by Iago, so that it suddenly strikes Othello in a new point of view, as
the inability to resist temptation; but to us who perceive the character
as a whole, this extreme gentleness of nature is yet delineated with
such exceeding refinement, that the effect never approaches to
feebleness. It is true that _once_ her extreme timidity leads her in a
moment of confusion and terror to prevaricate about the fatal
handkerchief. This handkerchief, in the original story of Cinthio, is
merely one of those embroidered handkerchiefs which were as fashionable
in Shakspeare's time as in our own; but the minute description of it as
"lavorato alla morisco sottilissimamente,"[52] suggested to the poetical
fancy of Shakspeare one of the most exquisite and characteristic
passages in the whole play. Othello makes poor Desdemona believe that
the handkerchief was a talisman.
There's magic in the web of it.
A sibyl, that had numbered in the world
The sun to make two hundred compasses,
In her prophetic fury sew'd the work:
The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk,
And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful
Conserv'd of maidens' hearts.
DESDEMONA.
Indeed! is't true?
OTHELLO.
Most veritable, therefore look to't well.
DESDEMONA.
Then would to heaven that I had never seen it!
OTHELLO.
Ha! wherefore!
DESDEMONA.
Why do you speak so startingly and rash?
OTHELLO.
Is't lost,--Is't gone? Speak, is it out of the way?
DESDEMONA.
Heavens bless us!
OTHELLO.
Say you?
DESDEMONA.
It is not lost--but what an' if it were?
OTHELLO.
Ha!
DESDEMONA.
I say it is not lost.
OTHELLO.
Fetch it, let me see it.
DESDEMONA.
Why so I can, sir, but I will not now, &c.
Desdemona, whose soft credulity, whose turn for the marvellous, whose
susceptible imagination had first directed her thoughts and affections
to Othello, is precisely the woman to be frightened out of her senses by
such a tale as this, and betrayed by her fears into a momentary
tergiversation. It is most natural in such a being, and shows us that
even in the sweetest natures there can be no completeness and
consistency without moral energy.[53]
With the most perfect artlessness, she has something of the instinctive,
unconscious address of her sex; as when she appeals to her father--
So much duty as my mother show'd
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge, that I may profess
Due to the Moor, my lord.
And when she is pleading for Cassio--
What! Michael Cassio!
That came a wooing with you; and many a time.
When I have spoken of you disparagingly,
Hath ta'en your part?
In persons who unite great sensibility and lively fancy, I have often
observed this particular species of address, which is always unconscious
of itself, and consists in the power of placing ourselves in the
position of another, and imagining, rather than perceiving, what is in
their hearts. We women have this _address_ (if so it can be called)
naturally, but I have seldom met with it in men. It is not inconsistent
with extreme simplicity of character, and quite distinct from that kind
of art which is the result of natural acuteness and habits of
observation--quick to perceive the foibles of others, and as quick to
turn them to its own purposes; which is always conscious of itself, and,
if united with strong intellect, seldom perceptible to others. In the
mention of her mother, and the appeal to Othello's self-love, Desdemona
has no design formed on conclusions previously drawn; but her intuitive
quickness of feeling, added to her imagination, lead her more safely to
the same results, and the distinction is as truly as it is delicately
drawn.
When Othello first outrages her in a manner which appears inexplicable,
she seeks and finds excuses for him. She is so innocent that not only
she cannot believe herself suspected, but she cannot conceive the
existence of guilt in others.
Something, sure, of state,
Either from Venice, or some unhatch'd practice
Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,
Hath puddled his clear spirit.
'Tis even so--
Nay, we must think, men are not gods,
Nor of them look for such observances
As fit the bridal.
And when the direct accusation of crime is flung on her in the vilest
terms, it does not anger but stun her, as if it transfixed her whole
being; she attempts no reply, no defence; and reproach or resistance
never enters her thought.
Good friend, go to him--for by this light of heaven
I know not how I lost him: here I kneel:--
If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love,
Either in discourse of thought or actual deed;
Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,
Delighted them in any other form;
Or that I do not yet, and ever did,
And ever will, though he do shake me off
To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly,
Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much,
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love.
