for evidently Iago is more in Othello's confidence than any one. When Iago is gone for this purpose, Othello takes the opportunity to relate, by the Duke's leave, how he obtained Desdemona's love, saying in moving words:

"Her father lov'd me; oft invited me;
Still question'd me the story of my life,

From year to year-the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it;
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of being taken by the insolent foe

And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence."

Othello proceeds to relate some risks and adventures of his early life, the natural wonders of different lands he had visited, and the various savages he had seen or heard about. Among these he mentions a race that neither ancient history nor modern discovery acknowledges as ever existing for certain, though obscurely hinted at by the ancient and comparatively modern writers, Pliny and Sir Walter Raleigh.1

"The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

During his wonderful narrative Othello, like some other travellers, apparently mingled fact and fiction together, either through his own credulity or from wishing to astonish as well as interest his hearers,

• Staunton's notes.

He adds, referring to the effect of his narrative on Desdemona :

"This to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline :

But still the house affairs would draw her thence:
Which ever as she could with haste despatch,
She would 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.

My story being done,

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,

And bade me if I had a friend that lov'd her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story,

And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake :
She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd,

And I lov'd her that she did pity them."

Then, scornfully reverting to Brabantio's charge against him, he concludes:

"This only is the witchcraft I have used.

Here comes the lady; let her witness it."

Desdemona enters with Iago and attendants, while the Duke, deeply impressed by Othello's words, besides having high esteem for his past service to Venice, exclaims with sympathetic feeling :

"I think this tale would win my daughter too."

Then, addressing Brabantio, who has remained silent during Othello's speech, but doubtless heard it with

earnest attention, the Duke proceeds to give him advice:

"Good Brabantio,

Take up this mangled matter at the best,"

evidently wishing him to be reconciled to his new son-in-law, and utterly disbelieving in the idea of Othello's having bewitched Desdemona. Brabantio's love of truth and frankness has evidently been impressed by Othello's words, yet he is still too prejudiced and irritated to quite believe them, and firmly replies:

"I pray you, hear her speak:

If she confess that she was half the wooer,
Destruction on my head, if my bad blame
Light on the man!"

He then asks his daughter the important question, on her answer to which depends, indeed, all the happiness of his future life :

"Come hither, gentle mistress :

Do you perceive in all this noble company
Where most you owe obedience?"

All wait in silence, as so much depends on Desdemona's reply to this solemn and, in her case, awful question. To the grief and amazement of her father, she answers in the calm style of a rational mind, free from all secret evil influence, but fully determined and resolute :

My noble father,

I do perceive here a divided duty:

To you I am bound for life and education.

You are the lord of duty :

I am hitherto your daughter; but here's my husband,
And so much duty as my mother show'd
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord."

These words convince Brabantio for the first time that his daughter has left him of her own free will. He now knows that Desdemona, apparently convinced that he would never have consented to her wishes, had therefore secretly married Othello, who, though friendly with him, had never even hinted about his love for Desdemona. Overcome, amazed and shocked

Desdemona's free admission of her thoughts and acts, Brabantio exclaims, evidently from his heart, as he now abandons her for ever, and believes that she has ungratefully abandoned him :

"God be with you !—I have done."

Then, as if trying to suppress his private grief in turning to his country's welfare, he proceeds, addressing the Duke for the moment:

"Please it your grace, on to the State affairs";

and at once reverting to his own troubles, he addresses both Othello and his daughter in words of sad and solemn abandonment :

"Come hither, Moor:

I here do give thee that with all my heart
Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart
I would keep from thee. For your sake, jewel,
I am glad at soul I have no other child;
For thy escape would teach me tyranny,
To hang clogs on them. I have done, my lord."

The Duke recognising much to respect in both Othello and Brabantio, and naturally anxious to reconcile such men, calmly replies to the latter:

"Let me speak like yourself,' and lay a sentence,

Which, as a grise or step, may help these lovers
Into your favour."

He then proceeds, vainly interceding, and perhaps quoting, in favour of the newly married pair:

"When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
What cannot be preserv'd when Fortune takes
Patience her injury a mockery makes.

The robb'd that smiles, steals something from the thief;
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief."

This calm, quaint, yet wise advice, in a case which the adviser has nothing to do with, has no effect on the heart-broken Brabantio. He answers it with almost sarcastic bitterness, while vainly trying to turn his afflicted mind from private sorrows to public business. Knowing the Venetian anxiety to preserve Cyprus from the Turks, he aptly, even in the midst of his depression, compares an apprehended political loss to his own private deprivation, and exclaims :

"So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile;

We lose it not, so long as we can smile.

He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears,
But the free comfort, which from thence he hears,

Mr. Staunton suggests, "He perhaps means sententiously."