Page 1429 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

Valiant Othello, we must straight employ you,
Against the general enemy Ottoman;
(To Brabantio)
I did not see you; welcome, gentle signior, [50]

We lack’d your counsel and your help to-night.

BRABANTIO
So did I yours: good your grace, pardon me,
Neither my place, nor aught I heard of business,
Hath rais’d me from my bed, nor doth the general care

Take any hold of me, for my particular grief [55]
Is of so flood-gate 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!

ALL
Dead?

BRABANTIO
Ay, to me:
She is abus’d, stol’n from me and corrupted, [60]
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 [65]
Hath thus beguil’d your daughter of herself,

And you of her, the bloody book of law
You shall yourself read, in the bitter letter,