The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (HTML edition)Ward, Artemus
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The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (HTML edition)
Ward, Artemus
American wit and humor
wife. She has a lazy time of it, the hired girl doin all the cookin and
washin. Desdemony, in fact, don't have to git the water to wash her
own hands with. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git
Otheller out of his snug government birth, now goes to work & upsets
the Otheller family in the most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a
brainless youth named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker.
(Iago allers played foul.) He thus got money enuff to carry out his
onprincipled skeem. Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool by
Iago. Mike was a clever feller & orficer in Otheller's army. He liked
his tods too well, howsever, & they floored him, as they have many other
promisin young men. Iago injuces Mike to drink with him, Iago slyly
throwin his whiskey over his shoulder. Mike gits as drunk as a biled
owl & allows that he can lick a yard full of the Veneshun fancy before
breakfast, without sweatin a hair. He meets Roderigo & proceeds for to
smash him. A feller named Montano undertakes to slap Cassio, when that
infatooated person runs his sword into him. That miserble man, Iago,
pretents to be very sorry to see Mike conduck hisself in this way &
undertakes to smooth the thing over to Otheller, who rushes in with a
drawn sword & wants to know what's up. Iago cunningly tells his story,
& Otheller tells Mike that he thinks a good deal of him, but he can't
train no more in his regiment. Desdemony sympathizes with poor Mike &
interceeds for him with Otheller. Iago makes him bleeve she does this
because she thinks more of Mike than she does of hisself. Otheller
swallers Iago's lyin tail & goes to makin a noosence of hisself
ginrally. He worries poor Desdemony terrible by his vile insinuations,
& finally smothers her to deth with a piller. Mrs. Iago cums in just as
Otheller has finished the fowl deed & givs him fits right & left, showin
him that he has bin orfully gulled by her miserble cuss of a husband.
Iago cums in, & his wife commences rakin him down also, when he stabs
her. Otheller jaws him a spell & then cuts a small hole in his stummick
with his sword. Iago pints to Desdemony's deth bed & goes orf with a
sardonic smile onto his countenance. Otheller tells the peple that he
has dun the state sum service & they know it; axes them to do as fair a
thing as they can for him under the circumstances, & kills hisself with
a fish-knife, which is the most sensible thing he can do. This is a
breef skedule of the synopsis of the play.
Edwin Forrest is a grate acter. I thot I saw Otheller before me all
the time he was actin, & when the curtin fell, I found my spectacles was
still mistened with salt-water, which had run from my eyes while poor
Desdemony was dyin. Betsy Jane--Betsy Jane! let us pray that our
domestic bliss may never be busted up by a Iago!
Edwin Forrest makes money actin out on the stage. He gits five-hundred
dollars a nite & his board & washin. I wish I had such a Forrest in my
Garding!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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