A Council Chamber.
 Enter the DUKE and SENATORS set at a table with lights, and ATTENDANTS.

Duke	There is no composition in these news
	That gives them credit.

1st Senator							Indeed, they are disproportioned.
	My letters say a hundred and seven galleys.

Duke	And mine a hundred-forty.

2nd Senator								And mine two hundred.
	But though they jump not on a just account-
	As in these cases, where the aim reports
	'Tis oft with difference - yet do they all confirm
	A Turkish fleet, and bearing up to Cyprus.

Duke	Nay, it is possible enough to judgement.
	I do not so secure me in the error,
	But the main article I do approve
	In fearful sense.

Sailor	[Within.]			What ho! What ho! What ho!

1st Officer	A messenger from the galleys.

                             Enter a SAILOR.

Duke								Now, what's the business?

Sailor	The Turkish preparation makes for Rhodes;
	So was I bid report here to the state
	By Signor Angelo.

Duke	How say you by this change?

1st Senator									This cannot be,
	By no assay of reason. 'Tis a pageant
	To keep us in false gaze. When we consider
	The importancy of Cyprus to the Turk,
	And let ourselves again but understand
	That as it more concerns the Turk than Rhodes,
	So may he with more facile question bear it,
	For that it stands not in such warlike brace,
	But altogether lacks th' abilities
	That Rhodes is dressed in. If we make thought of this,
	We must not think the Turk is so unskilful
	To leave that latest which concerns him first,
	Neglecting an attempt of ease and gain
	To wake and wage a danger profitless.

Duke	Nay, in all confidence, he's not for Rhodes.

1st Officer	Here is more news.

                            Enter a MESSENGER.

Messenger	The Ottomites, reverend and gracious,
	Steering with due course toward the Isle of Rhodes,
	Have there injointed them with an after fleet.

1st Senator	Ay, so I thought. How many, as you guess?

Messenger	Of thirty sail; and now they do restem
	Their backward course, bearing with frank appearance
	Their purposes toward Cyprus. Signor Montano,
	Your trusty and most valiant servitor,
	With his free duty recommends you thus,
	And prays you to believe him.

Duke	'Tis certain, then, for Cyprus.
	Marcus Luccicos, is not he in town?

1st Senator	He's now in Florence.

Duke	Write from us to him post-posthaste dispatch.

     Enter BRABANTIO, OTHELLO, CASSIO, IAGO, RODERIGO, and OFFICERS.

1st Senator	Here comes Brabantio and the valiant Moor.

Duke	Valiant Othello, we must straight employ you
	Against the general enemy Ottoman.
	[To BRABANTIO.] I did not see you; welcome, gentle signor.
	We lacked your counsel and your help tonight.

Brabantio	So did I yours. Good your grace, pardon me;
	Neither my place nor aught I heard of business
	Hath raised me from my bed, nor doth the general care
	Take hold of me; for my particular grief
	Is of so floodgate and o'erbearing nature
	That it engluts and swallows other sorrows,
	And it is still itself.

Duke							Why, what's the matter?

Brabantio	My daughter! O, my daughter!

Senators									Dead?

Brabantio										Ay, to me.
	She is abused, stol'n from me, and corrupted,
	By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;
	For nature so preposterously to err,
	Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,
	Sans witchcraft could not.

Duke	Whoe'er he be that in this foul proceeding
	Hath thus beguiled your daughter of herself,
	And you of her, the bloody book of law
	You shall yourself read in the bitter letter,
	After your own sense; yea, though our proper son
	Stood in your action.

Brabantio							Humbly I thank your grace.
	Here is the man: this Moor, whom now it seems
	Your special mandate for the state affairs
	Hath hither brought.

All						We are very sorry for't.

Duke	[To OTHELLO.] What in your own part can you say to this?

Brabantio	Nothing, but this is so.

