HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK

HAMLET was the only son of the King of Denmark. He loved his father and mother dearly—and was happy in the love of a sweet lady named Ophelia. Her father, Polonius, was the King's Chamberlain.

While Hamlet was away studying at Wittenberg, his father died. Young Hamlet hastened home in great grief to hear that a serpent had stung the King, and that he was dead. The young Prince had loved his father so tenderly that you may judge what he felt when he found that the Queen, before yet the King had been laid in the ground a month, had determined to marry again—and to marry the dead King's brother.

Hamlet refused to put off mourning for the wedding.

"KING: ...........................................................

But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,—

HAMLET: A little more than kin, and less than kind!

KING: How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET: Not so, my lord: I am too much i' the sun.

QUEEN: Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,(70)

And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.

Do not for ever with thy vailed lids

Seek for thy noble father in the dust.

Thou know'st 'tis common. All that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.(75)

HAMLET: Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN: If it be,

Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET: Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems.

'tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,(80)

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected havior of the visage,

Together with all forms, modes, shapes of grief,(85)

That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,

For they are actions that a man might play;

But I have that within which passeth show,

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Then said Claudius the King's brother:

But you must know, your father lost a father;

That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound

In filial obligation for some term

To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever(95)

In obstinate condolement is a course

Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;

It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,

A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,

An understanding simple and unschool'd;(100)

For what we know must be, and is as common

As any the most vulgar thing to sense,

Why should we, in our peevish opposition,

Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,(105)

To reason most absurd, whose common theme

Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,

From the first corse till he that died today,

This must be so. We pray you throw to earth

This unprevailing woe, and think of us(110)

As of a father; for let the world take note

You are the most immediate to our throne,

And with no less nobility of love

Than that which dearest father bears his son

Do I impart toward you. For your intent(115)

In going back to school in Wittenberg,

It is most retrograde to our desire;

And we beseech you, bend you to remain

Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,

Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.(120)

With that, the Queen and Claudius left him, to make merry over their wedding, forgetting the poor good King who had been so kind to them both.

And Hamlet, left alone, began to wonder and to question as to what he ought to do. For he could not believe the story about the snake-bite. It seemed to him all too plain that the wicked Claudius had killed the King, so as to get the crown and marry the Queen. Yet he had no proof, and could not accuse Claudius. In addition, Fortinbras, the Prince of Norway, is threatening to invade Denmark, causing all of Denmark to be busy preparing for an imminent war. In a situation like this, Hamlet, as a responsible prince, has no other options; There’s nothing he can do. He should not kill himself either not to mention the killing of the king Claudius because even killing oneself is forbidden by God:

HAMLET: O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!(135)

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! ah, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature

Possess it merely. That it should come to this!(140)

But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two;

So excellent a king, that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!(145)

Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on; and yet, within a month—

Let me not think on't! Frailty, thy name is woman—

A little month, or ere those shoes were old(150)

With which she follow'd my poor father's body

Like Niobe, all tears—why she, even she—

O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourn'd longer—married with my uncle,

My father's brother, but no more like my father(155)

Than I to Hercules. Within a month,

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,

She married. O, most wicked speed, to post

With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!(160)

It is not, nor it cannot come to, good.

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

And while he was thus thinking came Horatio, a fellow student of his, from Wittenberg.

"What brought you here?" asked Hamlet, when he had greeted his friend kindly.

"I came, my lord, to see your father's funeral."

"I think it was to see my mother's wedding," said [131] Hamlet, bitterly. "My father! We shall not look upon his like again."

"My lord," answered Horatio, "I think I saw him yesternight."

Then, while Hamlet listened in surprise, Horatio told how he, with two gentlemen of the guard, had seen the King's ghost on the battlements. Hamlet went that night, and true enough, at midnight, the ghost of the King, in the armor he had been wont to wear when he fought and defeated the King of Norway in a single combat to settle the dispute over some part of territory, appeared on the battlements in the chill moonlight. Hamlet was a brave youth as his father was. Instead of running away from the ghost he spoke to it—and when it beckoned him he followed it to a quiet place, and there the ghost told him that what he had suspected was true. The wicked Claudius had indeed killed his good brother the King, by dropping poison into his ear as he slept in his orchard in the afternoon:

.......................... Now, Hamlet, hear.

'tis given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,(40)

A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark

Is by a forged process of my death

Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,

The serpent that did sting thy father's life

Now wears his crown.(45)

.................................

Sleeping within my orchard,

My custom always of the afternoon,(65)

Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,

With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,

And in the porches of my ears did pour

The leperous distilment, whose effect

Holds such an enmity with blood of man(70)

That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through

The natural gates and alleys of the body,

And, with a sudden vigour, it doth posset

And curd, like eager droppings into milk,

The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine;(75)

And a most instant tetter bark'd about,

Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust

All my smooth body.

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand

Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd;(80)

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,

No reckoning made, but sent to my account

With all my imperfections on my head.

"And you," said the ghost, "must avenge this cruel murder—on my wicked brother. But do nothing against the Queen—for I have loved her, and she is your mother. Remember me."

Then seeing the morning approach, the ghost vanished.

"Now," said Hamlet, "there is nothing left but revenge. Remember thee—I will remember nothing else—books, pleasure, youth—let all go—and your commands alone live on my brain."

So when his friends came back he made them swear to keep the secret of the ghost, and then went in from the battlements, now gray with mingled dawn and moonlight, to think how he might best avenge his murdered father.

The shock of seeing and hearing his father's ghost made him feel almost mad, and for fear that his uncle might notice that he was not himself, he determined to hide his mad longing for revenge under a pretended madness, “antic disposition,” in other matters.

And when he met Ophelia, who loved him—and to whom he had given gifts, and letters, and many loving words—he behaved so wildly to her, that she could not but think him mad. For she loved him so that she could not believe he would be as cruel as this, unless he were quite mad. So she told her father, and showed him a pretty letter from Hamlet. And in the letter was much folly, and this pretty verse—

"Doubt that the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love."

And from that time on everyone believed that the cause of Hamlet's supposed madness was love for Ophelia.

Poor Hamlet was very unhappy. He longed to obey his father's ghost—and yet he was too discreet to kill even his father's murderer, who is now head of a kingdom in an emergency situation. And sometimes he wondered whether, after all, the ghost spoke truly. In this dilemma, he thinks of killing himself again:

HAMLET: To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune(65)

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep—

No more—and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'tis a consummation(70)

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep—

To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub!

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause—there's the respect(75)

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns(80)

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death(85)

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,(90)

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Just at this time some actors came to the Court, and Hamlet ordered them to perform a certain play before the King and Queen. Now, this play called “Mouse Trap” was the story of a man who had been murdered in his garden by a near relation, who afterwards married the dead man's wife. The murderer in this play- within-the-play, however, is not a brother to the king but a nephew, thus making the play ambiguous.

You may imagine the feelings of the wicked King, as he sat on his throne, with the Queen beside him and all his Court around, and saw, acted on the stage, the very wickedness that he had himself done. And when, in the play, the wicked relation poured poison into the ear of the sleeping man, the wicked Claudius suddenly rose, and staggered from the room—the Queen and others following.

Then said Hamlet to his friends—

"Now I am sure the ghost spoke true.” For, he thinks, if Claudius had not done this murder, he could not have been so distressed to see it in a play.

But unlike Hamlet’s interpretation, the meaning of the play is construed by the King as a threatening to him.

Now the Queen sent for Hamlet, by the King's desire, to scold him for his conduct during the play, and for other matters; and Claudius, wishing to know exactly what happened, told old Polonius to hide himself behind the hangings in the Queen's room. And as they talked, the Queen got frightened at Hamlet's rough, strange words, and cried for help, and Polonius behind the curtain cried out too. Hamlet, thinking it was the King who was hidden there, thrust with his sword at the hangings, and killed, not the King, but poor old Polonius.

