I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind

To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black

And have not those soft parts of conversation

That chamberers have; or for I am declined

Into the vale of years – yet that’s not much–

She’s gone: I am abused, and my relief

Must be to loathe her. O, curse of marriage!

That we can call these delicate creatures ours

And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad

And live upon the vapour of a dungeon,

Than keep a corner in the thing I love

For others’ uses. Yet, ’tis the plague of great ones;

Prerogatived are they less than the base.

’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death:

Even then this forked plague is fated to us

When we do quicken:

[V, ii, 1–22] Convinced of his wife’s infidelity by no more compelling cause than his own frantic jealousy, Othello resolves to murder Desdemona:

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul:

Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!

It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood,

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,

And smooth as monumental alabaster:

Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.

Put out the light, and then put out the light:

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore,

Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,

Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume. When I have plucked thy rose,

I cannot give it vital growth again,

It must needs wither. I’ll smell it on the tree.

He kisses her

O, balmy breath, that dost almost persuade

Justice to break her sword! One more, one more.

Be thus when thou art dead and I will kill thee,

And love thee after. One more, and this the last.

So sweet was ne’er so fatal. I must weep.

But they are cruel tears; this sorrow’s heavenly–

It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.

All’s Well That Ends Well

[I, i, 78–97] Helena should, she knows, reserve her sorrow for the recent death of her beloved father – but she finds her overpowering love for Bertram displacing such filial feelings:

O, were that all! I think not on my father,

And these great tears grace his remembrance more

Than those I shed for him. What was he like?

I have forgot him; my imagination

Carries no favour in’t but Bertram’s.

I am undone: there is no living, none,

If Bertram be away. ’Twere all one

That I should love a bright particular star

And think to wed it, he is so above me.

In his bright radiance and collateral light

Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.

Th’ ambition in my love thus plagues itself:

The hind that would be mated by the lion

Must die for love. ’Twas pretty, though a plague,

To see him every hour; to sit and draw