_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. [_Lays down the sword._ 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: 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 relumine.--[_Sets down the taper._ When I have pluck’d thy rose, I cannot give it vital growth again; It needs must wither.--I’ll smell thee on the tree; [_Kissing her._ Oh 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, that’s the last; So sweet was ne’er so fatal! I must weep, But they are cruel tears? this sorrow’s heav’nly; It strikes where it doth love.---- She wakes---- _Act 5. sc. 6._ In Otway’s _Orphan_, we have an illustrious example of the address employed to gratify opposite passions directed upon the same object. Castalio and Polydore, brothers and rivals, had sworn mutual confidence. Castalio broke his faith by a private marriage. By this concealment, Polydore was unwarily betrayed into a dismal deed, that of polluting his brother’s bed. Thus he had injured his brother, and was injured by him. Justice prompted him to make full atonement by his own death: resentment against his brother required a full atonement to be made to himself. In coexistent passions so contradictory, one of them commonly prevails after a struggle. But here happily an expedient occurred to gratify both; which was, that Polydore should provoke his brother to put him to death. Polydore’s crime in his own opinion merited this punishment; and justice was satisfied when he fell by the hands of the man he had injured. He wanted at the same time to punish his brother for breach of faith; and he could not do this more effectually than by betraying his brother to be his executioner.