SEWARD.
Very fine. My dear sir, you are not angry with me?
TALBOYS.
Angry? Not he. Look on his face—how mild!
NORTH.
Othello, in his wrath, calls Emilia "a closet-lock-and-key of villanous secrets: and yet she'll kneel and pray; I have seen her do't." Where and when? It could only have been at Cyprus; and such language denotes a somewhat long attendance there on Desdemona.
SEWARD.
Ingenious—and better than so.
NORTH.
"Some of your function, mistress," renewed to Emilia—when, after conversing with Desdemona, Othello is going out—is his treatment of one whom he supposes to have been serviceable to his wife's and Cassio's amour. Where? There, only there, in Cyprus, by all witnessing, palpably. She could not before. He speaks to her as professional in such services, therefore long dealing in them; but this all respects this one intrigue, not her previous life. The wicked energy of the forced attribution vanishes, if this respects anything but her helpfulness to his wife and her paramour, and at Cyprus—there—only there. Nothing points to a farther back looking suspicion. Iago's "thousand times committed" can only lengthen out the stay at Cyprus. Othello still believes that she once loved him—that she has fallen to corruption.