Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
sweetheart, and allow Othello to suppose that the lady spoken of was
Desdemona.
“How are you, lieutenant?” asked Iago when Cassio appeared.
“The worse for being called what I am not,” replied Cassio, gloomily.
“Keep on reminding Desdemona, and you'll soon be restored,” said Iago,
adding, in a tone too low for Othello to hear, “If Bianca could set the
matter right, how quickly it would mend!”
“Alas! poor rogue,” said Cassio, “I really think she loves me,” and like
the talkative coxcomb he was, Cassio was led on to boast of Bianca's
fondness for him, while Othello imagined, with choked rage, that he
prattled of Desdemona, and thought, “I see your nose, Cassio, but not
the dog I shall throw it to.”
Othello was still spying when Bianca entered, boiling over with the idea
that Cassio, whom she considered her property, had asked her to copy the
embroidery on the handkerchief of a new sweetheart. She tossed him the
handkerchief with scornful words, and Cassio departed with her.
Othello had seen Bianca, who was in station lower, in beauty and speech
inferior far, to Desdemona and he began in spite of himself to praise
his wife to the villain before him. He praised her skill with the
needle, her voice that could “sing the savageness out of a bear,” her
wit, her sweetness, the fairness of her skin. Every time he praised
her Iago said something that made him remember his anger and utter it
foully, and yet he must needs praise her, and say, “The pity of it,
Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!”
There was never in all Iago's villainy one moment of wavering. If there
had been he might have wavered then.
“Strangle her,” he said; and “Good, good!” said his miserable dupe.
The pair were still talking murder when Desdemona appeared with a
relative of Desdemona's father, called Lodovico, who bore a letter
for Othello from the Duke of Venice. The letter recalled Othello from
Cyprus, and gave the governorship to Cassio.
Luckless Desdemona seized this unhappy moment to urge once more the suit
of Cassio.
“Fire and brimstone!” shouted Othello.
“It may be the letter agitates him,” explained Lodovico to Desdemona,
and he told her what it contained.
“I am glad,” said Desdemona. It was the first bitter speech that
Othello's unkindness had wrung out of her.
“I am glad to see you lose your temper,” said Othello.
“Why, sweet Othello?” she asked, sarcastically; and Othello slapped her
face.
Now was the time for Desdemona to have saved her life by separation, but
she knew not her peril--only that her love was wounded to the core. “I
have not deserved this,” she said, and the tears rolled slowly down her
face.
Lodovico was shocked and disgusted. “My lord,” he said, “this would not
be believed in Venice. Make her amends;” but, like a madman talking in
his nightmare, Othello poured out his foul thought in ugly speech, and
roared, “Out of my sight!”
“I will not stay to offend you,” said his wife, but she lingered even in
going, and only when he shouted “Avaunt!” did she leave her husband and
his guests.
Othello then invited Lodovico to supper, adding, “You are welcome, sir,
to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys!” Without waiting for a reply he left the
company.
Distinguished visitors detest being obliged to look on at family
quarrels, and dislike being called either goats or monkeys, and Lodovico
asked Iago for an explanation.
True to himself, Iago, in a round-about way, said that Othello was worse
than he seemed, and advised them to study his behavior and save him from
the discomfort of answering any more questions.
He proceeded to tell Roderigo to murder Cassio. Roderigo was out of tune
with his friend. He had given Iago quantities of jewels for Desdemona
without effect; Desdemona had seen none of them, for Iago was a thief.
Iago smoothed him with a lie, and when Cassio was leaving Bianca's
house, Roderigo wounded him, and was wounded in return. Cassio shouted,
and Lodovico and a friend came running up. Cassio pointed out Roderigo
as his assailant, and Iago, hoping to rid himself of an inconvenient
friend, called him “Villain!” and stabbed him, but not to death.
At the Castle, Desdemona was in a sad mood. She told Emilia that she
must leave her; her husband wished it. “Dismiss me!” exclaimed Emilia.
“It was his bidding, said Desdemona; we must not displease him now.”
She sang a song which a girl had sung whose lover had been base to
her--a song of a maiden crying by that tree whose boughs droop as though
it weeps, and she went to bed and slept.
She woke with her husband's wild eyes upon her. “Have you prayed
to-night?” he asked; and he told this blameless and sweet woman to ask
God's pardon for any sin she might have on her conscience. “I would not
kill thy soul,” he said.
He told her that Cassio had confessed, but she knew Cassio had nought to
confess that concerned her. She said that Cassio could not say anything
that would damage her. Othello said his mouth was stopped.
Then Desdemona wept, but with violent words, in spite of all her
pleading, Othello pressed upon her throat and mortally hurt her.
Then with boding heart came Emilia, and besought entrance at the door,
and Othello unlocked it, and a voice came from the bed saying, “A
guiltless death I die.”
“Who did it?” cried Emilia; and the voice said, “Nobody--I myself.
Farewell!”
“'Twas I that killed her,” said Othello.
He poured out his evidence by that sad bed to the people who came
running in, Iago among them; but when he spoke of the handkerchief,
Emilia told the truth.
And Othello knew. “Are there no stones in heaven but thunderbolts?” he
exclaimed, and ran at Iago, who gave Emilia her death-blow and fled.
But they brought him back, and the death that came to him later on was a
relief from torture.