Othello	Most potent, grave, and reverend signors,
	My very noble and approved good masters,
	That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter,
	It is most true; true I have married her;
	The very head and front of my offending
	Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech,
	And little blest with the soft phrase of peace;
	For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith,
	Till now some nine moons wasted they have used
	Their dearest action in the tented field,
	And little of this great world can I speak
	More than pertains to feats of broils and battle;
	And therefore little shall I grace my cause
	In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,
	I will a round unvarnished tale deliver
	Of my whole course of love: what drugs, what charms,
	What conjuration and what mighty magic-
	For such proceedings I am charged withal-
	I won his daughter.

Brabantio							A maiden never bold;
	Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion
	Blushed at her self; and she, in spite of nature,
	Of years, of country, credit, everything,
	To fall in love with what she feared to look on?
	It is a judgment maimed and most imperfect
	That will confess perfection so would err
	Against all rules of nature, and must be driven
	To find out practices of cunning hell
	Why this should be. I therefore vouch again
	That with some mixtures powerful o'er the blood,
	Or with some dram conjured to this effect,
	He wrought upon her.

Duke						To vouch this is no proof
	Without more wider and more overt test
	Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods
	Of modern seeming do prefer against him.

1st Senator	But, Othello, speak.
	Did you by indirect and forcd courses
	Subdue and poison this young maid's affections?
	Or came it by request and such fair question
	As soul to soul affordeth?

Othello								I do beseech you
	Send for the lady to the Sagittary,
	And let her speak of me before her father.
	If you do find me foul in her report,
	The trust, the office I do hold of you,
	Not only take away, but let your sentence
	Even fall upon my life.

Duke							Fetch Desdemona hither.

Othello	Ensign, conduct them; you best know the place.
									[Exit IAGO with two or three.
	And till she come, as truely as to heaven
	I do confess the vices of my blood,
	So justly to your grave ears I'll present
	How I did thrive in this fair lady's love,
	And she in mine.

Duke						Say it, Othello.

Othello	Her father loved me, oft invited me,
	Still questioned me the story of my life
	From year to year: the battles, sieges, fortune,
	That I have passed.
	I ran it through, even from my boyish days
	To th' very moment that he bade me tell it,
	Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances:
	Of moving accidents by flood and field,
	Of hair-breadth 'scapes i'th' imminent deadly breach,
	Of being taken by the insolent foe
	And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence,
	And portance in my traveller's history,
	Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
	Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
	It was my hint to speak - such was my process-
	And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
	The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
	Do grow beneath their shoulders. These things to hear
	Would Desdemona seriously incline;
	But still the house affairs would draw her thence,
	Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
	She'd come again, and with a greedy ear
	Devour up my discourse; which I observing,
	Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
	To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
	That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
	Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
	But not intentively. I did consent;
	And often did beguile her of her tears
	When I did speak of some distressful stroke
	That my youth suffered. My story being done,
	She gave me for my pains a world of kisses:
	She swore, i'faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange,
	'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful;
	She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished
	That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me,
	And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
	I should but teach him how to tell my story,
	And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
	She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
	And I loved her that she did pity them.
	This only is the witchcraft I have used.

                  Enter DESDEMONA, IAGO, and ATTENDANTS.

	Here comes the lady; let her witness it.

Duke	I think this tale would win my daughter too.
	Good Brabantio,
	Take up this mangled matter at the best.
	Men do their broken weapons rather use
	Than their bare hands.

Brabantio							I pray you hear her speak.
	If she confess that she was half the wooer,
	Destruction on my head if my bad blame
	Light on the man! Come hither, gentle mistress.
	Do you perceive in all this noble company
	Where most you owe obedience?

Desdemona									My noble father,
	I do perceive here a divided duty.
	To you I am bound for life and education:
	My life and education both do learn me
	How to respect you. You are the lord of duty,
	I am hitherto your daughter; but here's my husband,
	And so much duty as my mother showed
	To you, preferring you before her father,
	So much I challenge that I may profess
	Due to the Moor my lord.

