Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

O, behold,

The riches of the ship is come on shore!

Ye men of Cyprus, let her have your knees.

Hail to thee, lady! And the grace of heaven,

Before, behind thee, and on every hand,

Enwheel thee round!

 

-Michael Cassio

Othello                    Act II Scene i, Line 86

 

Well, I couldn’t give you just the one line I picked, which was Before, behind thee, and on every hand; that, at the very least needed the line before and after it to make it complete. And then I thought that since I was giving you three lines, I might as well give you the three lines previous to that which really make it fully complete. Then I started going back further and actually considered giving you even more, because in the paragraphs previous Cassio goes even further in his praise of Desdemona. He talks about a maid that paragons description and wild fame; One that extols the quirks of blazoning pens. He also talks about how the tempests themselves…do omit their mortal natures, letting go safely by the divine Desdemona. I never realized before how far Cassio goes in his praise of Desdemona. It becomes a little more obvious as to why Iago picked Cassio to make Othello jealous. The way he talks about Othello’s wife makes it already seem like he might have designs on her.

But hold on; there’s some interesting language in here that we should look at. First, the riches of the ship is come on shore! Sounds like a grammatical error: singular verb for a plural noun. However, it turns out that the ship’s riches is singular: Desdemona is come on shore.

How about the grace of heaven, before, behind thee and on every hand, enwheel thee round. It sounds pretty good, but what exactly does that mean?

And finally, how about being a maid that extols the quirks of blazoning pens? Got any idea what that means? Let’s think: a blazoning pen is a pen that’s writing something big or important. To extol is to praise. Uh, forget it.