So now Hamlet had offended his uncle and his mother, and by bad hap killed his true love's father.

"Oh! what a rash and bloody deed is this," cried the Queen.

And Hamlet answered bitterly, "Almost as bad as to kill a king, and marry his brother." Then Hamlet told the Queen plainly all his thoughts and how he knew of the murder, and begged her, at least, to have no more friendship or kindness of the base Claudius, who had killed the good King. And as they spoke the King's ghost again appeared before Hamlet, saying

“Do not forget. This visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But look, amazement on thy mother sits.

O, step between her and her fighting soul!

Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.(125)

Speak to her, Hamlet,”

but the Queen could not see it. So when the ghost had gone, they parted.

When the Queen told Claudius what had passed, and how Polonius was dead, he said, "This shows plainly that Hamlet is mad, and since he has killed the Chancellor, it is for his own safety that we must carry out our plan, and send him away to England." Before he goes to England he meets Claudius face-to-face, saying:

KING: Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?(20)

HAMLET: At supper.

KING: At supper? Where?

HAMLET: Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain

convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your

worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures(25)

else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat

king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two

dishes, but to one table. That's the end.

KING: Alas, alas!

HAMLET: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a(30)

king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING: What dost thou mean by this?

HAMLET: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a

progress through the guts of a beggar.

KING: Where is Polonius?(35)

HAMLET: In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger

find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But

indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall

nose him as you go up the stair, into the lobby.

KING: Go seek him there.(40)

HAMLET: He will stay till you come.

KING: Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety—

Which we do tender as we dearly grieve

For that which thou hast done—must send thee hence

With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself.(45)

The bark is ready and the wind at help,

The associates tend, and everything is bent

For England.

HAMLET: For England?

KING: Ay, Hamlet.(50)

HAMLET: Good.

KING: So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.

HAMLET: I see a cherub that sees them. But come, for England!

Farewell, dear mother.

KING: Thy loving father, Hamlet.(55)

HAMLET: My mother! Father and mother is man and wife; man

and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England!

So Hamlet was sent, under charge of two courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who served the King, and these bore letters to the English Court, requiring that Hamlet should be put to death. But Hamlet had the good sense to get at these letters, and put in others instead, with the names of the two courtiers who were so ready to betray him. Then, as the vessel went to England, Hamlet escaped on board a pirate ship, and the two wicked courtiers left him to his fate, and went on to meet theirs.

On his way to England before he gets on board the ship, seeing that an army led by young Fortinbras is marching to conquer Poland, Hamlet soliloquizes like this:

How all occasions do inform against me

And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,(35)

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason(40)

To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event—

A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom

And ever three parts coward—I do not know(45)

Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do,'

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me.

Witness this army, of such mass and charge,

Led by a delicate and tender prince,(50)

Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd,

Makes mouths at the invisible event,

Exposing what is mortal and unsure

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,

Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great(55)

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,

That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,

Excitements of my reason and my blood,(60)

And let all sleep, while to my shame I see

The imminent death of twenty thousand men

That for a fantasy and trick of fame

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,(65)

Which is not tomb enough and continent

To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

Sending a letter to Claudius that he will come “naked,” Hamlet hurried home, but in the meantime a dreadful thing had happened. Poor pretty Ophelia, having lost her lover and her father, lost her wits too, and went in sad madness about the Court, with straws, and weeds, and flowers in her hair, singing strange scraps of songs, and talking poor, foolish, pretty talk with no heart of meaning to it. And one day, coming to a stream where willows grew, she tried to hang a flowery garland on a willow, and fell into the water with all her flowers, and so died.

And Hamlet had loved her, though his plan of seeming madness had made him hide it; and when he came back, he found the King and Queen, and the Court, weeping at the funeral of his dear love and lady.

Ophelia's brother, Laertes, had also just come to Court to ask justice for the death of his father, old Polonius; and now, wild with grief, he leaped into his sister's grave, to clasp her in his arms once more.

"I loved her more than forty thousand brothers," cried Hamlet, and leapt into the grave after him, and they fought till they were parted.

Afterwards Hamlet begged Laertes to forgive him.

"I could not bear," he said, "that any, even a brother, should seem to love her more than I."

But the wicked Claudius would not let them be friends. He told Laertes, who had a moment ago rebelled against Claudius but had been persuaded to serve him like a tool after hearing how Hamlet, not Claudius, had killed old Polonius, and between them they made a plot to slay Hamlet by treachery.

Laertes challenged him to a fencing match, and all the Court were present. Before going to the fencing match, Hamlet says, to Horatio’s advice to reconsider his decision to go to the game, like this:

... we defy augury; there's a special

Providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to

come, if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now,

yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man has

aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.(215)

Hamlet had the blunt foil always used in fencing, but Laertes had prepared for himself a sword, sharp, and tipped with poison. And the wicked King had made ready a bowl of poisoned wine, which he meant to give poor Hamlet when he should grow warm with the sword play, and should call for drink.

So Laertes and Hamlet fought, and Laertes, after some fencing, gave Hamlet a sharp sword thrust. Hamlet, angry at this treachery—for they had been fencing, not as men fight, but as they play—closed with Laertes in a struggle; both dropped their swords, and when they picked them up again, Hamlet, without noticing it, had exchanged his own blunt sword for Laertes' sharp and poisoned one. And with one thrust of it he pierced Laertes, who fell dead by his own treachery, “purposes mistook/ Fall'n on the inventors' heads.” as Horatio later sums up the situation.

At this moment the Queen cried out, "The drink, the drink! Oh, my dear Hamlet! I am poisoned!"

She had drunk of the poisoned bowl the King had prepared for Hamlet, and the King saw the Queen, whom, wicked as he was, he really loved, fall dead by his means.

Then Ophelia being dead, and Polonius, and the Queen, and Laertes, and the two courtiers who had been sent to England, Hamlet at last found courage to do the ghost's bidding and avenge his father's murder—which, if he had braced up his heart to do long before, all these lives had been spared, and none had suffered but the wicked King, who well deserved to die.

Hamlet, his heart at last being great enough to do the deed he ought, turned the poisoned sword on the false King.

"Then—venom—do thy work!" he cried, and the King died.

So Hamlet in the end kept the promise he had made his father. And all being now accomplished, he himself died:

O, I die, Horatio!

The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit.(365)

I cannot live to hear the news from England,

But I do prophesy the election lights

On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.

So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,

Which have solicited—The rest is silence.

And those who stood by saw him die, with prayers and tears, for his friends and his people loved him with their whole hearts. In the final scene Fortinbras, coming from Poland to the court, knows what happened and orders Hamlet’s funeral like this:

Let four captains

Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage;

For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have proved most royal; and, for his passage,(415)

The soldiers' music and the rites of war

Speak loudly for him.

Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this

Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.

Go, bid the soldiers shoot.(420)

Thus ends the tragic tale of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

Macbeth

WHEN a person is asked to tell the story of Macbeth, he can tell two stories. One is of a man called Macbeth who came to the throne of Scotland by a crime in the year of our Lord 1039, and reigned justly and well, on the whole, for fifteen years or more. This story is part of Scottish history. The other story issues from a place called Imagination; it is gloomy and wonderful, and you shall hear it.

A year or two before Edward the Confessor began to rule England, a battle was won in Scotland against a Norwegian King by two generals named Macbeth and Banquo. After the battle, the generals walked together towards Forres, in Elginshire, where Duncan, King of Scotland, was awaiting them.

While they were crossing a lonely heath, they saw three bearded women, weird sisters, hand in hand, withered in appearance and wild in their attire.

"Speak, who are you?" demanded Macbeth.

"Hail, Macbeth, chieftain of Glamis," said the First Witch.

[155] "Hail, Macbeth, chieftain of Cawdor," said the Second Witch.

