(for
Horatio had made a motion as if he would slay himself to accompany the
prince in death), and Horatio promised that he would make a true
report, as one that was privy to all the circumstances. And, thus
satisfied, the noble heart of Hamlet cracked; and Horatio and the
bystanders with many tears commended the spirit of this sweet prince to
the guardianship of angels. For Hamlet was a loving and a gentle
prince, and greatly beloved for his many noble and princelike
qualities; and if he had lived, would no doubt have proved a most royal
and complete king to Denmark.

OTHELLO

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 passed through; the perils he had been exposed
to by land and by water; his hair-breadth escapes, when he had 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 wilderness 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 traveller