_Des._ "I call'd my love false love; but what said
"he then?
"Sing willow, &c.]
This couplet is not in the ballad, which is the complaint, not of a
woman forsaken, but of a man rejected. These lines were probably added
when it was accommodated to a woman.
IV.iii.94 (493,6) our former having] Our former allowance of experience.
IV.iii.107 (493,7) heaven me such usage send] --_heaven me such_ uses
_send_,] Such is the reading of the folio, and of the subsequent
editions; but the old quarto has,
--_such_ usage _send_.--
_Usage_ is an old word for _custom_, and, I think, better than _uses_.
V.i.11 (494,1) I have rubb'd this young quat _almost to the sense_] In
some editions,
_I've rubb'd this young_ gnat _almost to the sense,
And he grows angry_.]
This is a passage much controverted among the editors. Sir T. Hanner
reads _quab_, a _gudgeon_; not that a gudgeon can be _rubbed_ to much
_sense_, but that a man grossly deceived is often called a _gudgeon_.
Mr. Upton reads _quail_, which he proves, by much learning, to be a very
choleric bird. Dr. Warburton retains _gnat_, which is found in the early
quarto. Theobald would introduce _knot_, a small bird of that name. I
have followed the text of the folio, and third and fourth quartos.
A _quat_ in the midland counties is a _pimple_, which by rubbing is made
to smart, or is _rubbed to sense_. Roderigo is called a _quat_ by the
same mode of speech, as a low fellow is now termed in lay language a
_scab. To rub to the sense_, is _to rub to the quick_.
V.i.37 (496,2) No passage?] No passengers? No body going by?
V.i.42 (499,4) a heary night] A _thick cloudy_ night, in which an ambush
may be commodiously laid.
V.ii.1 (499,4) It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul;--/Let me not
name it] The abruptness of this soliloquy makes it obscure. The meaning,
I think, is this: "I am here (says Othello in his mind) overwhelmed with
horror. What is the reason of this perturbation? Is it want of
resolution to do justice? Is it the dread of shedding blood? No; it is
not the action that shocks me, but _it is the cause, it is the cause, my
soul; let me not name it to you, ye chaste stars; it is the cause_."