Session 25 Notes

"Her father loved me, oft invited me, / Still questioned me the story of my life / From year to year - the battles, sieges, fortunes / That I have passed. / I ran it through, even from my boyish days / To th' very moment that he bade me tell it. / Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances, / Of moving accidents by flood and field; / Of hairbreadth scapes i' th' imminent deadly breach; / Of being taken by the insolent foe / And sold to slavery. Of my redemption thence / And portance in my traveler's history, / Wherein of anters vast and deserts idle, / Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, / It was my hint to speak - such was my process; / And of the cannibals that each other eat, / The anthropophagi, and men whose heads / Do grow beneath their shoulders. These things to hear / Would Desdemona seriously incline; / But still the house affairs would draw her thence, / Which ever as she could with haste dispatch, / She'd come again, and with a greedy ear / Devour up my discourse. Which I observing, / Took once a pliant hour, and found good means / To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart / That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, / Whereof by parcels she had something heard, / But not intentively. I did consent, / And often did beguile her of her tears / When I did speak of some distressful stroke / That my youth suffered. My story being done, / She gave me for my pains a world of kisses. / She swore in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange; / 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful. / She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished / That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me, / And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, / I should but teach him how to tell my story, / And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake. / She loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them. / This only is the witchcraft I have used." (I.3.128-69)