William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition

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5.2 Enter Othello with a light. ⌈He draws back a curtain, revealing⌉ Desdemona asleep in her bed

OTHELLO

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 plucked thy

rose

I cannot give it vital growth again.

It needs must wither. I’ll smell thee on the tree.

[He kisses her]

O 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 that’s the last.

He kisses her

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.

DESDEMONA Who’s there? Othello?

OTHELLO Ay, Desdemona.

DESDEMONA Will you come to bed, my lord?

OTHELLOHave you prayed tonight, Desdemon?

DESDEMONA Ay, my lord.

OTHELLO

If you bethink yourself of any crime

Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace,

Solicit for it straight.

DESDEMONA

Alack, my lord, what may you mean by that?

OTHELLO

Well, do it, and be brief. I will walk by.

I would not kill thy unprepared spirit.

No, heavens forfend! I would not kill thy soul.

DESDEMONA

Talk you of killing?

OTHELLO Ay, I do.

DESDEMONA Then heaven

Have mercy on me.

OTHELLO Amen, with all my heart.

DESDEMONA

If you say so, I hope you will not kill me.

OTHELLO Hum!

DESDEMONA

And yet I fear you, for you’re fatal then

When your eyes roll so. Why I should fear I know not,

Since guiltiness I know not, but yet I feel I fear.

OTHELLO Think on thy sins.

DESDEMONA They are loves I bear to you.

OTHELLO Ay, and for that thou diest.

DESDEMONA

That death’s unnatural that kills for loving.

Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip?

Some bloody passion shakes your very frame.

These are portents, but yet I hope, I hope

They do not point on me.

OTHELLO Peace, and be still.

DESDEMONA

I will so. What’s the matter?

OTHELLO That handkerchief

Which I so loved and gave thee, thou gav’st to Cassio.

DESDEMONA

No, by my life and soul. Send for the man

And ask him.

OTHELLO

Sweet soul, take heed, take heed of perjury.

Thou art on thy deathbed.

DESDEMONA Ay, but not yet to die.

OTHELLO Presently.

Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin,

For to deny each article with oath

Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception

That I do groan withal. Thou art to die.

DESDEMONA

Then Lord have mercy on me.

OTHELLO I say amen.

DESDEMONA

And have you mercy, too. I never did

Offend you in my life, never loved Cassio

But with such general warranty of heaven

As I might love. I never gave him token.

OTHELLO

By heaven, I saw my handkerchief in’s hand.

O perjured woman! Thou dost stone my heart,

And makes me call what I intend to do

A murder, which I thought a sacrifice.

I saw the handkerchief.

DESDEMONA He found it, then.

I never gave it him. Send for him hither.

Let him confess a truth.

OTHELLO He hath confessed.

DESDEMONA

What, my lord?

OTHELLO That he hath used thee.

DESDEMONA How, unlawfully?

OTHELLO Ay.

DESDEMONA He will not say so.

OTHELLONo, his mouth is stopped.

Honest Iago hath ta’en order for’t.

DESDEMONA

O, my fear interprets! What, is he dead?

OTHELLO

Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge

Had stomach for em all.

DESDEMONA (weeping)

Alas, he is betrayed, and I undone.

OTHELLO

Out, strumpet! Weep’st thou for him to my face?

DESDEMONA

O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not.

OTHELLO (attacking her) Down, strumpet.

DESDEMONA

Kill me tomorrow; let me live tonight.

OTHELLO Nay, an you strive—

DESDEMONA But half an hour.

OTHELLO Being done, there is no pause.

DESDEMONA But while I say one prayer.

OTHELLO It is too late.

He smothers her

DESDEMONAO Lord, Lord, Lord!

Emilia at the door

EMILIA (within)

My lord, my lord, what ho, my lord, my lord!

OTHELLO

What noise is this? Not dead? Not yet quite dead?

I that am cruel am yet merciful.

I would not have thee linger in thy pain.

So, so.

EMILIA (within) What ho, my lord, my lord!

OTHELLOWho’s there?

EMILIA (within)

O, good my lord, I would speak a word with you.

