BULLER.
Antenuptial?
NORTH.
Faugh! Could he have the most horrible, revolting, and loathsome of all thoughts, that he wedded her impure? and not a hint given of that most atrocious pang? Incredible—impossible! I can never believe, if Shakspeare intended an infidelity taking precedency of the marriage, that he would not by word or by hint have said so. Think how momentous to our intelligence of the jealousy the date is; not as to Tuesday or Wednesday, but as to before or after the nuptial knot—before or after the first religious loosing of the virgin zone. That a man's wife has turned into a wanton—hell and horror! But that he wedded one—Pah! Faugh! Could Iago, could Othello, could Shakspeare have left this point in the chronology of guilt to be argued out doubtfully? No. The greatest of Poets for pit, boxes, and gallery, must have written intelligibly to pit, boxes, and gallery; and extrication, unveiled, after two hundred and fifty years, by studious men, in a fit of perplexity, cannot be the thunderbolt which Shakspeare flung to his audience at the Globe Theatre.
TALBOYS.
You remember poor, dear, Sweet Mrs Henry Siddons—the Desdemona—how she gave utterance to those words
"It was his bidding—therefore, good Emilia,
Give me my nightly wearing, and adieu;
We must not now displease him.
Emilia.—I would you had never seen him!
Desdemona.—So would not I; my love doth so approve him,
That even his stubbornness, his checks, and frowns,—
Pr'ythee, unpin me,—have grace and favour in them.
Emilia.—I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed.
Desdemona.—All's one: Good father! how foolish are our minds!
If I do die before thee—pr'ythee shroud me
In one of those same sheets."
The wedding sheets were reserved. They had been laid by for weeks—months—time long enough to give a saddest character to the bringing them out again—a serious, ominous meaning—disturbed from the quietude, the sanctity of their sleep by a wife's mortal presentiment that they may be her shroud.
NORTH.
Long time established at Cyprus.