Puslapio vaizdai
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This relick late a Boem pilgrim bare,

And gave her father other things beside,

Which costly things he kept with no small care.

O. F. Canto xxviii. St. 15.

But the mention of "mummy," and other points in the passage, seem to guide us to the true Egyptians, neighbours of the Moors.

There is something more classical in the expression

In her prophetic fury sewed the work,

than is perhaps anywhere else to be found in these plays; but the phrase may have presented itself to Shakespeare in the writings of Sylvester, where it often occurs.

III. 3. IAGO.

Not poppy, nor MANDRAGORA,

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,

Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow'd'st yesterday.

A little further justification or elucidation of "mandragora" than the notes supply may be acceptable. The word occurs again in Anthony and Cleopatra:

Give me to drink mandragora

That I may sleep out this great gap of time
My Anthony is away.

Act i. Sc. 6.

Parkinson (Paradisus Terrestris, fol. 1629, page 378) speaks of it as only another name for the mandrake; but it appears from what he says that it was not used in England as a soporific. He states, however, that it is regarded as possessed of the soporiferous quality :-"The apples have a soporiferous property, as Levinus Lemnius maketh mention, in his Herbal to the Bible, of an experiment of his own." Sir John Ferne (Blazon of Gentry, 4to. 1586, p. 112) says, that "Macrobius, Duke of Carthage, set upon the

Assyrians' camp, even when they were sunk into a drunken sleep, by the immoderate use of wine with mandrake;" and, like him, Parkinson says, that "Hamilcar, the Carthaginian captain, is said to have infected the wine of the Lybians with the apples of mandrake, whereby, they being made exceeding drowsy, he obtained a famous victory over them." Bartholomeus (De Proprietatibus Rerum, lib. xvii. cap. 104) says that the rind infused in wine is given to drink to them that are to be cut by the surgeon, that they should sleep. It may be suspected that when Shakespeare used the word, mandragora had but a traditional and historical claim to be reckoned among the "drowsy syrups of the world," though Cole says in his Dictionary that it is "a root used by the chirurgeons to cast men into a deep sleep."

III. 3. OTHELLO.

Pride, pomp, and CIRCUMSTANCE of glorious war.

So singular a use of the word "circumstance" requires something to shew that it was not without precedent. Take the following from Langley's Translation of Polydore Virgil, where we find that the Romans celebrated their dead" with great pomp and circumstance." Fol. 122 b.

IV. 2. OтHello.

but (alas!) to make me

A fixed figure, for the time of scorn

To point his slow unmoving finger at.

Thus the passage about which there has been so much controversy stands in the Variorum.

The quartos represent it thus:

but alas, to make me

A fixed figure, for the time of scorne,

To point his slow unmouing finger (and fingers) at.

The folios

But alas, to make me

The fixed Figure for the time of Scorne
To point his slow, and moving finger at.

These variations shew that there was some uncertainty about the true reading of the passage among the author's contemporaries. I have little doubt that the particles "of" and "for" have changed places: and that, on the whole, the true reading is

but, alas! to make me

The fixed figure of the time, for Scorn

To point his slow and moving finger at.

It is of the nature of that feeling which leads a person to suppose himself an object of scorn and derision, to think of himself also as an object of universal attention. Thus Othello represents to himself that he shall be "the fixed figure of the time," the one object of public attention, every passer by pointing at him the finger of scorn.

IV. 3. DESDEMONA.

My mother had a maid, called—Barbara;
She was in love; and he she loved proved mad
And did forsake her; she had a song of willow,

An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune,
And she died singing it.

Ludovicus Vives cautions women of quality from entertaining in their service young women who could "sing a ballad with a clear voice." They were rather to choose one "sad, pale, and untrimmed." He was following Jerome. His Instruction of a Christian Woman was published in English in 1592.

IV. 3. DESDEMONA.

Heaven me such uses send,

Not to pick bad from bad; but by bad mend.

Shakespeare having remarked in King John

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds

Makes ill deeds done,

we may probably take these words of Desdemona, as beside their purpose in the drama itself, intended as a hint and warning to the audience not to be infected by the fearful instance about to be presented of the higher paroxysms of passion. We have noticed similar caution on other occasions.

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

All the original copies agree in this reading: and, as far as I know, none of the modern editors have found any difficulty in accepting it, and giving it a place in the text without note or comment. Yet I confess the sense is not clear to me. It seems as if it should be that Othello is the "betrayed," not Cassio, or any other person whom the Moor in his disor.. dered mind may suppose to be a second Cassio. I would therefore suggest, as worthy of consideration, that the line may have been originally—

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

This conjecture is to a certain extent supported by the use of the word betray in the following passage of Beard's Theatre of God's Judgment, 4to 1531:-"Out of the same fountain sprang the words of Queen Hecuba in Euripides, speaking to Menelaus touching Helen, when she admonished him to enact this law, that any woman which should betray

her husband's credit and her own chastity to another man, should die the death." p. 387.

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The commentators have not informed us what tree or what gum is here intended.

The gum is probably that called Bernix, of which the following account is given in The Great Herbal:- "Bernix is the gomme of a tre that groweth beyond the see. For this tre droppeth a gommy thicknesse that hardeneth by heat of the sonne." Its uses in medicine are then described,

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