TALBOYS.
A puzzler, and something more.
"Bianca. Save you, friend Cassio!
Cassio. What make you from home?
How is it with you, my most fair Bianca?
I'faith, sweet love, I was coming to your house.
Bianca. And I was going to your lodging, Cassio.
What! keep a week away? seven days and nights?
Eight score eight hours? And lovers' absent hours,
More tedious than the dial eight score times?
O weary reckoning!
Cassio. Pardon me, Bianca;
I have this while with leaden thoughts been press'd;
But I shall, in a more continuate time,
Strike off the score of absence."
Here the reproaches of Bianca to Cassio develop long time. For, besides his week's absence from her house, there is implied the preceding time necessary for contracting and habitually carrying on the illicit attachment. Bianca is a Cyprus householder; Cassio sups at her house; his intimacy, which has various expressions of continuance, has been formed with her there; he has found her, and grown acquainted with her there, not at Venice. I know it has been suggested that she was his mistress at Venice—that she came with the squadron from Venice; and that her last cohabitation with Cassio had taken place in Venice about a week ago—but for believing this there is here not the slightest ground. "What! keep a week away?" would be a strange exclamation, indeed, from one who knew that he had been but a day on shore—had landed along with herself yesterday from the same ship—and had been a week cooped up from her in a separate berth. And Bianca, seeing the handkerchief, and being told to "take me this work out," cries—
"O Cassio! whence came this?
This is some token from a newer friend.
To the felt absence now I feel a cause."
"To the felt absence," Eight score eight hours! the cause? Some new mistress at Cyprus—not forced separation at sea.