OTHELLO (calling)

Yes.—‘Tis Emilia. (Calling) By and by!—She’s dead.

’Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio’s death.

The noise was high. Ha! No more moving.

Still as the grave. Shall she come in? Were’t good?

I think she stirs again. No. What’s best to do?

If she come in, she’ll sure speak to my wife.

My wife, my wife! What wife? I ha’ no wife.

O insupportable, O heavy hour!

Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse

Of sun and moon, and that th’affrighted globe

Should yawn at alteration.

EMILIA (within) I do beseech you

That I may speak with you. O, good my lord!

OTHELLO

I had forgot thee.—O, come in, Emilia.—

Soft, by and by. Let me the curtains draw.

He closes the bed-curtains

Where art thou?

He opens the door. Enter Emilia

What’s the matter with thee now?

EMILIA

O my good lord, yonder’s foul murder’s done.

OTHELLO What, now?

EMILIA But now, my lord.

OTHELLO

It is the very error of the moon,

She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,

And makes men mad.

EMILIA

Cassio, my lord, hath killed a young Venetian

Called Roderigo.

OTHELLO Roderigo killed

And Cassio killed?

EMILIA No, Cassio is not killed.

OTHELLO

Not Cassio killed? Then murder’s out of tune,

And sweet revenge grows harsh.

DESDEMONA O, falsely, falsely murdered!

EMILIA O Lord, what cry is that?

OTHELLO That? What?

EMILIA

Out and alas, that was my lady’s voice!

⌈She opens the bed-curtains

Help, help, ho, help ! O lady, speak again!

Sweet Desdemona, O sweet mistress, speak!

DESDEMONA

A guiltless death I die.

EMILIA O, who hath done this deed?

DESDEMONA

Nobody, I myself. Farewell.

Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell! She dies

OTHELLO

Why, how should she be murdered?

EMILIA Alas, who knows?

OTHELLO

You heard her say herself it was not I.

EMILIA

She said so, I must needs report the truth.

OTHELLO

She’s like a liar gone to burning hell.

’Twas I that killed her.

EMILIA

O, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil!

OTHELLO

She turned to folly, and she was a whore.

EMILIA

Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil.

OTHELLO

She was false as water.

EMILIA Thou art rash as fire

To say that she was false. O, she was heavenly true!

OTHELLO

Cassio did top her. Ask thy husband else.

O, I were damned beneath all depth in hell

But that I did proceed upon just grounds

To this extremity! Thy husband knew it all.

EMILIA

My husband?

OTHELLO Thy husband.

EMILIA That she was false to wedlock?

OTHELLO

Ay, with Cassio. Had she been true,

If heaven would make me such another world

Of one entire and perfect chrysolite

I’d not have sold her for it.

EMILIA My husband?

OTHELLO

Ay, ’twas he that told me on her first.

An honest man he is, and hates the slime

That sticks on filthy deeds.

EMILIA My husband?

OTHELLO

What needs this iterance? Woman, I say thy husband.

EMILIA

O mistress, villainy hath made mocks with love.

My husband say she was false?

OTHELLO He, woman.

I say thy husband. Dost understand the word?

My friend, thy husband, honest, honest Iago.

EMILIA

If he say so, may his pernicious soul

Rot half a grain a day. He lies to th’ heart.

She was too fond of her most filthy bargain.

OTHELLO Ha?

EMILIA Do thy worst.

This deed of thine is no more worthy heaven

Than thou wast worthy her.

OTHELLO Peace, you were best.

EMILIA

Thou hast not half that power to do me harm

As I have to be hurt. O gull, O dolt,

As ignorant as dirt! Thou hast done a deed—

I care not for thy sword, I’ll make thee known

Though I lost twenty lives. Help, help, hot Help!

The Moor hath killed my mistress. Murder, murder!

Enter Montano, Graziano, and Iago

MONTANO

What is the matter? How now, general?

EMILIA

O, are you come, Iago? You have done well,

That men must lay their murders on your neck.

GRAZIANO What is the matter?