"Hail, Macbeth, King that is to be," said the Third Witch.

Then Banquo asked, "What of me?" and the third woman replied, "Thou shalt be the father of kings."

"Tell me more," said Macbeth. "By my father's death I am chieftain of Glamis, but the chieftain of Cawdor lives, and the King lives, and his children live. Speak, I charge you!"

The women replied only by vanishing, as though suddenly mixed with the air.

Banquo and Macbeth knew then that they had been addressed by witches, and were discussing their prophecies when two nobles approached. One of them thanked Macbeth, in the King's name, for his military services, and the other said, "He bade me call you chieftain of Cawdor."

Macbeth then learned that the man who had yesterday borne that title was to die for treason, and he could not help thinking, "The third witch called me, 'King that is to be.' "

"Banquo," he said, "you see that the witches spoke [156] truth concerning me. Do you not believe, therefore, that your child and grandchild will be kings?"

Banquo frowned. Duncan had two sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, and he deemed it disloyal to hope that his son Fleance should rule Scotland. He told Macbeth that the witches might have intended to tempt them both into villainy by their prophecies concerning the throne. Macbeth, however, thought the prophecy that he should be King too pleasant to keep to himself, and he mentioned it to his wife in a letter.

Lady Macbeth was the grand-daughter of a King of Scotland who had died in defending his crown against the King who preceded Duncan, and by whose order her only brother was slain. To her, Duncan was a reminder of bitter wrongs. Her husband had royal blood in his veins, and when she read his letter, she was determined that he should be King.

When a messenger arrived to inform her that Duncan would pass a night in Macbeth's castle, she nerved herself for a very base action:

The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements. Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry 'Hold, hold!'

She told Macbeth almost as soon as she saw him [157] that Duncan must spend a sunless morrow. She meant that Duncan must die, and that the dead are blind. "We will speak further," said Macbeth uneasily, and at night, with his memory full of Duncan's kind words, he would fain have spared his guest:

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well

It were done quickly: if the assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease success; that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases

We still have judgment here; that we but teach

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return

To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice

Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice

To our own lips. He's here in double trust;

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

Who should against his murderer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against

The deep damnation of his taking-off;

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

And falls on the other.

"Would you live a coward?" demanded Lady Macbeth, who seems to have thought that morality and cowardice were the same.

"I dare do all that may become a man," replied Macbeth; "who dare do more is none."

"Why did you write that letter to me?" she inquired fiercely, and with bitter words she egged him [158] on to murder, and with cunning words she showed him how to do it.

After supper Duncan went to bed, and two grooms were placed on guard at his bedroom door. Lady Macbeth caused them to drink wine till they were stupefied. She then took their daggers and would have killed the King herself if his sleeping face had not looked like her father's.

Macbeth came later, and found the daggers lying by the grooms; and soon with red hands he appeared before his wife, saying, "Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more! Macbeth destroys the sleeping.' "

"Wash your hands," said she. "Why did you not leave the daggers by the grooms? Take them back, and smear the grooms with blood."

"I'll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done;

Look on't again I dare not," said Macbeth.

“Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead

Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,

I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal;

For it must seem their guilt,” said his wife.

His wife dared, and she returned to him with hands red as his own, but a heart less white, she proudly told him, for she scorned his fear:

My hands are of your colour; but I shame

To wear a heart so white.

Knocking within

I hear a knocking

At the south entry: retire we to our chamber;

A little water clears us of this deed:

How easy is it, then! Your constancy

Hath left you unattended.

The murderers heard a knocking, and Macbeth wished it was a knocking which could wake the dead:

To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself.

Knocking within

Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!

It was the knocking of Macduff, the chieftain of [159] Fife, who had been told by Duncan to visit him early. Macbeth went to him, and showed him the door of the King's room.

Macduff entered, and came out again crying, "O horror! horror! horror!"

Macbeth appeared as horror-stricken as Macduff, and pretending that he could not bear to see life in Duncan's murderers, he slew the two grooms with their own daggers before they could proclaim their innocence:

Had I but died an hour before this chance,

I had lived a blessed time; for, from this instant,

There 's nothing serious in mortality:

All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.

Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:

The expedition my violent love

Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin laced with his golden blood;

And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature

For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,

Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers

Unmannerly breech'd with gore: who could refrain,

That had a heart to love, and in that heart

Courage to make 's love known?

These murders did not shriek out, and Macbeth was crowned at Scone. One of Duncan's sons went to Ireland, the other to England. Macbeth was [160] King. But he was discontented. The prophecy concerning Banquo oppressed his mind. If Fleance were to rule, a son of Macbeth would not rule. Macbeth determined, therefore, to murder both Banquo and his son. He hired two ruffians, who slew Banquo one night when he was on his way with Fleance to a banquet which Macbeth was giving to his nobles. Fleance escaped.

Meanwhile Macbeth and his Queen received their guests very graciously, and he expressed a wish for them which has been uttered thousands of times since his day—"Now good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both."

"We pray your Majesty to sit with us," said Lennox, a Scotch noble; but ere Macbeth could reply, the ghost of Banquo entered the banqueting hall and sat in Macbeth's place.

Not noticing the ghost, Macbeth observed that, if Banquo were present, he could say that he had collected under his roof the choicest chivalry of Scotland. Macduff, however, had curtly declined his invitation.

The King was again pressed to take a seat, and [161] Lennox, to whom Banquo's ghost was invisible, showed him the chair where it sat.

But Macbeth, with his eyes of genius, saw the ghost. He saw it like a form of mist and blood, and he demanded passionately, "Which of you have done this?"

Still none saw the ghost but he, and to the ghost Macbeth said, "Thou canst not say I did it."

The ghost glided out, and Macbeth was impudent enough to raise a glass of wine "to the general joy of the whole table, and to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss."

The toast was drunk as the ghost of Banquo entered for the second time.

"Begone!" cried Macbeth. "You are senseless, mindless! Hide in the earth, thou horrible shadow."

Again none saw the ghost but he.

"What is it your Majesty sees?" asked one of the nobles.

The Queen dared not permit an answer to be given to this question. She hurriedly begged her guests to quit a sick man who was likely to grow worse if he was obliged to talk.

[162] Macbeth, however, was well enough next day to converse with the witches whose prophecies had so depraved him.

He found them in a cavern on a thunderous day. They were revolving round a cauldron in which were boiling particles of many strange and horrible creatures, and they knew he was coming before he arrived.

"Answer me what I ask you," said the King.

"Would you rather hear it from us or our masters?" asked the first witch.

"Call them," replied Macbeth.

Thereupon the witches poured blood into the cauldron and grease into the flame that licked it, and a helmeted head appeared with the visor on, so that Macbeth could only see its eyes.

He was speaking to the head, when the first witch said gravely, "He knows thy thought," and a voice in the head said, "Macbeth, beware Macduff, the chieftain of Fife." The head then descended into the cauldron till it disappeared.

"One word more," pleaded Macbeth.

"He will not be commanded," said the first witch, [163] and then a crowned child ascended from the cauldron bearing a tree in his hand. The child said—

"Macbeth shall be unconquerable till

The Wood of Birnam climbs Dunsinane Hill."

"That will never be," said Macbeth; and he asked to be told if Banquo's descendants would ever rule Scotland.

The cauldron sank into the earth; music was heard, and a procession of phantom kings filed past Macbeth; behind them was Banquo's ghost. In each king, Macbeth saw a likeness to Banquo, and he counted eight kings.

Then he was suddenly left alone.

His next proceeding was to send murderers to Macduff's castle. They did not find Macduff, and asked Lady Macduff where he was. She gave a stinging answer, and her questioner called Macduff a traitor. "Thou liest!" shouted Macduff's little son, who was immediately stabbed, and with his last breath entreated his mother to fly. The murderers did not leave the castle while one of its inmates remained alive.