Brabantio							God be with you, I have done.
	Please it your grace, on to the state affairs;
	I had rather to adopt a child than get it.
	Come hither, Moor.
	I here do give thee that with all my heart
	Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart
	I would keep from thee.
			[To DESDEMONA.] For your sake, jewel,
	I am glad at soul I have no other child;
	For thy escape would teach me tyranny,
	To hang clogs on them. I have done, my lord.

Duke	Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence
	Which as a grise or step may help these lovers
	Into your favour.
	When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
	By seeing the worst which late on hopes depended.
	To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
	Is the next way to draw more mischief on.
	What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,
	Patience her injury a mockery makes.
	The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief;
	He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.

Brabantio	So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile,
	We lose it not so long as we can smile;
	He bears the sentence well that nothing bears
	But the free comfort which from thence he hears;
	But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow
	That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow.
	These sentences, to sugar or to gall,
	Being strong on both sides, are equivocal.
	But words are words: I never yet did hear
	That the bruised heart was piercd through the ear.
	I humbly beseech you proceed to th' affairs of state.

Duke	The Turk with most mighty preparation makes for Cyprus. 
	Othello, the fortitude of the place is best known to you; 
	and though we have there a substitute of most allowed 
	sufficiency, yet opinion, a more sovereign mistress of 
	effects, throws a more safer voice on you. You must 
	therefore be content to slubber the gloss of your new 
	fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous expedition.

Othello	The tyrant custom, most grave senators,
	Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war
	My thrice-driven bed of down. I do agnize
	A natural and prompt alacrity
	I find in hardness, and do undertake
	This present wars against the Ottomites.
	Most humbly, therefore, bending to your state,
	I crave fit disposition for my wife,
	Due reference of place and exhibition,
	With such accommodation and besort
	As levels with her breeding.

Duke	Why, at her father's.

Brabantio							I will not have it so.

Othello	Nor I.

Desdemona			Nor I; I would not there reside
	To put my father in impatient thoughts
	By being in his eye. Most gracious duke,
	To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear,
	And let me find a charter in your voice
	T'assist my simpleness.

Duke								What would you, Desdemona?

Desdemona	That I did love the Moor to live with him,
	My downright violence and storm of fortunes
	May trumpet to the world. My heart's subdued
	Even to the very quality of my lord.
	I saw Othello's visage in his mind,
	And to his honours and his valiant parts
	Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate;
	So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,
	A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
	The rites for which I love him are bereft me,
	And I a heavy interim shall support
	By his dear absence. Let me go with him.

Othello	Let her have your voice.
	Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not
	To please the palate of my appetite,
	Nor to comply with heat - the young affects
	In me defunct - and proper satisfaction,
	But to be free and bounteous of her mind;
	And heaven defend your good souls that you think
	I will your serious and great business scant
	When she is with me. No, when light-winged toys
	Of feathered Cupid seel with wanton dullness
	My speculative and officed instruments,
	That my disports corrupt and taint my business,
	Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,
	And all indign and base adversities
	Make head against my estimation!

Duke	Be it, as you shall privately determine,
	Either for her stay or going. Th' affair cries haste,
	And speed must answer it.

1st Senator								You must away tonight.

Desdemona	Tonight, my Lord?

Duke					This night.

Othello								With all my heart.

Duke	At nine i'th' morning here we'll meet again.
	Othello, leave some officer behind,
	And he shall our commission bring to you,
	And such things else of quality and respect
	As doth import you.

Othello						So please your grace, my ensign;
	A man he is of honesty and trust.
	To his conveyance I assign my wife,
	With what else needful your good grace shall think
	To be sent after me.

Duke							Let it be so.
	Good night to everyone. [To BRABANTIO.] And, noble signor,
	If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
	Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.

1st Senator	Adieu, brave Moor. Use Desdemona well.

Brabantio	Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
	She has deceived her father, and may thee.
							 [Exeunt all but OTHELLO, DESDEMONA,
												RODERIGO and IAGO.

