Page 1435 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

Patience her injury a mockery makes.
The robb’d that smiles, steals something from the thief,
He robs himself, that spends a bootless grief.

BRABANTIO
So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile, [210]
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. [215]
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 bruis’d heart was pierced through the ear:

Beseech you now, to the affairs of the state. [220]

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 sovereign mistress of

effects, throws a more safer voice on you: [225] 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 [230]

My thrice-driven bed of down: I do agnize
A natural and prompt alacrity
I find in hardness, and would undertake

This present wars against the Ottomites.
Most humbly therefore, bending to your state, [235]
I crave fit disposition for my wife,
Due reference of place, and exhibition,
With such accommodation and besort

As levels with her breeding.