It has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and
pity. That is, it substitutes imaginary sympathy for mere
selfishness. It gives us a high and permanent interest, beyond
ourselves, in humanity as such. It raises the great, the remote, and
the possible to an equality with the real, the little and the near.
It makes man a partaker with his kind. It subdues and softens the
stubbornness of his will. It teaches him that there are and have
been others like himself, by showing him as in a glass what they
have felt, thought, and done. It opens the chambers of the human
heart. It leaves nothing indifferent to us that can affect our
common nature. It excites our sensibility by exhibiting the passions
wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of imagination or the
temptation of circumstances; and corrects their fatal excesses in
ourselves by pointing to the greater extent of sufferings and of
crimes to which they have led others. Tragedy creates a balance of
the affections. It makes us thoughtful spectators in the lists of
life. It is the refiner of the species; a discipline of humanity.
The habitual study of poetry and works of imagination is one chief
part of a well-grounded education. A taste for liberal art is
necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is
hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out
of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or
engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.--OTHELLO
furnishes an illustration of these remarks. It excites our sympathy
in an extraordinary degree. The moral it conveys has a closer
application to the concerns of human life than that of any other of
Shakespeare's plays. 'It comes directly home to the bosoms and
business of men.' The pathos in LEAR is indeed more dreadful and
overpowering: but it is less natural, and less of every day's
occurrence. We have not the same degree of sympathy with the
passions described in MACBETH. The interest in HAMLET is more remote
and reflex. That of OTHELLO is at once equally profound and
affecting.
The picturesque contrasts of character in this play are almost as
remarkable as the depth of the passion. The Moor Othello, the gentle
Desdemona, the villain Iago, the good-natured Cassio, the fool
Roderigo, present a range and variety of character as striking and
palpable as that produced by the opposition of costume in a picture.
Their distinguishing qualities stand out to the mind's eye, so that
even when we are not thinking of their actions or sentiments, the
idea of their persons is still as present to us as ever. These
characters and the images they stamp upon the mind are the farthest
asunder possible, the distance between them is immense: yet the
compass of knowledge and invention which the poet has shown in
embodying these extreme creations of his genius is only greater than
the truth and felicity with which he has identified each character
with itself, or blended their different qualities together in the
same story. What a contrast the character of Othello forms to that
of Iago: at the same time, the force of conception with which these
two figures are opposed to each other is rendered still more intense
by the complete consistency with which the traits of each character
are brought out in a state of the highest finishing. The making one
black and the other white, the one unprincipled, the other
unfortunate in the extreme, would have answered the common purposes
of effect, and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter of
character. Shakespeare has laboured the finer shades of difference
in both with as much care and skill as if he had had to depend on
the execution alone for the success of his design. On the other
hand, Desdemona and Aemilia are not meant to be opposed with
anything like strong contrast to each other. Both are, to outward
appearance, characters of common life, not more distinguished than
women usually are, by difference of rank and situation. The
difference of their thoughts and sentiments is, however, laid as
open, their minds are separated from each other by signs as plain
and as little to be mistaken as the complexions of their husbands.
The movement of the passion in OTHELLO is exceedingly different from
that of MACBETH. In MACBETH there is a violent struggle between opposite
feelings, between ambition and the stings of conscience, almost from
first to last: in Othello, the doubtful conflict between contrary
passions, though dreadful, continues only for a short time, and the
chief interest is excited by the alternate ascendancy of different
passions, the entire and unforeseen change from the fondest love and
most unbounded confidence to the tortures of jealousy and the madness of
hatred. The revenge of Othello, after it has once taken thorough
possession of his mind, never quits it, but grows stronger and stronger
at every moment of its delay. The nature of the Moor is noble,
confiding, tender, and generous; but his blood is of the most
inflammable kind; and being once roused by a sense of his wrongs, he is
stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity till he has given a
loose to all the dictates of his rage and his despair. It is in working
his noble nature up to this extremity through rapid but gradual
transitions, in raising passion to its height from the smallest
beginnings and in spite of all obstacles, in painting the expiring
conflict between love and hatred, tenderness and resentment, jealousy
and remorse, in unfolding the strength and the weaknesses of our nature,
in uniting sublimity of thought with the anguish of the keenest woe, in
putting in motion the various impulses that agitate this our mortal
being, and at last blending them in that noble tide of deep and
sustained passion, impetuous but majestic, that 'flows on to the
Propontic, and knows no ebb', that Shakespeare has shown the mastery of
his genius and of his power over the human heart. The third act of
Othello is his masterpiece, not of knowledge or passion separately, but
of the two combined, of the knowledge of character with the expression
of passion, of consummate art in the keeping up of appearances with the
profound workings of nature, and the convulsive movements of
uncontrollable agony, of the power of inflicting torture and of
suffering it. Not only is the tumult of passion heaved up from the very
bottom of the soul, but every the slightest undulation of feeling is
seen on the surface, as it arises from the impulses of imagination or
the different probabilities maliciously suggested by Iago. The
progressive preparation for the catastrophe is wonderfully managed from
the Moor's first gallant recital of the story of his love, of 'the
spells and witchcraft he had used', from his unlooked-for and romantic
success, the fond satisfaction with which he dotes on his own happiness,
the unreserved tenderness of Desdemona and her innocent importunities in
favour of Cassio, irritating the suspicions instilled into her husband's
mind by the perfidy of lago, and rankling there to poison, till he loses
all command of himself, and his rage can only be appeased by blood. She
is introduced, just before lago begins to put his scheme in practice,
pleading for Cassio with all the thoughtless gaiety of friendship and
winning confidence in the love of Othello.
