ACT 1
Scene 1

...bags! Thieves, thieves!
Enter Brabantio, above.
What is the reason of this terrible summons?
What is the matter there?

...your doors locked?
Why, wherefore ask you this?

...Arise, I say!
What, have you lost your wits?

...know my voice?
Not I. What are you?

...name is Roderigo.
The worser welcome.
I have charged thee not to haunt about my doors.
In honest plainness thou hast heard me say
My daughter is not for thee. And now in madness,
Being full of supper and distemp’ring draughts,
Upon malicious bravery dost thou come
To start my quiet.

...Sir, sir, sir—
But thou must needs be sure
My spirit and my place have in them power
To make this bitter to thee.

...Patience, good sir.
What tell’st thou me of robbing?
This is Venice. My house is not a grange.

...jennets for germans.
What profane wretch art thou?

...with two backs.
Thou art a villain.

...are a senator.
This thou shalt answer. I know thee, Roderigo.

...thus deluding you.
Strike on the tinder, ho!
Give me a taper. Call up all my people.
This accident is not unlike my dream.
Belief of it oppresses me already.
Light, I say, light!
He exits.

...him. So, farewell.
Enter Brabantio in his nightgown, with Servants and Torches.
It is too true an evil. Gone she is,
And what’s to come of my despisèd time
Is naught but bitterness.—Now, Roderigo,
Where didst thou see her?—O, unhappy girl!—
With the Moor, sayst thou?—Who would be a father?—
How didst thou know ’twas she?—O, she deceives me
Past thought!—What said she to you?—Get more tapers.
Raise all my kindred.—Are they married, think you?

...think they are.
O heaven! How got she out? O treason of the blood!
Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters’ minds
By what you see them act.—Is there not charms
By which the property of youth and maidhood
May be abused? Have you not read, Roderigo,
Of some such thing?

...I have indeed.
Call up my brother.—O, would you had had her!—
Some one way, some another.—Do you know
Where we may apprehend her and the Moor?

...along with me.
Pray you lead on. At every house I’ll call.
I may command at most.—Get weapons, ho!
And raise some special officers of night.—
On, good Roderigo. I will deserve your pains.
They exit.

Scene 2

...seek for you.
Enter Brabantio, Roderigo, with Officers, and Torches.

...is the Moor.
Down with him, thief!
They draw their swords.

...with your weapons.
O, thou foul thief, where hast thou stowed my daughter?
Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her!
For I’ll refer me to all things of sense,
If she in chains of magic were not bound,
Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy,
So opposite to marriage that she shunned
The wealthy curlèd darlings of our nation,
Would ever have, t’ incur a general mock,
Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom
Of such a thing as thou—to fear, not to delight!
Judge me the world, if ’tis not gross in sense
That thou hast practiced on her with foul charms,
Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals
That weakens motion. I’ll have ’t disputed on.
’Tis probable, and palpable to thinking.
I therefore apprehend and do attach thee
For an abuser of the world, a practicer
Of arts inhibited and out of warrant.—
Lay hold upon him. If he do resist,
Subdue him at his peril.

...this your charge?
To prison, till fit time
Of law and course of direct session
Call thee to answer.

...is sent for.
How? The Duke in council?
In this time of the night? Bring him away;
Mine’s not an idle cause. The Duke himself,
Or any of my brothers of the state,
Cannot but feel this wrong as ’twere their own.
For if such actions may have passage free,
Bondslaves and pagans shall our statesmen be.
They exit.

Scene 3

...the valiant Moor.
Enter Brabantio, Othello, Cassio, Iago, Roderigo, and Officers.

...your help tonight.
So did I yours. Good your Grace, pardon me.
Neither my place nor aught I heard of business
Hath raised me from my bed, nor doth the general care
Take hold on me, for my particular grief
Is of so floodgate and o’erbearing nature
That it engluts and swallows other sorrows
And it is still itself.

...what’s the matter?
My daughter! O, my daughter!

... Dead?
Ay, to me.
She is abused, stol’n from me, and corrupted
By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;
For nature so prepost’rously to err—
Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense—
Sans witchcraft could not.

...in your action.
Humbly I thank your Grace.
Here is the man—this Moor, whom now it seems
Your special mandate for the state affairs
Hath hither brought.

...say to this?
Nothing, but this is so.

...won his daughter.
A maiden never bold,
Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion
Blushed at herself. And she, in spite of nature,
Of years, of country, credit, everything,
To fall in love with what she feared to look on!
It is a judgment maimed and most imperfect
That will confess perfection so could err
Against all rules of nature, and must be driven
To find out practices of cunning hell
Why this should be. I therefore vouch again
That with some mixtures powerful o’er the blood,
Or with some dram conjured to this effect,
He wrought upon her.

...their bare hands.
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.—Come hither, gentle mistress.
Do you perceive in all this noble company
Where most you owe obedience?

...Moor my lord.
God be with you! I have done.
Please it your Grace, on to the state affairs.
I had rather to adopt a child than get it.—
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.

...a bootless grief.
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;
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow
That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow.
These sentences to sugar or to gall,
Being strong on both sides, are equivocal.
But words are words. I never yet did hear
That the bruised heart was piercèd through the ear.
I humbly beseech you, proceed to th’ affairs of state.

...at her father’s.
I will not have it so.

...use Desdemona well.
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see.
She has deceived her father, and may thee.
He exits.