"O, _if_ in black my lady's 4. "_If_ she be black, and thereto
brows be decked." have a wit." id.
5. "And therefore is she born 5. "A measure to the health of
to make black fair." black Othello." ii. 3.
6. "Paints itself black to 6. "For I am black." iii, 3.
imitate her brow."
7. "To look like her are 7. "_Begrimed_ and black." id.
_chimney-sweepers_ black."
Now, with these parallel passages before them, what man, woman, or child
could bring himself or herself to believe that the connection of these
plays was casual or the date of the first Othello removable from the date
of the early contemporary late-first-period-but-one play _Love's Labour's
Lost_, or that anybody's opinion that they were so was worth one straw?
When therefore by the introduction of the Iago episode Shakespeare in his
later days had with the assistance of three fellow-poets completed the
unfinished work of his youth, the junction thus effected of the Brabantio
part of the play with this Iago underplot supplied them with an evidence
wholly distinct from that of the metrical test which yet confirmed in
every point the conclusion independently arrived at and supported by the
irresistible coincidence of all the tests.
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