And there is one stroke of consummate delicacy surprising, when we
remember the latitude of expression prevailing in Shakspeare's time, and
which he allowed to his other women generally: she says, on recovering
from her stupefaction--
Am I that name, Iago?
IAGO.
What name, sweet lady?
DESDEMONA.
That which she says my lord did say I was.
So completely did Shakspeare enter into the angelic refinement of the
character.
Endued with that temper which is the origin of superstition in love as
in religion,--which, in fact makes love itself a religion,--she not
only does not utter an upbraiding, but nothing that Othello does or
says, no outrage, no injustice, can tear away the charm with which her
imagination had invested him, or impair her faith in his honor; "Would
you had never seen him!" exclaims Emilia.
DESDEMONA.
So would not I!--my love doth so approve him,
That even his stubbornness, his checks and frowns
Have grace and favor in them.
There is another peculiarity, which, in reading the play of Othello, we
rather feel than perceive: through the whole of the dialogue
appropriated to Desdemona, there is not one general observation. Words
are with her the vehicle of sentiment, and never of reflection; so that
I cannot find throughout a sentence of general application. The same
remark applies to Miranda: and to no other female character of any
importance or interest; not even to Ophelia.
The rest of what I wished to say of Desdemona, has been anticipated by
an anonymous critic, and so beautifully, so justly, so eloquently
expressed, that I with pleasure erase my own page, to make room for his.
"Othello," observes this writer, "is no love story; all that is below
tragedy in the passion of love, is taken away at once, by the awful
character of Othello; for such he seems to us to be designed to be. He
appears never as a lover, but at once as a husband: and the relation of
his love made dignified, as it is a husband's justification of his
marriage, is also dignified, as it is a soldier's relation of his stern
and perilous life. His love itself, as long as it is happy, is perfectly
calm and serene--the protecting tenderness of a husband. It is not till
it is disordered, that it appears as a passion: then is shown a power in
contention with itself--a mighty being struck with death, and bringing
up from all the depths of life convulsions and agonies. It is no
exhibition of the power of the passion of love, but of the passion of
life, vitally wounded, and self over-mastering. If Desdemona had been
really guilty, the greatness would have been destroyed, because his love
would have been unworthy, false. But she is good, and his love is most
perfect, just, and good. That a man should place his perfect love on a
wretched thing, is miserably debasing, and shocking to thought; but that
loving perfectly and well, he should by hellish human circumvention be
brought to distrust and dread, and abjure his own perfect love, is most
mournful indeed--it is the infirmity of our good nature wrestling in
vain with the strong powers of evil. Moreover, he would, had Desdemona
been false, have been the mere victim of fate; whereas he is now in a
manner his own victim. His happy love was heroic tenderness; his injured
love is terrible passion, and disordered power, engendered within itself
to its own destruction, is the height of all tragedy.
"The character of Othello is perhaps the most greatly drawn, the most
heroic of any of Shakspeare's actors; but it is, perhaps, that one also
of which his reader last acquires the intelligence. The intellectual and
warlike energy of his mind--his tenderness of affection--his loftiness
of spirit--his frank, generous magnanimity--impetuosity like a
thunderbolt--and that dark, fierce flood of boiling passion, polluting
even his imagination,--compose a character entirely original, most
difficult to delineate, but perfectly delineated."
Emilia in this play is a perfect portrait from common life, a
masterpiece in the Flemish style: and though not necessary as a
contrast, it cannot be but that the thorough vulgarity, the loose
principles of this plebeian woman, united to a high degree of spirit,
energetic feeling, strong sense and low cunning, serve to place in
brighter relief the exquisite refinement, the moral grace, the
unblemished truth, and the soft submission of Desdemona.
On the other perfections of this tragedy, considered as a production of
genius--on the wonderful characters of Othello and Iago--on the skill
with which the plot is conducted, and its simplicity which a
word unravels,[54] and on the overpowering horror of the
catastrophe--eloquence and analytical criticism have been exhausted; I
will only add, that the source of the pathos throughout--of that pathos
which at once softens and deepens the tragic effect--lies in the
character of Desdemona. No woman differently constituted could have
excited the same intense and painful compassion, without losing
something of that exalted charm, which invests her from beginning to
end, which we are apt to impute to the interest of the situation, and to
the poetical coloring, but which lies, in fact, in the very essence of
the character. Desdemona, with all her timid flexibility and soft
acquiescence, is not weak; for the negative alone is weak; and the mere
presence of goodness and affection implies in itself a species of power;
power without consciousness, power without effort, power with
repose--that soul of grace!