EMILIA (to Iago)

Disprove this villain if thou beest a man.

He says thou told‘st him that his wife was false.

I know thou didst not. Thou’rt not such a villain.

Speak, for my heart is full.

IAGO

I told him what I thought, and told no more

Than what he found himself was apt and true.

EMILIA

But did you ever tell him she was false?

IACO I did.

EMILIA

You told a lie, an odious, damnèd lie,

Upon my soul a lie, a wicked lie.

She false with Cassio? Did you say with Cassio?

IAGO

With Cassio, mistress. Go to, charm your tongue.

EMILIA

I will not charm my tongue. I am bound to speak.

My mistress here lies murdered in her bed.

⌈MONTANO and GRAZIANO⌉ O heavens forfend!

EMILIA (to Iago)

And your reports have set the murder on.

OTHELLO

Nay, stare not, masters. It is true indeed.

GRAZIANO

’Tis a strange truth.

MONTANO O monstrous act!

EMILIA

Villainy, villainy, villainy!

I think upon’t, I think. I smell’t. O villainy!

I thought so then. I’ll kill myself for grief.

O villainy, villainy!

IAGO

What, are you mad? I charge you get you home.

EMILIA

Good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak.

‘Tis proper I obey him, but not now.

Perchance, Iago, I will ne’er go home.

OTHELLO

O, O, O!

Othello falls on the bed

EMILIA Nay, lay thee down and roar,

For thou hast killed the sweetest innocent

That e’er did lift up eye.

OTHELLO ⌈rising ⌉ O, she was foul!

(To Graziano) I scarce did know you, uncle. There lies

your niece,

Whose breath indeed these hands have newly

stopped.

I know this act shows horrible and grim

GRAZIANO

Poor Desdemon, I am glad thy father’s dead.

Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief

Shore his old thread in twain. Did he live now

This sight would make him do a desperate turn,

Yea, curse his better angel from his side,

And fall to reprobance.

OTHELLO

’Tis pitiful. But yet Iago knows

That she with Cassio hath the act of shame

A thousand times committed. Cassio confessed it,

And she did gratify his amorous works

With that recognizance and pledge of love

Which I first gave her. I saw it in his hand.

It was a handkerchief, an antique token

My father gave my mother.

EMILIA O God! O heavenly God!

IAGO

’Swounds, hold your peace!

EMILIA ‘Twill out, ’twill out. I peace?

No, I will speak as liberal as the north.

Let heaven, and men, and devils, let ’em all,

All, all cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak.

IAGO Be wise and get you home.

EMILIA I will not.

Iago draws his sword

GRAZIANO (to Iago) Fie, your sword upon a woman?

EMILIA

O thou dull Moor, that handkerchief thou speak’st of

I found by fortune and did give my husband,

For often, with a solemn earnestness—

More than indeed belonged to such a trifle—

He begged of me to steal’t.

IAGO Villainous whore!

EMILIA

She give it Cassio? No, alas, I found it,

And I did give’t my husband.

IAGO Filth, thou liest.

EMILIA

By heaven I do not, I do not, gentlemen.

O murderous coxcomb! What should such a fool

Do with so good a wife?

OTHELLO Are there no stones in heaven

But what serves for the thunder? Precious villain!

The Moor runs at lago. Montano disarms Othello. Iago wounds his wife

GRAZIANO

The woman falls. Sure he hath killed his wife.

EMILIA

Ay, ay. O, lay me by my mistress’ side!

Exit lago

GRAZIANO He’s gone, but his wife’s killed.

MONTANO

‘Tis a notorious villain. Take you this weapon

Which I have here recovered from the Moor.

Come, guard the door without. Let him not pass,

But kill him rather. I’ll after that same villain,

For ’tis a damned slave. Exeunt Montano and Graziano

OTHELLO I am not valiant neither,

But every puny whipster gets my sword.

But why should honour outlive honesty?

Let it go all.

EMILIA What did thy song bode, lady?

Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan,

And die in music. (Sings) ‘Willow, willow, willow.’—

Moor, she was chaste. She loved thee, cruel Moor.