[164] Macduff was in England listening, with Malcolm, to a doctor's tale of cures wrought by Edward the Confessor when his friend Ross came to tell him that his wife and children were no more. At first Ross dared not speak the truth, and turn Macduff's bright sympathy with sufferers relieved by royal virtue into sorrow and hatred. But when Malcolm said that England was sending an army into Scotland against Macbeth, Ross blurted out his news, and Macduff cried, "All dead, did you say? All my pretty ones and their mother? Did you say all?"

His sorry hope was in revenge, but if he could have looked into Macbeth's castle on Dunsinane Hill, he would have seen at work a force more solemn than revenge. Retribution was working, for Lady Macbeth was mad. She walked in her sleep amid ghastly dreams. She was wont to wash her hands for a quarter of an hour at a time; but after all her washing, would still see a red spot of blood upon her skin. It was pitiful to hear her cry that all the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten her little hand:

Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why,

then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my

lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we

fear who knows it, when none can call our power to

account?--Yet who would have thought the old man

to have had so much blood in him.

Doctor

Do you mark that?

The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?--

What, will these hands ne'er be clean?--No more o'

that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with

this starting.

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" [165] inquired Macbeth of the doctor, but the doctor replied that his patient must minister to her own mind. This reply gave Macbeth a scorn of medicine. "Throw physic to the dogs," he said; "I'll none of it."

One day he heard a sound of women crying. An officer approached him and said, "The Queen, your Majesty, is dead."

I have almost forgot the taste of fears;

The time has been, my senses would have cool'd

To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors;

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts

Cannot once start me.

Re-enter SEYTON

Wherefore was that cry?

SEYTON

The queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing,

muttered Macbeth, meaning that life was like a candle, at the mercy of a puff of air. He did not weep; he was too familiar with death.

Presently a messenger told him that he saw Birnam Wood on the march. Macbeth called him a liar and a slave, and threatened to hang him if he had made a mistake. "If you are right you can hang me," he said.

From the turret windows of Dunsinane Castle, Birnam Wood did indeed appear to be marching. Every soldier of the English army held aloft a bough which he had cut from a tree in that wood, and like human trees they climbed Dunsinane Hill.

Macbeth had still his courage. He went to battle to conquer or die, and the first thing he did was to [166] kill the English general's son in single combat. Macbeth then felt that no man could fight him and live, and when Macduff came to him blazing for revenge, Macbeth said to him, "Go back; I have spilt too much of your blood already."

"My voice is in my sword," replied Macduff, and hacked at him and bade him yield.

"I will not yield!" said Macbeth, but his last hour had struck:

MACBETH

Thou losest labour:

As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air

With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:

Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;

I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,

To one of woman born.

MACDUFF

Despair thy charm;

And let the angel whom thou still hast served

Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb

Untimely ripp'd.

And finally he fell.

Macbeth's men were in retreat when Macduff [167] came before Malcolm holding a King's head by the hair.

"Hail, King!" he said; and the new King looked at the old.

So Malcolm reigned after Macbeth; but in years that came afterwards the descendants of Banquo were kings.

King Lear

KING LEAR was old and tired. He was aweary of the business of his kingdom, and wished only to end his days quietly near his three daughters. Two of his daughters were married to the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall; and the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France were both suitors for the hand of Cordelia, his youngest daughter.

Lear called his three daughters together, and told them that he proposed to divide his kingdom between [68] them. "But first," said he, "I should like to know how much you love me."

Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.

Give me the map there. Know that we have divided

In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent

To shake all cares and business from our age;

Conferring them on younger strengths, while we

Unburthen'd crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall,

And you, our no less loving son of Albany,

We have this hour a constant will to publish

Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife

May be prevented now. The princes, France and Burgundy,

Great rivals in our youngest daughter's love,

Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,

And here are to be answer'd. Tell me, my daughters,--

Since now we will divest us both of rule,

Interest of territory, cares of state,--

Which of you shall we say doth love us most?

That we our largest bounty may extend

Where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril,

Our eldest-born, speak first.

Goneril, who was really a very wicked woman, and did not love her father at all, said she loved him more than words could say:

Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter;

Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty;

Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;

No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;

As much as child e'er loved, or father found;

A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable;

Beyond all manner of so much I love you.

She said she loved him dearer than eyesight, space or liberty, more than life, grace, health, beauty, and honor.

To which Regan added "I love you as much as my sister and more, since I care for nothing but my father's love."

Lear was very much pleased with Regan's professions, and turned to his youngest daughter, Cordelia. "Now, our joy, though last not least," he said, "the best part of my kingdom have I kept for you. What can you say?"

"Nothing, my lord," answered Cordelia.

"Nothing can come of nothing. Speak again," said the King.

And Cordelia answered, "I love your Majesty according to my duty—no more, no less."

And this she said, because she was disgusted with the way in which her sisters professed love, when really they had not even a right sense of duty to their old father.

[69] "I am your daughter," she went on, "and you have brought me up and loved me, and I return you those duties back as are right and fit, obey you, love you, and most honor you."

Lear, who loved Cordelia best, had wished her to make more extravagant professions of love than her sisters. He said,

Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower:

For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,

The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;

By all the operation of the orbs

From whom we do exist, and cease to be;

Here I disclaim all my paternal care,

Propinquity and property of blood,

And as a stranger to my heart and me

Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian,

Or he that makes his generation messes

To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom

Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,

As thou my sometime daughter.

The Earl of Kent, one of Lear's favorite courtiers and captains, tried to say a word for Cordelia's sake, but Lear would not listen. He divided the kingdom between Goneril and Regan, and told them that he should only keep a hundred knights at arms, and would live with his daughters by turns.

When the Duke of Burgundy knew that Cordelia would have no share of the kingdom, he gave up his courtship of her. But the King of France was wiser, and said, "Thy dowerless daughter, King, is Queen of us—of ours, and our fair France."

"Take her, take her," said the King; "for I will never see that face of hers again."

So Cordelia became Queen of France, and the Earl of Kent, for having ventured to take her part, was banished from the kingdom. The King now went to stay with his daughter Goneril, who had got everything from her father that he had to give, and now began to grudge even the hundred knights that he had reserved for himself. She was harsh and undutiful to him, and her servants either refused to obey his orders or pretended that they did not hear them:

GONERIL

By day and night he wrongs me; every hour

He flashes into one gross crime or other,

That sets us all at odds: I'll not endure it:

His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us

On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,

I will not speak with him; say I am sick:

If you come slack of former services,

You shall do well; the fault of it I'll answer.

KING LEAR

O, you sir, you, come you hither, sir: who am I,

sir?

OSWALD

My lady's father.

KING LEAR

'My lady's father'! my lord's knave: your

whoreson dog! you slave! you cur!

Now the Earl of Kent, when he was banished, [71] made as though he would go into another country, but instead he came back in the disguise of a servingman and took service with the King. The King had now two friends—the Earl of Kent, whom he only knew as his servant, and his Fool, who was faithful to him. Goneril told her father plainly that his knights only served to fill her Court with riot and feasting; and so she begged him only to keep a few old men about him such as himself.

"My train are men who know all parts of duty," said Lear.

Darkness and devils!

Saddle my horses; call my train together:

Degenerate bastard! I'll not trouble thee.

Yet have I left a daughter.

O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven

Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!

Enter Gentleman

How now! are the horses ready?

And his horses being saddled, he set out with his followers for the castle of Regan. But she, who had formerly outdone her sister in professions of attachment to the King, now seemed to outdo her in undutiful conduct, saying that fifty knights were too many to wait on him, and Goneril (who had hurried thither to prevent Regan showing any kindness to the old King) said five were too many, since her servants could wait on him.

Return to her, and fifty men dismiss'd?

