'Sterile' occurs in 2Henry IV, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and The Tempest. It is used of Calpurnia (JuC 1.2.9), but in its other occurrences refers to land. Hamlet's "sterile promontory" (Ham.2.2.299) is probably a sea coast like the "sea-marge, sterile and rocky hard" in the masque of the Tempest (Tem.4.1.69).
In 2Henry IV and Othello 'sterile' collocates with 'manure', a word that elsewhere occurs only in Richard II. The two passages stand in a suggestive counterpoint. After the Gaultre Forest episode with its Machiavellian treachery, Falstaff delivers a long encomium on wine, which can be read as a nostalgic reflection on the disenchantments of modernity. He expresses his dislike for Prince John, the "young sober-blooded boy" who "drinks no wine." For Falstaff, wine is the flesh made word:
It ascends me into the brain, dries me
98 there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapors which
99 environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full
100 of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which deliver'd
101 o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth,
102 becomes excellent wit. (2H4 4.3.97-102)
Falstaff implicitly takes some credit for the "spiritual" education of Prince Hal:
117 Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant, for the
118 cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he
119 hath, like lean, sterile, and bare land, manur'd, husbanded,
120 and till'd with excellent endeavor of
121 drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he
122 is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand
123 sons, the first humane principle I would teach them
124 should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict
125 themselves to sack.
Iago by contrast does not believe in transsubstantiation, as is shown in his dismissive response to Roderigo's praise of Desdemona's "blest condition": "the wine she drinks is made of grapes"(Oth.2.1.250). In another speech to Roderigo, Iago uses the collocation of 'sterile' and 'manure' in the context of education. But he describes a very different and entirely instrumental world, untouched by "humane principle":
319 Virtue? a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are
320 thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the
321 which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant
322 nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up [tine],
323 supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with
324 many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manur'd
325 with industry -- why, the power and corrigible
326 authority of this lies in our wills. (Oth.1.3.319.326)
21 September 1999