Othello	My life upon her faith! Honest Iago,
	My Desdemona must I leave to thee.
	I prithee, let thy wife attend on her,
	And bring them after in the best advantage.
	Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour
	Of love, of worldly matter, and direction
	To spend with thee. We must obey the time.
								  [Exeunt OTHELLO and DESDEMONA.

Roderigo	Iago.

Iago	What sayst thou, noble heart?

Roderigo	What will I do, think'st thou?

Iago	Why, go to bed and sleep.

Roderigo	I will incontinently drown myself.

Iago	If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Why, thou 
	silly gentleman?

Roderigo	It is silliness to live when to live is torment; and then 
	have we a prescription to die, when death is our physician.

Iago	O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times 
	seven years, and since I could distinguish betwixt a 
	benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to 
	love himself. Ere I would say I would drown myself for the 
	love of a guinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a 
	baboon.

Roderigo	What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond, 
	but it is not in my virtue to amend it.

Iago	Virtue? A fig! 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. 
	Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are 
	gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, 
	set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of 
	herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile 
	with idleness or manured with industry - why, the power and 
	corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the 
	balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise 
	another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our 
	natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions. 
	But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal 
	stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you 
	call love, to be a sect or scion.

Roderigo	It cannot be.

Iago	It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the 
	will. Come, be a man. Drown thyself? Drown cats and blind 
	puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me 
	knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness. 
	I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy 
	purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an 
	usurped beard. I say put money in thy purse. It cannot be 
	long that Desdemona should continue her love to the Moor - 
	put money in thy purse - nor he his to her. It was a 
	violent commencement in her, and thou shalt see an 
	answerable sequestration - put but money in thy purse. 
	These Moors are changeable in their wills - fill thy purse 
	with money. The food that to him now is as luscious as 
	locusts shall be to him shortly as bitter as the 
	coloquintida. She must change fo youth: when she is sated 
	with his body she will find the error of her choice. 
	Therefore put money in thy purse. If thou wilt needs damn 
	thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all 
	the money thou canst. If sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt 
	an erring barbarian and a super-subtle Venetian be not too 
	hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt 
	enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! 
	It is clean out of the way. Seek thou rather to be hanged 
	in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without 
	her.

Roderigo	Wilt thou be fast to my hopes if I depend on the issue?

Iago	Thou art sure of me. Go, make money. I have told thee 
	often, and I retell thee again and again, I hate the Moor. 
	My cause is hearted, thine hath no less reason. Let us be 
	conjunctive in our revenge against him. If thou canst 
	cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport. 
	There are many events in the womb of time which will be 
	delivered. Traverse! Go; provide thy money. We will have 
	more of this tomorrow. Adieu.

Roderigo	Where shall we meet i'th' morning?

Iago	At my lodging.

Roderigo	I'll be with thee betimes.

Iago	Go to, farewell. Do you hear, Roderigo?

Roderigo	What say you?

Iago 	No more of drowning, do you hear?

Roderigo	I am changed. I'll sell all my land.

Iago	Go to; farewell. Put money enough in your purse.
												[Exit RODERIGO.
	Thus do I ever make my fool my purse;
	For I mine own gained knowledge should profane
	If I would time expend with such a snipe
	But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor,
	And it is thought abroad that 'twixt my sheets
	He's done my office. I know not if't be true,
	But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
	Will do as if for surety. He holds me well;
	The better shall my purpose work on him.
	Cassio's a proper man. Let me see now:
	To get his place and to plume up my will
	In double knavery - how, how? Let's see-
	After some time to abuse Othello's ears
	That he is too familiar with his wife;
	He hath a person and a smooth dispose
	To be suspected, framed to make women false.
	The Moor is of a free and open nature
	That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
	And will as tenderly be led by th' nose
	As asses are.
	I have't, it is engendered; hell and night
	Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light.
												[Exit.