No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose

To wage against the enmity o' the air;

To be a comrade with the wolf and owl,--

Necessity's sharp pinch! Return with her?

Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took

Our youngest born, I could as well be brought

To knee his throne, and, squire-like; pension beg

To keep base life afoot. Return with her?

Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter

To this detested groom.

Then when Lear saw that what they really wanted was to drive him away, he left them.

GONERIL

Hear me, my lord;

What need you five and twenty, ten, or five,

To follow in a house where twice so many

Have a command to tend you?

REGAN

What need one?

KING LEAR

O, reason not the need: our basest beggars

Are in the poorest thing superfluous:

Allow not nature more than nature needs,

Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;

If only to go warm were gorgeous,

Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,

Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,--

You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,

As full of grief as age; wretched in both!

If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts

Against their father, fool me not so much

To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,

And let not women's weapons, water-drops,

Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,

I will have such revenges on you both,

That all the world shall--I will do such things,--

What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be

The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep

No, I'll not weep:

I have full cause of weeping; but this heart

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,

Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

It was a wild [72] and stormy night, and he wandered about the heath half mad with misery, and with no companion but the poor Fool:

KING LEAR

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;

I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,

You owe me no subscription: then let fall

Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,

A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:

But yet I call you servile ministers,

That have with two pernicious daughters join'd

Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head

So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!

...................................................................

Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,

Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,

That hast within thee undivulged crimes,

Unwhipp'd of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;

Thou perjured, and thou simular man of virtue

That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,

That under covert and convenient seeming

Hast practised on man's life: close pent-up guilts,

Rive your concealing continents, and cry

These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man

More sinn'd against than sinning.

But presently his servant, the good Earl of Kent, met him, and at last persuaded him to lie down in a wretched little hovel.

KING LEAR

My wits begin to turn.

Come on, my boy: how dost, my boy? art cold?

I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?

The art of our necessities is strange,

That can make vile things precious. Come,

your hovel.

Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart

That's sorry yet for thee.

Fool

[Singing]

He that has and a little tiny wit--

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,--

Must make content with his fortunes fit,

For the rain it raineth every day.

KING LEAR

True, my good boy. Come, bring us to this hovel.

At daybreak the Earl of Kent removed his royal master to Dover, and hurried to the Court of France to tell Cordelia what had happened.

Cordelia's husband gave her an army and with it she landed at Dover. Here she found poor King Lear, wandering about the fields, wearing a crown of nettles and weeds.

GLOUCESTER

The trick of that voice I do well remember:

Is 't not the king?

KING LEAR

Ay, every inch a king:

When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.

I pardon that man's life. What was thy cause? Adultery?

Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No:

The wren goes to 't, and the small gilded fly

Does lecher in my sight.

Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester's bastard son

Was kinder to his father than my daughters

Got 'tween the lawful sheets.

To 't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.

Behold yond simpering dame,

Whose face between her forks presages snow;

That minces virtue, and does shake the head

To hear of pleasure's name;

The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to 't

With a more riotous appetite.

Down from the waist they are Centaurs,

Though women all above:

But to the girdle do the gods inherit,

Beneath is all the fiends';

There's hell, there's darkness, there's the

sulphurous pit,

Burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie,

fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet,

good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination:

there's money for thee.

GLOUCESTER

O, let me kiss that hand!

KING LEAR

Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.

GLOUCESTER

O ruin'd piece of nature! This great world

Shall so wear out to nought. Dost thou know me?

KING LEAR

I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny

at me? No, do thy worst, blind Cupid! I'll not

love. Read thou this challenge; mark but the

penning of it.

GLOUCESTER

Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.

EDGAR

I would not take this from report; it is,

And my heart breaks at it.

KING LEAR

Read.

GLOUCESTER

What, with the case of eyes?

KING LEAR

O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your

head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in

a heavy case, your purse in a light; yet you see how

this world goes.

GLOUCESTER

I see it feelingly.

KING LEAR

What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes

with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond

justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in

thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which

is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen

a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?

GLOUCESTER

Ay, sir.

KING LEAR

And the creature run from the cur? There thou

mightst behold the great image of authority: a

dog's obeyed in office.

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!

Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;

Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind

For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.

Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;

Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks:

Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.

None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em:

Take that of me, my friend, who have the power

To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes;

And like a scurvy politician, seem

To see the things thou dost not. Now, now, now, now:

Pull off my boots: harder, harder: so.

EDGAR

O, matter and impertinency mix'd! Reason in madness!

KING LEAR

If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.

I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester:

Thou must be patient; we came crying hither:

Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air,

We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark.

GLOUCESTER

Alack, alack the day!

KING LEAR

When we are born, we cry that we are come

To this great stage of fools: this a good block;

It were a delicate stratagem, to shoe

A troop of horse with felt: I'll put 't in proof;

And when I have stol'n upon these sons-in-law,

Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!

Enter a Gentleman, with Attendants

They brought him back and fed and clothed him, and Cordelia came to him and kissed him.

CORDELIA

O, look upon me, sir,

And hold your hands in benediction o'er me:

No, sir, you must not kneel.

KING LEAR

Pray, do not mock me:

I am a very foolish fond old man,

Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;

And, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you, and know this man;

Yet I am doubtful for I am mainly ignorant

What place this is; and all the skill I have

Remembers not these garments; nor I know not

Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;

For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.

CORDELIA

And so I am, I am.

KING LEAR

Be your tears wet? yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not:

If you have poison for me, I will drink it.

I know you do not love me; for your sisters

Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:

You have some cause, they have not.

CORDELIA

No cause, no cause.

KING LEAR

Am I in France?

KENT

In your own kingdom, sir.

KING LEAR

Do not abuse me.

"You must bear with me," said Lear; "forget and forgive. I am old and foolish."

And now he knew at last which of his children it was that had loved him best, and who was worthy of his love.

Goneril and Regan joined their armies to fight Cordelia's army, and were successful; and Cordelia and her father were thrown into prison. Then Goneril's husband, the Duke of Albany, who was a good [73] man, and had not known how wicked his wife was, heard the truth of the whole story; and when Goneril found that her husband knew her for the wicked woman she was, she killed herself, having a little time before given a deadly poison to her sister, Regan, out of a spirit of jealousy.

But they had arranged that Cordelia should be hanged in prison,

CORDELIA

We are not the first

Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst.

For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;

Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown.

Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?

KING LEAR

No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:

We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,

And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,

Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;

And take upon's the mystery of things,

As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,

In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,

That ebb and flow by the moon.

EDMUND

Take them away.

KING LEAR

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,

The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?

He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,

And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;

The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell,

Ere they shall make us weep: we'll see 'em starve

first. Come.

and though the Duke of Albany sent messengers at once, it was too late. The old King came staggering into the tent of the Duke of Albany, carrying the body of his dear daughter Cordelia, in his arms.

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:

Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so

That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!

I know when one is dead, and when one lives;

She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;

If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,

Why, then she lives.

....................................................................................

KING LEAR

A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!

I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever!

Cordelia, Cordelia! stay a little. Ha!

What is't thou say'st? Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.

I kill'd the slave that was a-hanging thee.

And soon after, with words of love for her upon his lips, he fell with her still in his arms, and died.

And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.

Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,

Look there, look there!

Dies

Othello

FOUR hundred years ago there lived in Venice an ensign named Iago, who hated his general, Othello, for not making him a lieutenant. Instead of Iago, who was strongly recommended, Othello had chosen Michael Cassio, whose smooth tongue had helped him to win the heart of Desdemona. lago had a friend called Roderigo, who supplied him with money and felt he could not be happy unless Desdemona was his wife.

Othello was a Moor, but of so dark a complexion that his enemies called him a Blackamoor. His life had been hard and exciting. He had been vanquished in battle and sold into slavery; and he had been a great traveler and seen men whose shoulders were higher than their heads. Brave as a lion, he had one great fault—jealousy. His love was a terrible selfishness. To love a woman meant with him to possess her as absolutely as he possessed something that did not live and think. The story of Othello is a story of jealousy.

