"Good madam ...--Gertrude, _Gertrude_, do not drink." This repetition of the name, which is required by the metre, adds, I think, much energy. The name is repeated in the same manner in iv. 5. * * * * * "As thou'rt a man!... Give me the cup; let go; by Heaven I'll have it." This appears to me to be the true punctuation. OTHELLO. ACT I. SC. 1. "A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife." The attempts made to give sense to 'wife' here are utterly ridiculous. I cannot see any objection to _life_, the reading of the sagacious Tyrwhitt. Here, as elsewhere, it may be observed 'damn'd' is merely to be damned, _i.e._ condemned, be odious, as a person of fair regular life must be in the eyes of an Iago, who in fact says of Cassio's (v. 1) "He hath a daily beauty in his _life_, That makes me ugly." If the allusion be to the person of Cassio, we might read _face_, _skin_, or some such word, as denoting effeminacy. * * * * * "Plague him with flies. Though that his joy be joy." Perhaps the second 'joy' was suggested by the first instead of _high_, _bright_, or some other adjective. * * * * * SC. 2. "Abus'd her youth with drugs or minerals That weaken motion." I read with Hanmer _waken_, for that was the object of philtres. 'Motion' is emotion, desire. In the next scene we have "To cool our raging _motions_, our carnal stings," and "mixtures powerful o'er the _blood_." * * * * * SC. 3. "As in these cases, where the aim reports, 'Tis oft with difference." The 4tos read 'they aim'; but the reading of the folio gives a more simple sense. 'The aim' is conjecture. * * * * * "And prays you to believe him." It has been proposed to read _relieve_, which seems to make better sense, and which I adopt. * * * * * "Sans witchcraft could not _be_." * * * * * "I won his daughter _with_." * * * * * _Duke._ "To vouch this is no proof," etc. The folio makes this part of Brabantio's speech. * * * * * "That I have passed." * * We might add _with his demands complying_. * * * * * "The rites for which I lov'd him are denied me." Is not this--whether we read 'rites' or 'rights'--rather indelicate coming from the lips of Desdemona? "Lovers can see to do their amorous _rites_ By their own beauties." Rom. and Jul. iii. 2. "The great prerogative and _rites_ of love, Which as your due time claims, he does acknowledge." All's Well, ii. 4.