So come my soul to bliss as I speak true.

So, speaking as I think, alas, I die. She dies

OTHELLO

I have another weapon in this chamber.

It was a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper.

O, here it is. (Calling) Uncle, I must come forth.

GRAZIANO (within)

If thou attempt it, it will cost thee dear.

Thou hast no weapon, and perforce must suffer.

OTHELLO

Look in upon me then, and speak with me,

Or, naked as I am, I will assault thee.

Enter Graziano

GRAZIANO

What is the matter?

OTHELLO Behold, I have a weapon;

A better never did itself sustain

Upon a soldier’s thigh. I have seen the day

That, with this little arm and this good sword,

I have made my way through more impediments

Than twenty times your stop. But O, vain boast!

Who can control his fate? ‘Tis not so now.

Be not afraid, though you do see me weaponed.

Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt

And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.

Do you go back dismayed? ’Tis a lost fear.

Man but a rush against Othello’s breast

And he retires. Where should Othello go?

(To Desdemona) Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-

starred wench,

Pale as thy smock! When we shall meet at count

This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,

And fiends will snatch at it.

⌈He touches her⌉

Cold, cold, my girl,

Even like thy chastity. O cursed, cursed slavel

Whip me, ye devils,

From the possession of this heavenly sight.

Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur,

Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!

O Desdemon! Dead Desdemon! Dead! 0! 0!

Enter Lodovico, Montano, Iago guarded by officers, with Cassio in a chair

LODOVICO

Where is this rash and most unfortunate man?

OTHELLO

That’s he that was Othello. Here I am.

LODOVICO

Where is that viper? Bring the villain forth.

OTHELLO

I look down towards his feet, but that’s a fable.

(To Iago) If that thou beest a devil I cannot kill thee.

He wounds Iago

LODOVICO

Wrench his sword from him.

Officers disarm Othello

IAGO I bleed, sir, but not killed.

OTHELLO

I am not sorry, neither. I’d have thee live,

For in my sense ’tis happiness to die.

LODOVICO

O thou Othello, that was once so good,

Fall’n in the practice of a cursed slave,

What shall be said to thee?

OTHELLO Why, anything;

An honourable murderer, if you will,

For naught I did in hate, but all in honour.

LODOVICO

This wretch hath part confessed his villainy.

Did you and he consent in Cassio’s death?

OTHELLO Ay.

CASSIO

Dear general, I never gave you cause.

OTHELLO

I do believe it, and I ask your pardon.

Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil

Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?

IAGO

Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.

From this time forth I never will speak word.

LODOVICO (to Iago) What, not to pray?

GRAZIANO (to Iago) Torments will ope your lips.

OTHELLO Well, thou dost best.

LODOVICO

Sir, you shall understand what hath befall’n,

Which as, I think, you know not. Here is a letter,

Found in the pocket of the slain Roderigo,

And here another. The one of them imports

The death of Cassio, to be undertook

By Roderigo.

OTHELLO O villain!

CASSIO Most heathenish and most gross.

LODOVICO

Now here’s another discontented paper

Found in his pocket too, and this it seems

Roderigo meant to’ve sent this damned villain,

But that, belike, Iago in the interim

Came in and satisfied him.

OTHELLO (to Iago) O thou pernicious caitiff!

How came you, Cassio, by that handkerchief

That was my wife’s?

CASSIO I found it in my chamber,

And he himself confessed it, but even now,

That there he dropped it for a special purpose

Which wrought to his desire.

OTHELLO O fool, fool, fool!

CASSIO

There is besides in Roderigo’s letter

How he upbraids Iago, that he made him

Brave me upon the watch, whereon it came

That I was cast; and even but now he spake

After long seeming dead, Iago hurt him,

Iago set him on.

LODOVICO (to Othello)

You must forsake this room and go with us.

Your power and your command is taken off,

And Cassio rules in Cyprus. For this slave,

If there be any cunning cruelty

That can torment him much and hold him long,

It shall be his. You shall close prisoner rest

Till that the nature of your fault be known

To the Venetian state. (To officers) Come, bring away.