One night Iago told Roderigo that Othello had carried off Desdemona without the knowledge of her father, Brabantio. He persuaded Roderigo to arouse Brabantio, and when that senator appeared Iago told him of Desdemona's elopement in the most unpleasant way. Though he was Othello's officer, he termed him a thief and a Barbary horse:

'Zounds, sir, you're robb'd!

For shame, put on your gown;

Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram

Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!(95)

Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,

Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.

Arise, I say!

..............................................................................

... you'll have your

daughter covered with a Barbary horse; you'll have your

nephews neigh to you; you'll have coursers for cousins,

and gennets for germans.

.......................................................................................

I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and

the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

Brabantio accused Othello before the Duke of Venice of using sorcery to fascinate his daughter, but Othello said that the only sorcery he used was his voice, which told Desdemona his adventures and hair-breadth escapes:

Her father loved me, oft invited me,(140)

Still question'd me the story of my life

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have pass'd.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days

To the very moment that he bade me tell it:(145)

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,

Of being taken by the insolent foe,

And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence,(150)

And portance in my travels' history;

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak,— such was the process;

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,(155)

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline;

But still the house affairs would draw her thence,

Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,(160)

She'ld come again, and with a greedy ear

Devour up my discourse; which I observing,

Took once a pliant hour, and found good means

To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart

That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,(165)

Whereof by parcels she had something heard,

But not intentively. I did consent,

And often did beguile her of her tears

When I did speak of some distressful stroke

That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,(170)

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;

She swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;

'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.

She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd

That heaven had made her such a man; she thank'd me,(175)

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story,

And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:

She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,

And I loved her that she did pity them.(180)

This only is the witchcraft I have used.

Desdemona was led into the [213] council-chamber, and she explained how she could love Othello despite his almost black face by saying, "I saw Othello's visage in his mind."

As Othello had married Desdemona, and she was glad to be his wife, there was no more to be said against him, especially as the Duke wished him to go to Cyprus to defend it against the Turks. Othello was quite ready to go, and Desdemona, who pleaded to go with him, was permitted to join him at Cyprus.

Othello's feelings on landing in this island were intensely joyful. "Oh, my [214] sweet," he said to Desdemona, who arrived with Iago, his wife, and Roderigo before him, "I hardly know what I say to you. I am in love with my own happiness."

News coming presently that the Turkish fleet was out of action, he proclaimed a festival in Cyprus from five to eleven at night.

Cassio was on duty in the Castle where Othello ruled Cyprus, so Iago decided to make the lieutenant drink too much. He had some difficulty, as Cassio knew that wine soon went to his head, but servants brought wine into the room where Cassio was, and Iago sang a drinking song, and so Cassio lifted a glass too often to the health of the general.

When Cassio was inclined to be quarrelsome, Iago told Roderigo to say something unpleasant to him. Cassio cudgeled Roderigo, who ran into the presence of Montano, the ex-governor. Montano civilly interceded for Roderigo, but received so rude an answer from Cassio that he said, "Come, come, you're drunk!" Cassio then wounded him, and Iago sent Roderigo out to scare the town with a cry of mutiny.

[215] The uproar aroused Othello, who, on learning its cause, said, "Cassio, I love thee, but never more be officer of mine."

On Cassio and Iago being alone together, the disgraced man moaned about his reputation:

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my

reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and

what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!

Iago said reputation and humbug were the same thing. "O God," exclaimed Cassio, without heeding him, "that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!"

Iago advised him to beg Desdemona to ask Othello to pardon him:

I'll tell you what you shall do. Our general's wife is

now the general. I may say so in this respect, for that he

hath devoted and given up himself to the contemplation,(305)

mark, and denotement of her parts and graces. Confess

yourself freely to her; importune her help to put you in

your place again. She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so

blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness

not to do more than she is requested. This broken joint(310)

between you and her husband entreat her to splinter;

and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack

of your love shall grow stronger than it was before.

Cassio was pleased with the advice, and next morning made his request to Desdemona in the garden of the castle. She was kindness itself, and said, "Be merry, Cassio, for I would rather die than forsake your cause."

Cassio at that moment saw Othello advancing with Iago, and retired hurriedly.

Iago said, "I don't like that."

"What did you say?" asked Othello, who felt that he had meant something unpleasant, but Iago pretended he had said nothing. "Was not that Cassio who went from my wife?" asked Othello, and Iago, who knew that it was Cassio and why it was Cassio, [216] said, "I cannot think it was Cassio who stole away in that guilty manner."

Desdemona told Othello that it was grief and humility which made Cassio retreat at his approach. She reminded him how Cassio had taken his part when she was still heart-free, and found fault with her Moorish lover. Othello was melted, and said, "I will deny thee nothing," but Desdemona told him that what she asked was as much for his good as dining.

Desdemona left the garden, and Iago asked if it was really true that Cassio had known Desdemona before her marriage.

"Yes," said Othello.

"Indeed," said Iago, as though something that had mystified him was now very clear.

"Is he not honest?" demanded Othello, and Iago repeated the adjective inquiringly, “Honest, my lord?” as though he were afraid to say "No."

"What dost thou think?" insisted Othello.

“Think, my lord?(120)” answered Iago.

Othello. Think, my lord? By heaven, he echoes me,

As if there were some monster in his thought

Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something:

I heard thee say even now, thou like'st not that,

When Cassio left my wife. What didst not like?(125)

And when I told thee he was of my counsel

In my whole course of wooing, thou criedst, “Indeed!”

And didst contract and purse thy brow together,

As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain

Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me,(130)

Show me thy thought.

To this Iago would only say the flat opposite of what he said to Cassio. He had told Cassio that reputation was humbug. To Othello he said,

Good my lord, pardon me;

Though I am bound to every act of duty,

I am not bound to that all slaves are free to.

Utter my thoughts? Why, say they are vile and false;(155)

As where's that palace where in to foul things

Sometimes intrude not? Who has a breast so pure,

But some uncleanly apprehensions

Keep leets and lawdays, and in session sit

With meditations lawful?(160)

.....................................................................

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name(180)

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.

At this Othello almost leapt into the air, saying “By heaven, I'll know thy thoughts.” and Iago was so confident of his jealousy that he ventured to warn him against it:

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!

It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock

The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss

Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;(190)

But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er

Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!

OTHELLO: O misery!

Iago having given jealousy one blow, proceeded to feed it with the remark that Desdemona deceived her father when she eloped with Othello:

IAGO: Poor and content is rich, and rich enough;

But riches fineless is as poor as winter(195)

To him that ever fears he shall be poor.

Good heaven, the souls of all my tribe defend

From jealousy!

OTHELLO: Why, why is this?

Think'st thou I'ld make a life of jealousy,(200)

To follow still the changes of the moon

With fresh suspicions? No! To be once in doubt

Is once to be resolved. Exchange me for a goat,

When I shall turn the business of my soul

To such exsufflicate and blown surmises,(205)

Matching thy inference. 'Tis not to make me jealous

To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,

Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;

Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.

Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw(210)

The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt;

For she had eyes and chose me.

No, Iago, I'll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove;

And on the proof, there is no more but this,

Away at once with love or jealousy!(215)

IAGO: I am glad of it, for now I shall have reason

To show the love and duty that I bear you

With franker spirit. Therefore, as I am bound,

Receive it from me. I speak not yet of proof.

Look to your wife; observe her well with Cassio;(220)

Wear your eye thus, not jealous nor secure.

I would not have your free and noble nature

Out of selfbounty be abused. Look to't.

I know our country disposition well;

In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks(225)

They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience

Is not to leave't undone, but keep't unknown.

OTHELLO: Dost thou say so?

