That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Where should we have our thanks?

Ho.

Not from his mouth,

Had it the ability of life to thank you:

He never gave commandment for their death.

1

But since, so jump upon this bloody question, You from the Polack wars, and you from England Are here arrived; give order, that these bodies High on a stage be placed to the view;

hear

And let me speak, to the yet unknowing world,
How these things come about: so shall
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts;

you

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;

Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause;
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fallen on the inventors' heads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

For.

Let us haste to hear it,

And call the noblest to the audience.

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune:
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Ho. Of that I shall have also cause to speak,

And from his mouth whose voice will draw on

more:

But let this same be presently perform'd,

Even while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance

So exactly at the time.

2 i. e. some rights which are remembered.

SHAK.

XIV.

M

On plots and errors happen.

For.
Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally; and, for his
The soldiers' music and the rites of war

Speak loudly for him.

passage,

Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

[a dead march. [Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which, a peal of ordnance is shot off.

OTHELLO,

THE MOOR OF VENICE.

HISTORICAL NOTICE

OF

OTHELLO.

A story in Cynthio's novels is the prototype whence our author derived his materials for this sublime and instructive tragedy, which is assigned by Maione, after considerable hesitation, to the date of 1604; while Dr. Drake and Mr. Chalmers conjecture it to be the production of a period as late as 1612 or 1614. This play was first entered at Stationers' Hall Oct. 6, 1621, and appeared in quarto in the course of the following year; between which edition and the folio of 1623 many minute differences exist.

'The beauties of this play,' says Dr. Johnson, 'impress themselves so strongly on the attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical illustration. The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless, and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge; the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his interest and his vengeance; the soft simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious of innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakspeare's skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any modern writer. The gradual progress which Iago