Enter Pompey and Mistress Overdone, ⌈meeting⌉
MISTRESS OVERDONE How now, what’s the news with you?
POMPEY Yonder man is carried to prison.
MISTRESS OVERDONE Well! What has he done?
POMPEY A woman.
MISTRESS OVERDONE But what’s his offence?
POMPEY Groping for trouts in a peculiar river.
MISTRESS OVERDONE What, is there a maid with child by him?
POMPEY No, but there’s a woman with maid by him: you have not heard of the proclamation, have you?
MISTRESS OVERDONE What proclamation, man?
POMPEY All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down.
MISTRESS OVERDONE And what shall become of those in the city?
POMPEY They shall stand for seed. They had gone down too, but that a wise burgher put in for them.
MISTRESS OVERDONE But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be pulled down?
POMPEY To the ground, mistress.
MISTRESS OVERDONE Why, here’s a change indeed in the commonwealth. What shall become of me?
POMPEY Come, fear not you. Good counsellors lack no clients. Though you change your place, you need not change your trade. I’ll be your tapster still. Courage, there will be pity taken on you. You that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you will be considered.
⌈A noise within⌉
MISTRESS OVERDONE What’s to do here, Thomas Tapster?
Let’s withdraw!
Enter the Provost and Claudio
POMPEY Here comes Signor Claudio, led by the Provost to prison. Exeunt Mistress Overdone and Pompey
CLAUDIO
Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to th’ world?
Bear me to prison, where I am committed.
PROVOST
I do it not in evil disposition,
But from Lord Angelo by special charge.
CLAUDIO
Thus can the demigod Authority
Make us pay down for our offence, by weight,
The bonds of heaven. On whom it will, it will;
On whom it will not, so; yet still ’tis just.
⌈Enter Lucio⌉
LUCIO
Why, how now, Claudio? Whence comes this restraint?
B. 3.1.515-4.1.65
Before revision there would have been no act-break and no song; the lines immediately following the song would also have been absent. The Duke’s soliloquies ‘He who the sword of heaven will bear’ and ‘O place and greatness’ have evidently been transposed in revision; in the original, the end of ‘O place and greatness’ would have led straight on to the Duke’s meeting with Isabella and then Mariana.
ESCALUS I am going to visit the prisoner. Fare you well.
DUKE Peace be with you. Exit Escalus
O place and greatness, millions of false eyes
Are stuck upon thee; volumes of report
Run with their false and most contrarious quest
Upon thy doings; thousand escapes of wit
Make thee the father of their idle dream,
And rack thee in their fancies.
Enter Isabella
Very well met.
What is the news from this good deputy?
ISABELLA
He hath a garden circummured with brick,
Whose western side is with a vineyard backed;
And to that vineyard is a planckèd gate,
That makes his opening with this bigger key.
This other doth command a little door
Which from the vineyard to the garden leads.
There have I made my promise
Upon the heavy middle of the night
To call upon him.
DUKE
But shall you on your knowledge find this way?
ISABELLA
I have ta‘en a due and wary note upon’t.
With whispering and most guilty diligence,
In action all of precept, he did show me
The way twice o’er.
DUKE
Are there no other tokens
Between you ’greed concerning her observance?
ISABELLA
No, none, but only a repair i’th’ dark,
And that I have possessed him my most stay
Can be but brief, for I have made him know
I have a servant comes with me along
That stays upon me, whose persuasion is
I come about my brother.
DUKE
’Tis well borne up.
I have not yet made known to Mariana
A word of this.—What ho, within! Come forth!
Enter Mariana
(To Mariana) I pray you be acquainted with this maid.
She comes to do you good.
ISABELLA I do desire the like.
DUKE (to Mariana)
Do you persuade yourself that I respect you?
MARIANA
Good friar, I know you do, and so have found it.
DUKE
Take then this your companion by the hand,
Who hath a story ready for your ear.
I shall attend your leisure; but make haste,
The vaporous night approaches.
MARIANA
Will’t please you walk aside.
⌈Exeunt Mariana and Isabella⌉
DUKE
He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe,
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go,
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offences weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking!
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice, and let his grow!
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
How may likeness made in crimes
Make my practice on the times
To draw with idle spiders’ strings
Most ponderous and substantial things?
Craft against vice I must apply.
With Angelo tonight shall lie
His old betrothed but despised.
So disguise shall, by th’ disguised,
Pay with falsehood false exacting,
And perform an old contracting.
⌈Enter Mariana and Isabella⌉
Welcome. How agreed?
ISABELLA
She’ll take the enterprise upon her, father,
If you advise it.
OTHELLO
Othello was given before James I in the Banqueting House at Whitehall on I November 1604. Information about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus appears to derive from Richard Knolles’s History of the Turks, published no earlier than 30 September 1603, so Shakespeare probably completed his play some time between that date and the summer of 1604. It first appeared in print in a quarto of 1622; the version printed in the 1623 Folio is about 160 lines longer, and has over a thousand differences in wording. It seems that Shakespeare partially revised his play, adding, for example, Desdemona’s willow song (4.3) and building up Emilia’s role in the closing scenes. We base our text on the Folio as that seems to represent Shakespeare’s second thoughts.