IAGO: She did deceive her father, marrying you;

And when she seem'd to shake and fear your looks,(230)

She loved them most.

OTHELLO: And so she did.

IAGO: Why, go to then.

She that so young could give out such a seeming,

To seel her father's eyes up close as oak—(235)

He thought 'twas witchcraft—but I am much to blame;

I humbly do beseech you of your pardon

For too much loving you.

OTHELLO: I am bound to thee forever.

IAGO: I see this hath a little dash'd your spirits.(240)

OTHELLO: Not a jot, not a jot.

IAGO: I' faith, I fear it has.

I hope you will consider what is spoke

Comes from my love. But I do see you're moved;

I am to pray you not to strain my speech(245)

To grosser issues, nor to larger reach

Than to suspicion.

OTHELLO: I will not.

IAGO: Should you do so, my lord,

My speech should fall into such vile success(250)

Which my thoughts aim not at. Cassio's my worthy friend—

My lord, I see you're moved.

OTHELLO: No, not much moved.

I do not think but Desdemona's honest.

IAGO: Long live she so! and long live you to think so!(255)

OTHELLO: And yet, how nature erring from itself—

IAGO: Ay, there's the point, as—to be bold with you—

Not to affect many proposed matches

Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,

Whereto we see in all things nature tends—(260)

Foh, one may smell in such a will most rank,

Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural.

But pardon me. I do not in position

Distinctly speak of her; though I may fear,

Her will, recoiling to her better judgement,(265)

May fall to match you with her country forms,

And happily repent.

OTHELLO: Farewell, farewell:

If more thou dost perceive, let me know more;

Set on thy wife to observe. Leave me, Iago.(270)

IAGO: My lord, I take my leave.

OTHELLO: Why did I marry? This honest creature doubtless

Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds.

IAGO: My lord, I would I might entreat your honor

To scan this thing no further; leave it to time:(275)

Though it be fit that Cassio have his place,

For sure he fills it up with great ability,

Yet, if you please to hold him off awhile,

You shall by that perceive him and his means:

Note if your lady strain his entertainment(280)

With any strong or vehement importunity;

Much will be seen in that. In the meantime,

Let me be thought too busy in my fears—

As worthy cause I have to fear I am—

And hold her free, I do beseech your honor.(285)

OTHELLO: Fear not my government.

IAGO: I once more take my leave.

Exit.

OTHELLO: This fellow's of exceeding honesty,

And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit,

Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard,(290)

Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings,

I'ld whistle her off and let her down the wind

To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black

And have not those soft parts of conversation

That chamberers have, or for I am declined(295)

Into the vale of years—yet that's not much—

She's gone. I am abused, and my relief

Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage,

That we can call these delicate creatures ours,

And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad,(300)

And live upon the vapor of a dungeon,

Than keep a corner in the thing I love

For others' uses. Yet, 'tis the plague of great ones;

Prerogatived are they less than the base;

'Tis destiny unshunnable, like death:(305)

Even then this forked plague is fated to us

When we do quicken. Desdemona comes:

Enter Desdemona and Emilia.

If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself!

I'll not believe't.

Presently Desdemona re-entered to tell Othello that dinner was ready. She saw that he was ill at ease. He explained it by a pain in his forehead. Desdemona then produced a handkerchief, which Othello had given her. A prophetess, two hundred years old, had made this handkerchief from the silk of sacred silkworms, dyed it in a liquid prepared from the hearts of maidens, and embroidered it with strawberries. Gentle Desdemona thought of it simply as a cool, soft thing for a throbbing brow; she knew of no spell upon it that would work destruction for her who lost it. "Let me tie it round [218] your head," she said to Othello; "you will be well in an hour." But Othello pettishly said it was too small, and let it fall. Desdemona and he then went indoors to dinner, and Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s maid, picked up the handkerchief which Iago had often asked her to steal.

She was looking at it when Iago came in. After a few words about it he snatched it from her, and bade her leave him.

In the garden he was joined by Othello, who seemed hungry for the worst lies he could offer. He therefore told Othello that he had seen Cassio wipe his mouth with a handkerchief, which, because it was spotted with strawberries, he [219] guessed to be one that Othello had given his wife:

I will in Cassio's lodging lose this napkin,

And let him find it. Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmations strong(360)

As proofs of holy writ; this may do something.

The Moor already changes with my poison:

Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,

Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,

But with a little act upon the blood(365)

Burn like the mines of sulphur. I did say so:

The unhappy Moor went mad with fury,

OTHELLO: Ha, ha, false to me?

IAGO: Why, how now, general! No more of that.

OTHELLO: Avaunt! be gone! Thou hast set me on the rack:

I swear 'tis better to be much abused(375)

Than but to know't a little.

IAGO: How now, my lord?

OTHELLO: What sense had I of her stol'n hours of lust?

I saw't not, thought it not, it harm'd not me;

I slept the next night well, was free and merry;(380)

I found not Cassio's kisses on her lips:

He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stol'n,

Let him not know't and he's not robb'd at all.

IAGO: I am sorry to hear this.

OTHELLO: I had been happy if the general camp,(385)

Pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body,

So I had nothing known. O, now forever

Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!

Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars

That make ambition virtue! O, farewell,(390)

Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,

The spiritstirring drum, the earpiercing fife,

The royal banner, and all quality,

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!

And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats(395)

The immortal Jove's dread clamors counterfeit,

Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!

IAGO: Is't possible, my lord?

OTHELLO: Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore;

Be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof;(400)

Or, by the worth of man's eternal soul,

Thou hadst been better have been born a dog

Than answer my waked wrath!

IAGO: Is't come to this?

OTHELLO: Make me to see't; or at the least so prove it,(405)

That the probation bear no hinge nor loop

To hang a doubt on; or woe upon thy life!

IAGO: My noble lord

OTHELLO: If thou dost slander her and torture me,

Never pray more; abandon all remorse;(410)

On horror's head horrors accumulate.

Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;

For nothing canst thou to damnation add

Greater than that.

.........................................

OTHELLO: By the world,

I think my wife be honest, and think she is not;

I think that thou art just, and think thou art not.

I'll have some proof. Her name, that was as fresh

As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black(430)

As mine own face. If there be cords or knives,

Poison or fire, or suffocating streams,

I'll not endure it. Would I were satisfied!

IAGO: I see, sir, you are eaten up with passion;

I do repent me that I put it to you.(435)

You would be satisfied?

OTHELLO: Would? Nay, I will.

IAGO: And may. But, how? how satisfied, my lord?

Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on?

Behold her topp'd?(440)

OTHELLO: Death and damnation! O!

............................................................................

OTHELLO: Give me a living reason she's disloyal.

IAGO: I do not like the office;(455)

But sith I am enter'd in this cause so far,

Prick'd to't by foolish honesty and love,

I will go on. I lay with Cassio lately

And, being troubled with a raging tooth,

I could not sleep.(460)

There are a kind of men so loose of soul,

That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs;

One of this kind is Cassio

In sleep I heard him say, “Sweet Desdemona,

Let us be wary, let us hide our loves”;(465)

And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand,

Cry, “O sweet creature!” and then kiss me hard,

As if he pluck'd up kisses by the roots,

That grew upon my lips; then laid his leg

Over my thigh, and sigh'd and kiss'd; and then(470)

Cried, “Cursed fate that gave thee to the Moor!”

OTHELLO: O monstrous! monstrous!

IAGO: Nay, this was but his dream.

OTHELLO: But this denoted a foregone conclusion:

'Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream.(475)

IAGO: And this may help to thicken other proofs

That do demonstrate thinly.

OTHELLO: I'll tear her all to pieces.

IAGO: Nay, but be wise; yet we see nothing done;

She may be honest yet. Tell me but this;(480)

Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief

Spotted with strawberries in your wife's hand?