They would have taken Othello back to Venice to try him there, but he
escaped them on his sword. “A word or two before you go,” he said to the
Venetians in the chamber. “Speak of me as I was--no better, no worse.
Say I cast away the pearl of pearls, and wept with these hard eyes; and
say that, when in Aleppo years ago I saw a Turk beating a Venetian, I
took him by the throat and smote him thus.”
With his own hand he stabbed himself to the heart; and ere he died his
lips touched the face of Desdemona with despairing love.
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
There lived in Padua a gentleman named Baptista, who had two fair
daughters. The eldest, Katharine, was so very cross and ill-tempered,
and unmannerly, that no one ever dreamed of marrying her, while her
sister, Bianca, was so sweet and pretty, and pleasant-spoken, that more
than one suitor asked her father for her hand. But Baptista said the
elder daughter must marry first.
So Bianca's suitors decided among themselves to try and get some one to
marry Katharine--and then the father could at least be got to listen to
their suit for Bianca.
A gentleman from Verona, named Petruchio, was the one they thought
of, and, half in jest, they asked him if he would marry Katharine, the
disagreeable scold. Much to their surprise he said yes, that was just
the sort of wife for him, and if Katharine were handsome and rich, he
himself would undertake soon to make her good-tempered.
Petruchio began by asking Baptista's permission to pay court to his
gentle daughter Katharine--and Baptista was obliged to own that she
was anything but gentle. And just then her music master rushed in,
complaining that the naughty girl had broken her lute over his head,
because he told her she was not playing correctly.
“Never mind,” said Petruchio, “I love her better than ever, and long to
have some chat with her.”
When Katharine came, he said, “Good-morrow, Kate--for that, I hear, is
your name.”
“You've only heard half,” said Katharine, rudely.
“Oh, no,” said Petruchio, “they call you plain Kate, and bonny Kate, and
sometimes Kate the shrew, and so, hearing your mildness praised in every
town, and your beauty too, I ask you for my wife.”
“Your wife!” cried Kate. “Never!” She said some extremely disagreeable
things to him, and, I am sorry to say, ended by boxing his ears.
“If you do that again, I'll cuff you,” he said quietly; and still
protested, with many compliments, that he would marry none but her.
When Baptista came back, he asked at once--
“How speed you with my daughter?”
“How should I speed but well,” replied Petruchio--“how, but well?”
“How now, daughter Katharine?” the father went on.
“I don't think,” said Katharine, angrily, “you are acting a father's
part in wishing me to marry this mad-cap ruffian.”
“Ah!” said Petruchio, “you and all the world would talk amiss of her.
You should see how kind she is to me when we are alone. In short, I will
go off to Venice to buy fine things for our wedding--for--kiss me, Kate!
we will be married on Sunday.”
With that, Katharine flounced out of the room by one door in a violent
temper, and he, laughing, went out by the other. But whether she fell in
love with Petruchio, or whether she was only glad to meet a man who was
not afraid of her, or whether she was flattered that, in spite of her
rough words and spiteful usage, he still desired her for his wife--she
did indeed marry him on Sunday, as he had sworn she should.
To vex and humble Katharine's naughty, proud spirit, he was late at the
wedding, and when he came, came wearing such shabby clothes that she was
ashamed to be seen with him. His servant was dressed in the same shabby
way, and the horses they rode were the sport of everyone they passed.
And, after the marriage, when should have been the wedding breakfast,
Petruchio carried his wife away, not allowing her to eat or
drink--saying that she was his now, and he could do as he liked with
her.
And his manner was so violent, and he behaved all through his wedding in
so mad and dreadful a manner, that Katharine trembled and went with him.
He mounted her on a stumbling, lean, old horse, and they journeyed by
rough muddy ways to Petruchio's house, he scolding and snarling all the
way.
She was terribly tired when she reached her new home, but Petruchio was
determined that she should neither eat nor sleep that night, for he had
made up his mind to teach his bad-tempered wife a lesson she would never
forget.
So he welcomed her kindly to his house, but when supper was served
he found fault with everything--the meat was burnt, he said, and
ill-served, and he loved her far too much to let her eat anything but
the best. At last Katharine, tired out with her journey, went supperless
to bed. Then her husband, still telling her how he loved her, and how
anxious he was that she should sleep well, pulled her bed to pieces,
throwing the pillows and bedclothes on the floor, so that she could not
go to bed at all, and still kept growling and scolding at the servants
so that Kate might see how unbeautiful a thing ill-temper was.
The next day, too, Katharine's food was all found fault with, and caught
away before she could touch a mouthful, and she was sick and giddy for
want of sleep. Then she said to one of the servants--
“I pray thee go and get me some repast. I care not what.”
“What say you to a neat's foot?” said the servant.
Katharine said “Yes,” eagerly; but the servant, who was in his master's
secret, said he feared it was not good for hasty-tempered people. Would
she like tripe?
“Bring it me,” said Katharine.
“I don't think that is good for hasty-tempered people,” said the
servant. “What do you say to a dish of beef and mustard?”
“I love it,” said Kate.
“But mustard is too hot.”
“Why, then, the beef, and let the mustard go,” cried Katharine, who was
getting hungrier and hungrier.
“No,” said the servant, “you must have the mustard, or you get no beef
from me.”