39 And bring them after in the best advantage. Rod. Iago. Iago. What say'st thou, noble heart? Rod. I will incontinently drown myself. Iago. Well, if thou dost, I shall never love thee after it. Why, thou silly gentleman! Rod. It is silliness to live, when to live is a torment; and then have we a prescription to die, when death is our physician. Iago. O villainous! I have look'd upon the world for four times seven years; 40 and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found a man that knew how to love himself. Ere 39 That is, fairest opportunity. 40 This clearly ascertains the age of Iago to be twenty-eight years; though the general impression of him is that of a much older man. The Poet, we doubt not, had a wise purpose in making him so young, as it infers his virulence of mind to be something innate and spontaneous, and not superinduced by harsh experience of the world. Mr. Verplanck remarks upon thus: "An old soldier of acknowledged merit, who, after years of service, sees a young man like Cassio placed over his head, has not a little to plead in justification of deep resentment, and in excuse, though not in defence, of his revenge: such a man may well brood over imaginary wrongs. The caustic sarcasm and contemptuous estimate of mankind are at least pardonable in a soured and disappointed veteran. But in a young man the revenge is more purely gratuitous, the hypocrisy, the knowledge, the dexterous manage. ment of the worst and weakest parts of human nature, the recklessness of moral feeling,· even the stern, bitter wit, intellectual and contemptuous, without any of the gayety of youth, are all precocious and peculiar; separating lago from the ordinary sympathies of our nature, and investing him with higher talent and blacker guilt." H. I would say I would drown myself for the love of a Guinea-hen," I would change my humanity with a baboon. Rod. What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond; but it is not in my virtue to amend it. Iago. Virtue? a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus. Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that, if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce; set hyssop, and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many; either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance 42 of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: But we have reason, to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect, or scion.** Rod. It cannot be. 43 Iago. It is merely a lust of the blood, and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself? drown cats and blind puppies. I have profess'd me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I 41 Guinea-hen was a cant term for a woman of easy virtue. 42 So the quartos; the folio has brain, perhaps a misprint for beam. In the second line of this speech, the folio has our before gardens. 1 H. 43 A sect is what the gardeners call a cutting. - -"This speech," says Coleridge, "comprises the passionless character of Iago. It is all will in intellect; and therefore he is here a bold partizan of a truth, but yet of a truth converted into a falsehood by the absence of all the necessary modifications caused by the frail nature of man." H. could never better stead thee than now. thy purse; 45 44 Put mon ey in thy purse; follow these wars; defeat thy favour with an usurp'd beard: I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be, that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,-put money in nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration; put but money in thy purse. These Moors are changeable in their wills;-fill thy purse with money: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts,46 shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. She must change for youth when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice. She must have change, she must; therefore put money in thy purse. -If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst. If sanctimony and a frail vow, betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian, be not too hard for my wits, and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hang'd in compassing thy joy, than to be drown'd and go without her. 48 47 Rod. Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on the issue? 44 Defeat was used for disfigurement or alteration of features: from the French défaire. Favour is countenance. 45 Sequestration is defined to be "a putting apart, a separation of a thing from the possession of both those that contend for it." 46 Alluding, probably, to the ceratonia or carob, an evergreen growing in the south of Europe, and bearing sweet black pods. Commerce had made the fruit well known in London, and locust was the popular name for it. 47 This iteration, 66 H. She must have change, she must," is in both the quartos, but not in the folio, H. 48 Erring is here used in its Latin sense of erratic or wandering. So in Hamlet: Th' extravagant and erring spirit." 66 H. Iago. Thou art sure of me.—Go, make money. -I have told thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I hate the Moor: my cause is hearted; thine hath no less reason. Let us be conjunctive in our revenge against him: if thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time, which will be delivered. Traverse,19 go: provide thy money. We will have more of this to-morrow. - Adieu. Rod. Where shall we meet i'the morning? Iago. At my lodging. Rod. I'll be with thee betimes. Iago. Go to; farewell. Do you hear, Roderigo? Rod. What say you? 5 50 Iago. No more of drowning; do you hear? Iago. Go to; farewell: put money enough in your purse. [Exit RODERIGO. 51 Thus do I ever make my fool my purse; 49 That is, march. See 2 Henry IV., Act iii. sc. 2, note 15. 50 This speech, and all that follows, down to the exit of Roderigo, except the words, "I'll sell all my land," is wanting in the folio. The quarto of 1622 gives all of the text; and that of 1630 all but the words, "Go to; farewell put money enough in your purse." H. 51 Note Iago's pride of mastery in the repetition, "Go, make money," to his anticipated dupe, even stronger than his love of lucre; and, when Roderigo is completely won, when the effect has been fully produced, the repetition of his triumph: "Go to; farewell put money enough in your purse!" The remainder Iago's soliloquy-the motive-bunting of a motiveless malignityhow awful it is! Yea, whilst he is still allowed to bear the divine image, it is too fiendish for his own steady view,- for the lonely gaze of a being next to devil, and only not quite devil; ⚫ and yet a character which Shakespeare has attempted and executed, without disgust and without scandal. - COLERidge. H. But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor; To be suspected; fram'd to make women false:- I have't! it is engender'd!-Hell and night 53 Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light. [Exit. 52 That is, I will act as if I were certain of the fact. "He holds me well," is, he entertains a good opinion of me. 53 Shakespeare has shown great judgment in the darkness which he makes to prevail in the first counsels of Iago. To the Poet himself, all the succeeding events must have been clear and determined; but to bring himself again into the situation of one who sees them in embryo, to draw a mist over that which he had already cleared, must have required an exertion of genius peculiar to this author alone. In so lively a manner does he make Iago show his perplexity about the future management of his conduct, that one is almost tempted to think that the Poet had determined as little himself about some of the particulars of Othello's destruction. Anderson's Bee, vol. i. H. |