, che alcun homo o femina fe haveffon in odio, fia frufta et bollado, et che hara confegliado patifca fimile pena." And therefore in the preceding scene Brabantio calls them,

arts inhibited, and out of warrant."

WARBURTON. Though I believe Shakspeare knew no more of this Venetian law than I do, yet he was well acquainted with the edicts of that fapient prince, King James the First, against

practifers

"Of arts inhibited and out of warrant." STEEVENS.

See p. 407, n. 3. MALONE.

8 Being not &c.]

This line is wanting in the first quarto.

STEEVENS.

9 For nature fo prepofterously to err,

Sans witchcraft could not-] The grammar requires we should read :

DUKE. Whoe'er he be, that, in this foul pro

ceeding,

Hath thus beguil'd your daughter of herself,
And you of her, the bloody book of law
You shall yourself read in the bitter letter,

After your own fenfe; yea, though our proper fon
Stood in your action.*

BRA.

Humbly I thank your grace. Here is the man, this Moor; whom now, it seems, Your special mandate, for the state affairs,

Hath hither brought.

DUKE and SEN.

We are very forry for it.

DUKE. What, in your own part, can you fay to

this?

BRA. Nothing, but this is fo.

[TO OTHELLO.

OTH. Most potent, grave, and reverend figniors, My very noble and approv'd good masters,

For nature jo prepofterously err, &c.

without the article to; and then the sentence will be complete.

M. MASON.

Were I certain that our author defigned the fentence to be complete, and not to be cut short by the Duke's interruption, I fhould readily adopt the amendment propofed by Mr. M. Mafon.

STEEVENS.

Omiffion is at all times the most dangerous mode of emendation, and here affuredly is unneceffary. We have again and again had occafion to obferve, that Shakspeare frequently begins to conftruct a fentence in one mode, and ends it in another. See p. 87, n. 6. Here he ufes could not, as if he had written, has not the power or capacity to, &c. It is not in nature fo to err; fhe knows not how to do it. MALONE.

Mr. Malone's opinion relative to omiffions, is contradicted by an ancient canon of criticifm,--Præferatur lectio brevior. I think it, in refpect to Shakspeare, of all other modes of emendation the leaft reprehenfible. See the Advertisement prefixed to this edition of our author, and Vol. III. p. 67, 68, n. 6. STEEVENS.

2 Stood in your action.] Were the man exposed to your charge or accufation. JOHNSON.

That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter,
It is most true; true, I have married her;
The very head and front of my offending'
Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my
fpeech,

And little blefs'd with the fet phrase of peace ; *
For fince these arms of mine had seven years' pith,
Till now fome nine moons wafted, they have us'd
Their dearest action' in the tented field;

3 The very head and front of my offending-] The main, the whole, unextenuated. JOHNSON.

"Frons caufæ non fatis honesta eft," is a phrase used by Quintilian. STEEVENS.

A fimilar expreffion is found in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, 1590: "The man that in the forehead of his fortunes

"Beares figures of renowne and miracle.”

Again, in Troilus and Creffida:

"So rich advantage of a promis'd glory,

"As fmiles upon the forehead of this action." MALONE. 4 And little blefs'd with the fet phrafe of peace ;] Soft is the reading of the folio. JOHNSON.

This apology, if addreffed to his mistress, had been well expreffed. But what he wanted, in fpeaking before a Venetian fenate, was not the foft blandishments of fpeech, but the art and method of masculine eloquence. The old quarto reads it, therefore, as I am perfuaded Shakspeare wrote:

the fet phrafe of peace. WARBURTON.

Soft may have been used for fill and calm, as opposed to the clamours of war. So, in Coriolanus.

66

Say to them,

"Thou art their foldier, and, being bred in broils,
"Haft not the foft way, which thou doft confefs
"Were fit for thee to use."

Again, in Antony and Cleopatra:

'Tis a worthy deed,

"And fhall become you well, to entreat your captain

66

To foft and gentle fpeech." MALONE.

5 Their dearest action-] That is, dear, for which much is paid, whether money or labour; dear action, is action performed at great expence, either of ease or fafety. JOHNSON.

Their dearest action is their most important action. See Vol. XI. p. 649, n. 7. MALONE.

And little of this great world can I fpeak,
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle;
And therefore little fhall I grace my cause,

In fpeaking for myfelf: Yet, by your gracious patience,

I will a round unvarnish'd' tale deliver

Of my whole courfe of love; what drugs, what charms,

What conjuration, and what mighty magick,
(For fuch proceeding I am charg'd withal,)
I won his daughter with."

BRA.

A maiden never bold; Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion

Inftead of their dearest action, we should say in modern language, their beft exertion. STEEVENS.

I should give these words a more natural fignification, and fuppofe that they mean-their favourite action, the action moft dear to them. Othello fays afterwards:

66

I do agnize

"A natural and prompt alacrity
"I find in hardness." M. MASON.

6 unvarnish'd-] The fecond quarto reads-unravished.

STEEVENS.

7 I won his daughter with.] [The firft quarto and folio-I won his daughter.] i. e. I won his daughter with: and fo all the modern editors read, adopting an interpolation made by the editor of the fecond folio, who was wholly unacquainted with our poet's metre and phrafeology. In Timon of Athens we have the fame elliptical expreffion:

"Who had the world as my confectionary,

"The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men, "At duty, more than I could frame employment [for].” See alfo Vol. XIII. p. 235, n. 5, where feveral other inftances of a fimilar phrafeology are collected. MALONE.

As my fentiments concerning the merits of the fecond folio are diametrically oppofite to Mr. Malone's opinion of it, I have not difplaced a grammatical to make room for an ungrammatical expreffion. What Mr. Malone has ftyled "fimilar phrafeology," I should not hesitate to call, in many instances, congeniality of omiffions and blunders made by tranfcribers, players, or printers.