I know a Desdemona in real life, one in whom the absence of intellectual
power is never felt as a deficiency, nor the absence of energy of will
as impairing the dignity, nor the most imperturbable serenity, as a want
of feeling: one in whom thoughts appear mere instincts, the sentiment of
rectitude supplies the principle, and virtue itself seems rather a
necessary state of being, than an imposed law. No shade of sin or vanity
has yet stolen over that bright innocence. No discord within has marred
the loveliness without--no strife of the factitious world without has
disturbed the harmony within. The comprehension of evil appears forever
shut out, as if goodness had converted all things to itself; and all to
the pure in heart must necessarily be pure. The impression produced is
exactly that of the character of Desdemona; genius is a rare thing, but
abstract goodness is rarer. In Desdemona, we cannot but feel that the
slightest manifestation of intellectual power or active will would have
injured the dramatic effect. She is a victim consecrated from the
first,--"an offering without blemish," alone worthy of the grand final
sacrifice; all harmony, all grace, all purity, all tenderness, all
truth! But, alas! to see her fluttering like a cherub in the talons of a
fiend!--to see her--O poor Desdemona!
IMOGEN.
We come to Imogen. Others of Shakspeare's characters are, as dramatic
and poetical conceptions, more striking, more brilliant, more powerful;
but of all his women, considered as individuals rather than as heroines,
Imogen is the most perfect. Portia and Juliet are pictured to the fancy
with more force of contrast, more depth of light and shade; Viola and
Miranda, with more aerial delicacy of outline; but there is no female
portrait that can be compared to Imogen as a woman--none in which so
great a variety of tints are mingled together into such perfect harmony.
In her, we have all the fervor of youthful tenderness, all the romance
of youthful fancy, all the enchantment of ideal grace,--the bloom of
beauty, the brightness of intellect and the dignity of rank, taking a
peculiar hue from the conjugal character which is shed over all, like a
consecration and a holy charm. In Othello and the Winter's Tale, the
interest excited for Desdemona and Hermione is divided with others: but
in Cymbeline, Imogen is the angel of light, whose lovely presence
pervades and animates the whole piece. The character altogether may be
pronounced finer, more complex in its elements, and more fully developed
in all its parts, than those of Hermione and Desdemona; but the position
in which she is placed is not, I think, so fine--at least, not so
effective, as a tragic situation.
Shakspeare has borrowed the chief circumstances of Imogen's story from
one of Boccaccio's tales.[55]
A company of Italian merchants who are assembled in a tavern at Paris,
are represented as conversing on the subject of their wives: all of them
express themselves with levity, or skepticism, or scorn, on the virtue
of women, except a young Genoese merchant named Bernabo, who maintains,
that by the especial favor of Heaven he possesses a wife no less chaste
than beautiful. Heated by the wine, and excited by the arguments and the
coarse raillery of another young merchant, Ambrogiolo, Bernabo proceeds
to enumerate the various perfections and accomplishments of his Zinevra.
He praises her loveliness, her submission, and her discretion--her skill
in embroidery, her graceful service, in which the best trained page of
the court could not exceed her; and he adds, as rarer accomplishments,
that she could mount a horse, fly a hawk, write and read, and cast up
accounts, as well as any merchant of them all. His enthusiasm only
excites the laughter and mockery of his companions, particularly of
Ambrogiolo, who, by the most artful mixture of contradiction and
argument, rouses the anger of Bernabo, and he at length exclaims, that
he would willingly stake his life, his head, on the virtue of his wife.
