.

OTHELLO

(_By Charles Lamb_)

Brabantio, the rich senator of Venice, had a fair daughter, the gentle
Desdemona. She was sought to by divers suitors, both on account of
her many virtuous qualities and for her rich expectations. But among
the suitors of her own clime and complexion she saw none whom she
could affect: for this noble lady, who regarded the mind more than
the features of men, with a singularity rather to be admired than
imitated, had chosen for the object of her affections a Moor, a black,
whom her father loved, and often invited to his house.

Neither is Desdemona to be altogether condemned for the unsuitableness
of the person whom she selected for her lover. Bating that Othello was
black, the noble Moor wanted nothing which might recommend him to the
affections of the greatest lady. He was a soldier, and a brave one;
and by his conduct in bloody wars against the Turks, had risen to the
rank of general in the Venetian service, and was esteemed and trusted
by the state.

He had been a traveller, and Desdemona (as is the manner of ladies)
loved to hear him tell the story of his adventures, which he would
run through from his earliest recollection; the battles, sieges, and
encounters, which he had past through; the perils he had been exposed
to by land and by water; his hair-breadth escapes, when he has entered
a breach, or marched up to the mouth of a cannon; and how he had
been taken prisoner by the insolent enemy, and sold to slavery: how
he demeaned himself in that state, and how he escaped: all these
accounts, added to the narration of the strange things he had seen in
foreign countries, the vast wildernesses and romantic caverns, the
quarries, the rocks and mountains, whose heads are in the clouds; of
the savage nations, the cannibals who are man-eaters, and a race of
people in Africa whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders: these
travellers' stories would so enchain the attention of Desdemona, that
if she were called off at any time by household affairs, she would
dispatch with all haste that business, and return, and with a greedy
ear devour Othello's discourse. And once he took advantage of a pliant
hour, and drew from her a prayer, that he would tell her the whole
story of his life at large, of which she had heard so much, but only
by parts: to which he consented, and beguiled her of many a tear, when
he spoke of some distressful stroke which his youth suffered.

His story bein