George Washington University

Scanning this Thing Further: Iago's Ambiguous AdviceAuthor(s): Erik S. RydingSource: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Summer, 1989), pp. 195-196Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2870821 .

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NOTES 195

line nine is clearly redundant. It is likely that this "And" was Shakespeare's cancelled "first thought," since the compositors of Romeo reproduced many such false starts. The two preceding lines both begin with a word taken from Moffet: "Leape" and "Louers." I suggest that when Shakespeare began the third line he had in mind the line of Moffet's that begins "And being scap't," and without thinking he started to write his own line in the same way.

Scanning This Thing Further: Iago's Ambiguous Advice

ERIK S. RYDING

Iago. My lord, I would I might entreat your honour To scan this thing no further, leave it to time: Though it be fit that Cassio have his place, For sure he fills it up with great ability, Yet if you please to hold him off awhile, You shall by that perceive him and his means..

(Othello, 3.3.248-53)1

The passage above, which slips by without comment in editions of Othello, illustrates Iago's characteristic use of double entendre. Ostensibly discouraging rashness and encouraging patience, Iago in reality tries to provoke Othello's rage by using ambiguous language with scabrous overtones. By entreating Othello to "scan this thing [Desdemona's supposed infidelity] no further"-indeed, by mentioning "this thing" at all-Iago in effect forces his general to question Desdemona's honesty. Othello, carefully weighing Iago's words, receives two messages when he hears that Cassio should "have his place, / For sure he fills it up with great ability." On the surface, Iago makes the simple statement that Cassio performs ably as a lieutenant. The subtext, however, is that Cassio performs well as a lover: he will "fill up" his "place" (Desdemona) "with great ability." Iago's metaphor, though sketchy, resembles a detailed conceit in the seventeenth scene of Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris; there, a soldier arrives to assassinate Mugeroun for having committed adultery:

Now ser to you yt dares make a dvke a cuckolde and vse a counterfeyt key to his privye chamber thoughe you take out none but yor owne treasure yett you putt in yt displeases him / And fill vp his rome yt he shold occupie.2

In this context the meaning of "fill up" is unambiguous. Like Marlowe, incidentally, Shakespeare uses the word treasure (or treasures) as a metaphor for sexual favors or for the genitals of either sex. Emilia, for example, when she offers Desdemona reasons for committing adultery, asks what wives should do if their husbands "slack their duties, / And pour our treasures into foreign laps" (4.3.87-88). And in Sonnet 136, Shakespeare plays with the lubricious meanings not only of will and treasure but also, significantly, of fulfill: "Will, will fulfill the treasure of thy loue, / I fill it full with wils, and my will

'The Arden edition Othello, ed. M. R. Ridley (London: Methuen, 1962). Emilia's lines are also from this edition.

2 The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, 2d ed., ed. Fredson Bowers, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), Vol. 1, 390n. My text is based on the manuscript fragment of The Massacre at Paris (reprinted in Bowers's edition), now in the Folger Shakespeare Library. The early printed text, a bad quarto, does not include the phrase "fill up"; see, however, Bowers's comments on the superiority of the Folger MS to the quarto in his Textual Introduction to the play (pp. 355-60, esp. pp. 358-59).

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196 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

one" (1609 quarto; 11. 5-6). So Shakespeare's audience would presumably have felt the lewd undercurrent in Iago's use of the verb "fill up."

Iago's next words now take on a new meaning: "Yet if you please to hold him off awhile, / You shall by that perceive him and his means." Again, the surface meaning is that Othello should not immediately reinstate Cassio; yet Iago surely hopes that the words "hold him off," after the previous two lines, will conjure up an image in which Othello is separating Cassio bodily from Desdemona.

Throughout this passage, Iago has ingeniously chosen his words so that Othello will associate Cassio's success as an officer with his supposed success as Desdemona's lover. Iago's subliminal message to Othello seems clear: if you let Cassio again have his place in the military, he will continue to cuckold you.

An Early Reference to the Coventry Mystery Plays in Shakespeare?

IRVIN LEIGH MATUS

INCLUDED IN THE CATALOGUE OF CURSES HURLED BY MARGARET of Anjou at the title character of Richard III is the wish that "The worm of conscience still begnaw thy

soul" (1.3.222).1 The phrase "worm of conscience" has received little attention from editors, and the Furness New Variorum edition of the plays contains only two entries:2

WRIGHT: In the margin of the Geneva Version of Isaiah, lxvi, 24: 'their worm shall not die,' is explained as 'a continual torment of conscience, which shall ever gnaw them, and never suffer them to be at rest.'-BARNARD: The 'Worm of Conscience' is a character in the Pilgremage of the Sowle, a spiritual romance printed by Caxton in 1483.3

Wright's note seems to suggest the more likely source for Shakespeare. Richmond Noble, however, cites few examples of Shakespeare's use of the Geneva version in his early plays and concludes, "The Genevan begins definitely to manifest its influence in 2 Henry IV, whose date might be taken to be about 1596-7."4 Noble has demonstrated that, prior to that play, the source for the majority of religious references is the Bishops' version.5 More tellingly, there is no entry for the phrase "worm of conscience" in Noble's "List of Biblical and Liturgical References," although this list "includes several passages whose resemblance to Biblical passages is only slight and for which it is improbable that Shakespeare was directly indebted to the Bible."6

A possible source for the "worm of conscience," I suggest, is the Corpus Christi plays of Coventry. In The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated William Dugdale wrote:

I have been told by some old people, who in their younger years were eye-witnesses of these Pageants so acted, that the yearly confluence of people to see that shew was extraordinary great, and yeilded no small advantage to this City.7

King Richard III, Arden edition, ed. Antony Hammond (London: Methuen, 1981). 2 The Tragedy of Richard the Third, New Variorum edition, ed. Horace Howard Furness, Jr. (Philadelphia:

J. B. Lippincott, 1908). 3 The editions cited are William Aldis Wright's for the Clarendon Press Series (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1880), and Francis Pierrepont Barnard's for Arnold's School Shakespeare (London: Edward Arnold, n.d.). 4 Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge and Use of the Book of Common Prayer (London: Society for Promoting

Christian Knowledge, 1935), p. 65. 5 See Noble, pp. 69-76. 6 Noble, p. 106. 7 London: T. Warren, 1656, p. 116. Dugdale evidently believed that the religious drama was the product of

the Grayfriars, and it is in the portion of his chapter on Coventry that the account is to be found.

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