This leads to the wager which forms so important an incident in the
drama. Ambrogiolo bets one thousand florins of gold against five
thousand, that Zinevra, like the rest of her sex, is accessible to
temptation--that in less than three months he will undermine her virtue,
and bring her husband the most undeniable proofs of her falsehood. He
sets off for Genoa, in order to accomplish his purpose; but on his
arrival, all that he learns, and all that he beholds with his own eyes,
of the discreet and noble character of the lady, make him despair of
success by fair means; he therefore has recourse to the basest
treachery. By bribing an old woman in the service of Zinevra, he is
conveyed to her sleeping apartment, concealed in a trunk, from which he
issues in the dead of the night; he takes note of the furniture of the
chamber, makes himself master of her purse, her morning robe, or cymar,
and her girdle, and of a certain mark on her person. He repeats these
observations for two nights, and, furnished with these evidences of
Zinevra's guilt, he returns to Paris, and lays them before the wretched
husband. Bernabo rejects every proof of his wife's infidelity except
that which finally convinces Posthumus. When Ambrogiolo mentions the
"mole, cinque-spotted," he stands like one who has received a poniard in
his heart; without further dispute he pays down the forfeit, and filled
with rage and despair both at the loss of his money and the falsehood of
his wife, he returns towards Genoa; he retires to his country house, and
sends a messenger to the city with letters to Zinevra, desiring that she
would come and meet him, but with secret orders to the man to despatch
her by the way. The servant prepares to execute his master's command,
but overcome by her entreaties for mercy, and his own remorse, he spares
her life, on condition that she will fly from the country forever. He
then disguises her in his own cloak and cap, and brings back to her
husband the assurance that she is killed, and that her body has been
devoured by the wolves. In the disguise of a mariner, Zinevra then
embarks on board a vessel bound to the Levant, and on arriving at
Alexandria, she is taken into the service of the Sultan of Egypt, under
the name of Sicurano; she gains the confidence of her master, who, not
suspecting her sex, sends her as captain of the guard which was
appointed for the protection of the merchants at the fair of Acre. Here
she accidentally meets Ambrogiolo, and sees in his possession the purse
and girdle, which she immediately recognizes as her own. In reply to her
inquiries, he relates with fiendish exultation the manner in which he
had obtained possession of them, and she persuades him to go back with
her to Alexandria. She then sends a messenger to Genoa in the name of
the Sultan, and induces her husband to come and settle in Alexandria. At
a proper opportunity, she summons both to the presence of the Sultan,
obliges Ambrogiolo to make a full confession of his treachery, and
wrings from her husband the avowal of his supposed murder of herself:
then falling at the feet of the Sultan discovers her real name and sex,
to the great amazement of all. Bernabo is pardoned at the prayer of his
wife, and Ambrogiolo is condemned to be fastened to a stake, smeared
with honey, and left to be devoured by the flies and locusts. This
horrible sentence is executed; while Zinevra, enriched by the presents
of the Sultan, and the forfeit wealth of Ambrogiolo, returns with her
husband to Genoa, where she lives in great honor and happiness, and
maintains her reputation of virtue to the end of her life.
These are the materials from which Shakspeare has drawn the dramatic
situation of Imogen. He has also endowed her with several of the
qualities which are attributed to Zinevra; but for the essential truth
and beauty of the individual character, for the sweet coloring of
pathos, and sentiment, and poetry interfused through the whole, he is
indebted only to nature and himself.
It would be a waste of words to refute certain critics who have accused
Shakspeare of a want of judgment in the adoption of the story; of
having transferred the manners of a set of intoxicated merchants and a
merchant's wife to heroes and princesses, and of having entirely
destroyed the interest of the catastrophe.[56] The truth is, that
Shakspeare has wrought out the materials before him with the most
luxuriant fancy and the most wonderful skill. As for the various
anachronisms, and the confusion of names, dates, and manners, over which
Dr. Johnson exults in no measured terms, the confusion is nowhere but in
his own heavy obtuseness of sentiment and perception, and his want of
poetical faith. Look into the old Italian poets, whom we read
continually with still increasing pleasure; does any one think of
sitting down to disprove the existence of Ariodante, king of Scotland?
or to prove that the mention of Proteus and Pluto, baptism and the
Virgin Mary, in a breath, amounts to an anachronism? Shakspeare, by
throwing his story far back into a remote and uncertain age, has
blended, by his "own omnipotent will," the marvellous, the heroic, the
ideal, and the classical,--the extreme of refinement and the extreme of
simplicity,--into one of the loveliest fictions of romantic poetry; and,
to use Schlegel's expression, "has made the social manners of the latest
times harmonize with heroic deeds, and even with the appearances of the
gods."[57]
But, admirable as is the conduct of the whole play, rich in variety of
character and in picturesque incident, its chief beauty and interest is
derived from Imogen.