OTHELLO: I gave her such a one; 'twas my first gift.

IAGO: I know not that; but such a handkerchief—

I am sure it was your wife's—did I today(485)

See Cassio wipe his beard with.

OTHELLO: If it be that—

IAGO: If it be that, or any that was hers,

It speaks against her with the other proofs.

OTHELLO: O, that the slave had forty thousand lives!(490)

One is too poor, too weak for my revenge.

Now do I see 'tis true. Look here, Iago;

All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven:

'Tis gone.

Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow cell!(495)

Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne

To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,

For 'tis of aspics' tongues!

IAGO: Yet be content.

OTHELLO: O, blood, blood, blood!(500)

IAGO: Patience, I say; your mind perhaps may change.

OTHELLO: Never, Iago: Like to the Pontic Sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont,(505)

Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,

Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,

Till that a capable and wide revenge

Swallow them up. Now, by yond marble heaven,

In the due reverence of a sacred vow(510)

I here engage my words.

IAGO: Do not rise yet.

and Iago bade the heavens witness that he devoted his hand and heart and brain to Othello's service:

Witness, you everburning lights above,

You elements that clip us round about, Iago Kneels.

Witness that here Iago doth give up(515)

The execution of his wit, hands, heart,

To wrong'd Othello's service! Let him command,

And to obey shall be in me remorse,

What bloody business ever.

"I accept your love," said Othello. "Within three days let me hear that Cassio is dead."

Iago's next step was to leave Desdemona's handkerchief in Cassio's room. Cassio saw it, and knew it was not his, but he liked the strawberry pattern on it, and he gave it to his sweetheart Bianca and asked her to copy it for him.

Iago's next move was to induce Othello, who had been bullying Desdemona about the handkerchief, to play the eavesdropper to a conversation between Cassio and himself. His intention was to talk about Cassio's sweetheart, and allow Othello to suppose that the lady spoken of was Desdemona.

"How are you, lieutenant?" asked Iago when Cassio appeared.

"The worse for being called what I am not," replied Cassio, gloomily.

"Keep on reminding Desdemona, and you'll soon be restored," said Iago, adding, in a tone too low [220] for Othello to hear, "If Bianca could set the matter right, how quickly it would mend!"

"Alas! poor rogue," said Cassio, "I really think she loves me," and like the talkative coxcomb he was, Cassio was led on to boast of Bianca's fondness for him, while Othello imagined, with choked rage, that he prattled of Desdemona, and thought, "I see your nose, Cassio, but not the dog I shall throw it to."

Othello was still spying when Bianca entered, boiling over with the idea that Cassio, whom she considered her property, had asked her to copy the embroidery on the handkerchief of a new sweetheart. She tossed him the handkerchief with scornful words, and Cassio departed with her.

Othello had seen Bianca, who was in station lower, in beauty and speech inferior far, to Desdemona, and he began in spite of himself to praise his wife to the villain before him. He praised her skill with the needle, her voice that could "sing the savageness out of a bear," her wit, her sweetness, the fairness of her skin. Every time he praised her Iago said something that made him remember his anger and utter [221] it foully, and yet he must needs praise her, and say, "The pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!"

There was never in all Iago's villainy one moment of wavering. If there had been he might have wavered then.

"Strangle her," he said; and "Good, good!" said his miserable dupe.

The pair were still talking murder when Desdemona appeared with a relative of Desdemona's father, called Lodovico, who bore a letter for Othello from the Duke of Venice. The letter recalled Othello from Cyprus, and gave the governorship to Cassio.

Luckless Desdemona seized this unhappy moment to urge once more the suit of Cassio.

"Fire and brimstone!" shouted Othello.

"It may be the letter agitates him," explained Lodovico to Desdemona, and he told her what it contained.

"I am glad," said Desdemona. It was the first bitter speech that Othello's unkindness had wrung out of her.

"I am glad to see you lose your temper," said Othello.

[222] "Why, sweet Othello?" she asked, sarcastically; and Othello slapped her face.

Now was the time for Desdemona to have saved her life by separation, but she knew not her peril—only that her love was wounded to the core. "I have not deserved this," she said, and the tears rolled slowly down her face.

Lodovico was shocked and disgusted. "My lord," he said, "this would not be believed in Venice. Make her amends;" but, like a madman talking in his nightmare, Othello poured out his foul thought in ugly speech, and roared, "Out of my sight!"

"I will not stay to offend you," said his wife, but she lingered even in going, and only when he shouted "Avaunt!" did she leave her husband and his guests.

Othello then invited Lodovico to supper, adding, "You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys!" Without waiting for a reply he left the company.

Distinguished visitors detest being obliged to look on at family quarrels, and dislike being called either goats or monkeys, and Lodovico asked Iago for an explanation.

True to himself, Iago, in a round-about way, said that Othello was worse than he seemed, and advised them to study his behavior and save him from the discomfort of answering any more questions.

He proceeded to tell Roderigo to murder Cassio. Roderigo was out of tune with his friend. He had [224] given Iago quantities of jewels for Desdemona without effect; Desdemona had seen none of them, for Iago was a thief.

Iago smoothed him with a lie, and when Cassio was leaving Bianca's house, Roderigo wounded him, and was wounded in return. Cassio shouted, and Lodovico and a friend came running up. Cassio pointed out Roderigo as his assailant, and Iago, hoping to rid himself of an inconvenient friend, called him "Villain!" and stabbed him, but not to death.

At the Castle, Desdemona was in a sad mood. She told Emilia that she must leave her; her husband wished it. "Dismiss me!" exclaimed Emilia. "It was his bidding," said Desdemona; "we must not displease him now."

She sang a song which a girl had sung whose lover had been base to her—a song of a maiden crying by that tree whose boughs droop as though it weeps, and she went to bed and slept.

While she is sleeping Othello comes in speaking to himself:

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,--

Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!--

It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood;

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,

And smooth as monumental alabaster.

Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.

Put out the light, and then put out the light:

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore,

Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,

Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd the rose,

I cannot give it vital growth again.

It must needs wither: I'll smell it on the tree.

Kissing her

Ah balmy breath, that dost almost persuade

Justice to break her sword! One more, one more.

Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,

And love thee after. One more, and this the last:

So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep,

But they are cruel tears: this sorrow's heavenly;

It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.

She woke with her husband's wild eyes upon her. "Have you prayed to-night?" he asked; and he told this blameless and sweet woman to ask God's par- [225] don for any sin she might have on her conscience. "I would not kill thy soul," he said.

He told her that Cassio had confessed, but she knew Cassio had nought to confess that concerned her. She said that Cassio could not say anything that would damage her. Othello said his mouth was stopped.

[226] Then Desdemona wept, but with violent words, in spite of all her pleading, Othello pressed upon her throat and mortally hurt her.

Then with boding heart came Emilia, and besought entrance at the door, and Othello unlocked it, and a voice came from the bed saying, "A guiltless death I die."

"Who did it?" cried Emilia; and the voice said, "Nobody—I myself. Farewell!"

"'Twas I that killed her," said Othello.

He poured out his evidence by that sad bed to the people who came running in, Iago among them; but when he spoke of the handkerchief, Emilia told the truth.

And Othello knew. "Are there no stones in heaven but thunderbolts?" he exclaimed, and ran at Iago, who gave Emilia her death-blow and fled.

But they brought him back, and the death that came to him later on was a relief from torture.

They would have taken Othello back to Venice to try him there, but he escaped them on his sword. "A word or two before you go," he said to the Venetians in the chamber. "Speak of me as I was— [226] no better, no worse. Say I cast away the pearl of pearls, and wept with these hard eyes; and say that, when in Aleppo years ago I saw a Turk beating a Venetian, I took him by the throat and smote him thus."

With his own hand he stabbed himself to the heart; and ere he died his lips touched the face of Desdemona with despairing love.