RODERIGO.
Sir, I will answer anything. But I beseech you,
If ’t be your pleasure, and most wise consent,
(As partly I find it is) that your fair daughter,
At this odd-even and dull watch o’ the night,
Transported with no worse nor better guard,
But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier,
To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor:
If this be known to you, and your allowance,
We then have done you bold and saucy wrongs.
But if you know not this, my manners tell me,
We have your wrong rebuke. Do not believe
That from the sense of all civility,
I thus would play and trifle with your reverence.
Your daughter (if you have not given her leave)
I say again, hath made a gross revolt,
Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes
In an extravagant and wheeling stranger
Of here and everywhere. Straight satisfy yourself:
If she be in her chamber or your house,
Let loose on me the justice of the state
For thus deluding you.
BRABANTIO.
Strike on the tinder, ho!
Give me a taper! Call up all my people!
This accident is not unlike my dream,
Belief of it oppresses me already.
Light, I say, light!
[Exit from above.]
IAGO.
Farewell; for I must leave you:
It seems not meet nor wholesome to my place
To be produc’d, as if I stay I shall,
Against the Moor. For I do know the state,
However this may gall him with some check,
Cannot with safety cast him, for he’s embark’d
With such loud reason to the Cyprus wars,
Which even now stand in act, that, for their souls,
Another of his fathom they have none
To lead their business. In which regard,
Though I do hate him as I do hell pains,
Yet, for necessity of present life,
I must show out a flag and sign of love,
Which is indeed but sign. That you shall surely find him,
Lead to the Sagittary the raised search,
And there will I be with him. So, farewell.
[Exit.]
Enter Brabantio with Servants and torches.
BRABANTIO.
It is too true an evil. Gone she is,
And what’s to come of my despised time,
Is naught but bitterness. Now Roderigo,
Where didst thou see her? (O unhappy girl!)
With the Moor, say’st thou? (Who would be a father!)
How didst thou know ’twas she? (O, she deceives me
Past thought.) What said she to you? Get more tapers,
Raise all my kindred. Are they married, think you?
RODERIGO.
Truly I think they are.
BRABANTIO.
O heaven! How got she out? O treason of the blood!
Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters’ minds
By what you see them act. Is there not charms
By which the property of youth and maidhood
May be abused? Have you not read, Roderigo,
Of some such thing?
RODERIGO.
Yes, sir, I have indeed.