When Ferdinand tells Miranda that she was "created of every creature's
best," he speaks like a lover, or refers only to her personal charms:
the same expression might be applied critically to the character of
Imogen; for, as the portrait of Miranda is produced by resolving the
female character into its original elements, so that of Imogen unites
the greatest number of those qualities which we imagine to constitute
excellency in woman.
Imogen, like Juliet, conveys to our mind the impression of extreme
simplicity in the midst of the most wonderful complexity. To conceive
her aright, we must take some peculiar tint from many characters, and so
mingle them, that, like the combination of hues in a sunbeam, the effect
shall be as one to the eye. We must imagine something of the romantic
enthusiasm of Juliet, of the truth and constancy of Helen, of the
dignified purity of Isabel, of the tender sweetness of Viola, of the
self-possession and intellect of Portia--combined together so equally
and so harmoniously, that we can scarcely say that one quality
predominates over the other. But Imogen is less imaginative than Juliet,
less spirited and intellectual than Portia, less serious than Helen and
Isabel; her dignity is not so imposing as that of Hermione, it stands
more on the defensive; her submission, though unbounded, is not so
passive as that of Desdemona; and thus while she resembles each of
these characters individually, she stands wholly distinct from all.
It is true, that the conjugal tenderness of Imogen is at once the chief
subject of the drama, and the pervading charm of her character; but it
is not true, I think, that she is merely interesting from her tenderness
and constancy to her husband. We are so completely let into the essence
of Imogen's nature, that we feel as if we had known and loved her before
she was married to Posthumus, and that her conjugal virtues are a charm
superadded, like the color laid upon a beautiful groundwork. Neither
does it appear to me, that Posthumus is unworthy of Imogen, or only
interesting on Imogen's account. His character, like those of all the
other persons of the drama, is kept subordinate to hers: but this could
not be otherwise, for she is the proper subject--the heroine of the
poem. Every thing is done to ennoble Posthumus, and justify her love for
him; and though we certainly approve him more for her sake than for his
own, we are early prepared to view him with Imogen's eyes; and not only
excuse, but sympathize in her admiration of one
Who sat 'mongst men like a descended god.
* * * *
Who lived in court, which it is rare to do,
Most praised, most loved:
A sample to the youngest; to the more mature,
A glass that feated them.
And with what beauty and delicacy is her conjugal and matronly
character discriminated! Her love for her husband is as deep as Juliet's
for her lover, but without any of that headlong vehemence, that
fluttering amid hope, fear, and transport--that giddy intoxication of
heart and sense, which belongs to the novelty of passion, which we feel
once, and but once, in our lives. We see her love for Posthumus acting
upon her mind with the force of an habitual feeling, heightened by
enthusiastic passion, and hallowed by the sense of duty. She asserts and
justifies her affection with energy indeed, but with a calm and
wife-like dignity:--
CYMBELINE.
Thou took'st a beggar, would'st have made my throne
A seat for baseness.
IMOGEN.
No, I rather added a lustre to it
CYMBELINE.
O thou vile one!
IMOGEN.
Sir,
It is your fault that I have loved Posthumus;
You bred him as my playfellow, and he is
A man worth any woman; overbuys me,
Almost the sum he pays.
Compare also, as examples of the most delicate discrimination of
character and feeling, the parting scene between Imogen and Posthumus,
that between Romeo and Juliet, and that between Troilus and Cressida:
compare the confiding matronly tenderness, the deep but resigned sorrow
of Imogen, with the despairing agony of Juliet, and the petulant grief
of Cressida.
When Posthumus is driven into exile, he comes to take a last farewell of
his wife:--
IMOGEN.
My dearest husband,
I something fear my father's wrath, but nothing
(Always reserved my holy duty) what
His rage can do on me. You must be gone,
And I shall here abide the hourly shot
Of angry eyes: not comforted to live,
But that there is this jewel in the world
That I may see again.
POSTHUMUS.
My queen! my mistress!
O, lady, weep no more! lest I give cause
To be suspected of more tenderness
Than doth become a man. I will remain
The loyal'st husband that did e'er plight troth
* * * *