OTHELLO

Soft you, a word or two before you go.

I have done the state some service, and they know’t.

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak

Of one that loved not wisely but too well,

Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought,

Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinable gum. Set you down this,

And say besides that in Aleppo once,

Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,

I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog

And smote him thus.

He stabs himself

LODOVICO O bloody period!

GRAZIANO All that is spoke is marred.

OTHELLO (to Desdemona)

I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this:

Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

He kisses Desdemona and dies

CASSIO

This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon,

For he was great of heart.

LODOVICO (to Iago) O Spartan dog,

More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea,

Look on the tragic loading of this bed.

This is thy work. The object poisons sight.

Let it be hid.

⌈They close the bed-curtains ⌉

Graziano, keep the house,

And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor,

For they succeed on you. (To Cassio) To you, Lord

Governor,

Remains the censure of this hellish villain.

The time, the place, the torture, O, enforce it!

Myself will straight aboard, and to the state

This heavy act with heavy heart relate.

Exeunt ⌈with Emilia’s bodyl ⌉

THE HISTORY OF KING LEAR

THE QUARTO TEXT

King Lear first appeared in print in a quarto of 1608. A substantially different text appeared in the 1623 Folio. Until the first appearance of the Oxford text, editors, assuming that each of these early texts imperfectly represented a single play, conflated them. But research conducted mainly during the 1970s and 1980s confirms an earlier view that the 1608 quarto represents the play as Shakespeare originally wrote it, and the 1623 Folio as he substantially revised it. He revised other plays, too, but usually by making many small changes in the dialogue and adding or omitting passages, as in Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello. For these plays we print the revised text in so far as it can be ascertained. But in King Lear revisions are not simply local but structural, too; conflation, as Harley Granville-Barker wrote, ‘may make for redundancy or confusion’, so we print an edited version of each text. The first, printed in the following pages, represents the play as Shakespeare first conceived it, probably before it was performed.

The story of a king who, angry with the failure of his virtuous youngest daughter (Cordelia) to respond as he desires in a love-test, divides his kingdom between her two malevolent sisters (Gonoril and Regan), had been often told; Shakespeare would have come upon it in Holinshed’s Chronicles and in A Mirror for Magistrates while reading for his plays on English history. It is told also (though briefly) in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Book 2, canto 10), and had been dramatized in a play of unknown authorship—The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his three daughters—published in 1605, but probably written some fifteen years earlier. This play particularly gave Shakespeare much, including suggestions for the characters of Lear’s loyal servant, Kent, and of Gonoril’s husband, Albany, and her steward, Oswald; for the storm; for Lear’s kneeling to Cordelia; and for many details of language. Nevertheless, his play is a highly original creation. Lear’s madness and the harrowing series of disasters in King Lear’s final stages are of Shakespeare’s invention, and he complicates the plot by adding the story (based on an episode of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia) of Gloucester and his two sons, Edmund and Edgar. Edgar’s love and loyalty to the father who, failing to see the truth, has rejected him in favour of the villainous Edmund makes him a counterpart to Cordelia; and the horrific blinding of Gloucester brought about by Edmund creates a physical parallel to Lear’s madness which reaches its consummation in the scene (Sc. 20) at Dover Cliff when the mad and the blind old men commune together.

The clear-eyed intensity of Shakespeare’s tragic vision in King Lear has been too much for some audiences, and Nahum Tate’s adaptation, which gave the play a happy ending, held the stage from 1681 to 1843; since then, increased understanding of Shakespeare’s stagecraft along with a greater seriousness in theatre audiences has assisted in the rehabilitation of a play that is now recognized as one of the profoundest of all artistic explorations of the human condition.

In the text which follows, the Quarto scene numbers are followed by the equivalent Folio act and scene numbers in parentheses. There is no equivalent to Sc. 17 in the Folio.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

LEAR, King of Britain

GONORIL, Lear’s eldest daughter

Duke of ALBANY, her husband

REGAN, Lear’s second daughter

Duke of CORNWALL, her husband

CORDELIA, Lear’s youngest daughter