The scene which follows with Aemilia and the song of the Willow are
equally beautiful, and show the author's extreme power of varying
the expression of passion, in all its moods and in all
circumstances;
Aemilia. Would you had never seen him.
Desdemona. So would not I: my love doth so approve him,
That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns,
Have grace and favour in them, &c.
Not the unjust suspicions of Othello, not Iago's treachery, place
Desdemona in a more amiable or interesting light than the casual
conversation (half earnest, half jest) between her and Aemilia on the
common behaviour of women to their husbands. This dialogue takes place
just before the last fatal scene. If Othello had overheard it, it would
have prevented the whole catastrophe; but then it would have spoiled the
play.
The character of Iago is one of the supererogations of Shakespeare's
genius. Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought this whole
character unnatural, because his villainy is WITHOUT A SUFFICIENT
MOTIVE. Shakespeare, who was as good a philosopher as he was a poet,
thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which is another name
for the love of mischief, is natural to man. He would know this as well
or better than if it had been demonstrated to him by a logical diagram,
merely from seeing children paddle in the dirt or kill flies for sport.
Iago in fact belongs to a class of characters common to Shakespeare and
at the same time peculiar to him; whose heads are as acute and active as
their hearts are hard and callous. Iago is, to be sure, an extreme
instance of the kind; that is to say, of diseased intellectual activity,
with an almost perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather
with a decided preference of the latter, because it falls more readily
in with his favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and
scope to his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own
fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful
advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion--an
insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous
kind. 'Our ancient' is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills
has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a
fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching
the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a microscope; who plots the
ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in
the dark to prevent ennui. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the
success of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has inflicted on
others. He is an amateur of tragedy in real life; and instead of
employing his invention on imaginary characters, or long-forgotten
incidents, he takes the bolder and more desperate course of getting up
his plot at home, casts the principal parts among his nearest friends
and connexions, and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady
nerves and unabated resolution. We will just give an illustration or
two.
One of his most characteristic speeches is that immediately after
the marriage of Othello.
Roderigo. What a full fortune does the thick lips owe,
If he can carry her thus!
Iago. Call up her father:
Rouse him [Othello], make after him, poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen,
And tho' he in a fertile climate dwell,
Plague him with flies: Tho' that his joy be joy,
Yet throw such changes of vexation on it,
As it may lose some colour.
In the next passage, his imagination runs riot in the mischief he is
plotting, and breaks out into the wildness and impetuosity of real
enthusiasm.
Roderigo. Here is her father's house: I'll call aloud.
Iago. Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell,
As when, by night and negligence, the fire
Is spied in populous cities.
One of his most favourite topics, on which he is rich indeed, and in
descanting on which his spleen serves him for a Muse, is the
disproportionate match between Desdemona and the Moor. This is a
clue to the character of the lady which he is by no means ready to
part with. It is brought forward in the first scene, and he recurs
to it, when in answer to his insinuations against Desdemona,
Roderigo says:
I cannot believe that in her--she's full of most blest
conditions.
Iago. Bless'd fig's end. The wine she drinks is made of
grapes. If she had been blest, she would never have married
the Moor.
And again with still more spirit and fatal effect afterwards, when
he turns this very suggestion arising in Othello's own breast to her
prejudice.