51 That policy may either last so long, Or feed upon such nice and waterish diet, &c.] He may either of himself think it politic to keep me out of office so long, or he may be satisfied with such slight reasons, or so many accidents may make him think my re-admission at that time improper, that I may be quite forgotten. JOHNSON. 52-stand so mammering on.] To hesitate, to stand in suspense. The word often occurs in old English writings, and probably takes its original from the French M'Amour, which men were apt often to repeat when they were not prepared to give a direct answer. HANMER. 53 That came a wooing with you;] And yet in the first act Cassio appears perfectly ignorant of the amour, and is indebted to Iago for the information of Othello's marriage, and of the person to whom he is married. STEEVENS. 34 Excellent wretch!] The meaning of the word It is now, in wretch is not generally understood. some parts of England, a term of the softest and fondest tenderness. It expresses the utmost degree of amiableness, joined with an idea, which perhaps all tenderness includes, of feebleness, softness, and want of protection. Othello, considering Desdemona as excelling in beauty and virtue, soft and timorous by her sex, and by her situation absolutely in his power, calls her, Excellent wretch! It may be expressed: Dear, harmless, helpless excellence. JOHNSON. Sir W. D'Avenant uses the same expression in his Cruel Brother, 1630, and with the same meaning. It occurs twice: "Excellent wretch! with a timorous modesty she stifleth up her utterance." STEEVENS. 55 Keep leets, and law-days,] Leets, and law-days, are synonymous terms. "Leet (says Jacob, in his Law Dictionary) is otherwise called a law-day." They are there explained to be courts, or meetings of the hundred, "to certify the king of the good manners, and government, of the inhabitants," and to enquire of all offences that are not capital. The poet's meaning will now be plain. Who has a breast so little apt to form ill opinions of others, but that foul suspicions will sometimes mix with his fairest and most candid thoughts, and erect a court in his mind, to enquire of the offences apprehended. STEEVENS. The meat it feeds on:] The Oxford editor reads: which doth make The meat it feeds on: Implying that its suspicions are unreal and groundless. 57 But riches, fineless,] Fincless; sine fine, without end. 58 To such exsufflicate and blown surmises,] The allusion is to a bubble. Do not think, says the Moor, that I shall change the noble designs that now employ my thoughts, to suspicions which, like bubbles blown into a wide extent, have only an empty show without solidity; or that, in consequence of such empty fears, I will close with thy inference against the virtue of my wife. JOHNSON. 59 If I do prove her haggard,] A haggard hawk is a wild hawk, a hawk unreclaimed, or irreclaimable. JOHNSON. A haggard is a particular species of hawk. It is difficult to be reclaimed, but not irreclaimable. From a passage in Vittoria Corombona, it appears that haggard was a term of reproach sometimes applied to a wanton: "Is this your perch, you haggard? fly to the stews." 60 — her jesses-] Jesses are short straps of leather tied about the foot of a hawk, by which she is held on the fist. HANMER. 61 I'd whistle her off,] This passage may possibly receive illustration from a similar one in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 2. sect. 1. mem. 3: "As "a long-winged hawke, when he is first whistled off "the fist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure fetcheth many a circuit in the ayre, still soaring higher and higher, till he comes to his full pitch, and in the "end, when the game is sprung, comes down amaine, "and stoupes upon a sudden." PERCY. 62 Even then this forked plague is fated to us, When we do quicken.] In allusion to a barbed or forked arrow, which, once infixed, cannot be extracted. JOHNSON. Or rather, the forked plague is the cuckold's horns. PERCY. 63 Be not you known of't;] The folio reads— Be not acknowne on't. Perhaps (says Mr. Malone) acknown was a participial adjective from the verb to acknowledge.-Do not acknowledge any thing of this matter. 64 Not poppy, nor mandragora,] The mandragoras or mandrake has a soporific quality, and the ancients used it when they wanted an opiate of the most powerful kind. So Antony and Cleopatra, Act. 1. sc. 6: give me to drink mandragora, "That I may sleep out this great gap of time So, in Heywood's Jew of Malta, 1633: "I drank of poppy and cold mandrake juice, "And being asleep," &c. Again, in Mulcasses the Turk, 1610: "Image of death, and daughter of the night, "Sister to Lethe, all-oppressing sleep, "Thou, that amongst a hundred thousand dreams, "Crown'd with a wreath of mandrakes, sit'st as queen, "To whom a million of care-clogged souls Lye quaffing juice of poppy at thy feet, STEEVENS. 65 The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,] In mentioning the fife joined with the drum, Shakspeare, as usual, paints from the life; those instruments accompanying each other being used in his age by the English soldiery. The fife, however, as a martial in strument, was afterwards entirely discontinued among our troops for many years, but at length revived in the war before the last. It is commonly supposed that our soldiers borrowed it from the Highlanders in the last rebellion: but I do not know that the fife is peculiar to the Scotch, or even used at all by them. It was first used within the memory of man among our troops by the British guards, by order of the duke of Cumberland, when they were encamped at Maestricht, in the year 1747, and thence soon adopted into other English regiments of infantry. They took it from the allies with whom they served. This instrument, accompanying the drum, is of considerable antiquity in the European armies, particularly the German. In a curious picture in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, painted 1525, representing the siege of Pavia by the French king, where the emperor was taken prisoner, we see fifes and drums. In an old English treatise written by William Garrard before 1587, and published by one captain Hichcock in 1591, intitled The Art of Warre, there are several wood cuts of military evolutions, in which these instruments are both introduced. In Rymer's Fadera, in a diary of king Henry's siege of Bulloigne 1544, mention is made of the drommes and vifleurs marching at the head of the king's army. Tom. xv. p. 53. The drum and fife were also much used at ancient festivals, shows, and processions. Gerard Leigh, in his Accidence of Armorie, printed in 1576, describing a Christmas magnificently celebrated at the Inner Temple, |