What! Michael Cassio?
That came a wooing with you, and so many a time,
When I have spoke of you dispraisingly,
Hath ta'en your part, to have so much to do
To bring him in?--Why this is not a boon:
'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,
Or feed on nourishing meats, or keep you warm;
Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit
To your person. Nay, when I have a suit,
Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed,
It shall be full of poise, and fearful to be granted.
Othello's confidence, at first only staggered by broken hints and
insinuations, recovers itself at sight of Desdemona; and he exclaims
If she be false, O then Heav'n mocks itself:
I'll not believe it.
But presently after, on brooding over his suspicions by himself, and
yielding to his apprehensions of the worst, his smothered jealousy
breaks out into open fury, and he returns to demand satisfaction of
Iago like a wild beast stung with the envenomed shaft of the
hunters. 'Look where he comes', &c. In this state of exasperation
and violence, after the first paroxysms of his grief and tenderness
have had their vent in that passionate apostrophe, 'I felt not
Cassio's kisses on her lips,' Iago by false aspersions, and by
presenting the most revolting images to his mind, [Footnote: See the
passage beginning, 'It is impossible you should see this, Were they
as prime as goats,' &c.] easily turns the storm of Passion from
himself against Desdemona, and works him up into a trembling agony
of doubt and fear, in which he abandons all his love and hopes in a
breath.
Now do I see'tis true. Look here, Iago,
All my fond love thus do I blow to Heav'n. Tis gone.
Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell;
Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne
To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught;
For'tis of aspicks' tongues.
From this time, his raging thoughts 'never look back, ne'er ebb to
humble love' till his revenge is sure of its object, the painful
regrets and involuntary recollections of past circumstances which
cross his mind amidst the dim trances of passion, aggravating the
sense of his wrongs, but not shaking his purpose. Once indeed, where
Iago shows him Cassio with the handkerchief in his hand, and making
sport (as he thinks) of his misfortunes, the intolerable bitterness
of his feelings, the extreme sense of shame, makes him fall to
praising her accomplishments and relapse into a momentary fit of
weakness, 'Yet, oh, the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!' This
returning fondness, however, only serves, as it is managed by Iago,
to whet his revenge, and set his heart more against her. In his
conversations with Desdemona, the persuasion of her guilt and the
immediate proofs of her duplicity seem to irritate his resentment
and aversion to her; but in the scene immediately preceding her
death, the recollection of his love returns upon him in all its
tenderness and force; and after her death, he all at once forgets
his wrongs in the sudden and irreparable sense of his loss:
My wife! My wife! What wife? I have no wife.
Oh insupportable! Oh heavy hour!
This happens before he is assured of her innocence; but afterwards
his remorse is as dreadful as his revenge has been, and yields only
to fixed and death like despair. His farewell speech, before he
kills himself, in which he conveys his reasons to the senate for the
murder of his wife, is equal to the first speech in which he gave
them an account of his courtship of her, and 'his whole course of
love'. Such an ending was alone worthy of such a commencement.
If anything could add to the force of our sympathy with Othello, or
compassion for his fate, it would be the frankness and generosity of
his nature, which so little deserve it. When Iago first begins to
practise upon his unsuspecting friendship, he answers:
--Tis not to make me jealous,
To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are most virtuous.
Nor from my own weak merits will I draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt,
For she had eyes and chose me.
This character is beautifully (and with affecting simplicity)
confirmed by what Desdemona herself says of him to Aemilia after she
has lost the handkerchief, the first pledge of his love to her:
Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse
Full of cruzadoes. And but my noble Moor
Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness,
As jealous creatures are, it were enough
To put him to ill thinking.
Aemilia. Is he not jealous?
Desdemona. Who he? I think the sun where he was
born drew all such humours from him.
In a short speech of Aemilia's there occurs one of those
side-intimations of the fluctuations of passion which we seldom meet
with but in Shakespeare. After Othello has resolved upon the death of
his wife, and bids her dismiss her attendant for the night, she answers: