“A fellow almost damn’d in a fair _wife_”—
the true one, as fitting to Iago’s contempt for whatever did not display
power, and that intellectual power. In what follows, let the reader feel
how by and through the glass of two passions, disappointed vanity and
envy, the very vices of which he is complaining, are made to act upon him
as if they were so many excellences, and the more appropriately, because
cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious of inward
weakness;—but they act only by half, like music on an inattentive auditor,
swelling the thoughts which prevent him from listening to it.
_Ib._—
“_Rod._ What a full fortune does the _thick-lips_ owe,
If he can carry ’t thus.”
Roderigo turns off to Othello; and here comes one, if not the only,
seeming justification of our blackamoor or negro Othello. Even if we
supposed this an uninterrupted tradition of the theatre, and that
Shakespeare himself, from want of scenes, and the experience that nothing
could be made too marked for the senses of his audience, had practically
sanctioned it,—would this prove aught concerning his own intention as a
poet for all ages? Can we imagine him so utterly ignorant as to make a
barbarous negro plead royal birth,—at a time, too, when negroes were not
known except as slaves? As for Iago’s language to Brabantio, it implies
merely that Othello was a Moor,—that is, black. Though I think the rivalry
of Roderigo sufficient to account for his wilful confusion of Moor and
Negro,—yet, even if compelled to give this up, I should think it only
adapted for the acting of the day, and should complain of an enormity
built on a single word, in direct contradiction to Iago’s “Barbary horse.”
Besides, if we could in good earnest believe Shakespeare ignorant of the
distinction, still why should we adopt one disagreeable possibility
instead of a ten times greater and more pleasing probability? It is a
common error to mistake the epithets applied by the _dramatis personæ_ to
each other, as truly descriptive of what the audience ought to see or
know. No doubt Desdemona saw Othello’s visage in his mind; yet, as we are
constituted, and most surely as an English audience was disposed in the
beginning of the seventeenth century, it would be something monstrous to
conceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable
negro. It would argue a disproportionateness, a want of balance, in
Desdemona, which Shakespeare does not appear to have in the least
contemplated.
_Ib._ Brabantio’s speech:—
“This accident is not unlike my dream.”
The old careful senator, being caught careless, transfers his caution to
his dreaming power at least.
_Ib._ Iago’s speech:—
... “For their souls,
Another of his fathom they have not,
To lead their business.”
The forced praise of Othello, followed by the bitter hatred of him in this
speech! And observe how Brabantio’s dream prepares for his recurrence to
the notion of philtres, and how both prepare for carrying on the plot of
the arraignment of Othello on this ground.
_Ib._ sc. 2.—
“_Oth._ ’Tis better as it is.”
How well these few words impress at the outset the truth of Othello’s own
character of himself at the end—“that he was not easily wrought!” His
self-government contradistinguishes him throughout from Leontes.
_Ib._ Othello’s speech:—
... “And my demerits
May speak, _unbonneted_.”
The argument in Theobald’s note, where “and bonneted” is suggested, goes
on the assumption that Shakespeare could not use the same word differently
in different places; whereas I should conclude, that as in the passage in
_Lear_ the word is employed in its direct meaning, so here it is used
metaphorically; and this is confirmed by what has escaped the editors,
that it is not “I,” but “my demerits” that may speak unbonneted,—without
the symbol of a petitioning inferior.
_Ib._ sc. 3. Othello’s speech:—
“So please your grace, my ancient;
A man he is of honesty and trust:
To his conveyance I assign my wife.”
Compare this with the behaviour of Leontes to his true friend Camillo.
_Ib._—
“_Bra._ Look to her, Moor; if thou hast eyes to see;
She has deceived her father, and may thee.
_Oth._ My life upon her faith.”
In real life, how do we look back to little speeches as presentimental of,
or contrasted with, an affecting event! Even so, Shakespeare, as secure of
being read over and over, of becoming a family friend, provides this
passage for his readers, and leaves it to them.
_Ib._ Iago’s speech:—
“Virtue? a fig! ’tis in ourselves, that we are thus, or thus,” &c.
This speech comprises the passionless character of Iago. It is all will in
intellect; and therefore he is here a bold partizan of a truth, but yet of
a truth converted into a falsehood by the absence of all the necessary
modifications caused by the frail nature of man. And then comes the last
sentiment:—
“Our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts,
whereof I take this, that you call—love, to be a sect or scion!”
Here is the true Iagoism of, alas! how many! Note Iago’s pride of mastery
in the repetition of “Go, make money!” to his anticipated dupe, even
stronger than his love of lucre: and when Roderigo is completely won,—
“I am chang’d. I’ll go sell all my land,”—
when the effect has been fully produced, the repetition of triumph:—
“Go to; farewell; put money enough in your purse!”
The remainder—Iago’s soliloquy—the motive-hunting of a motiveless
malignity—how awful it is! Yea, whilst he is still allowed to bear the
divine image, it is too fiendish for his own steady view,—for the lonely
gaze of a being next to devil, and only not quite devil,—and yet a
character which Shakespeare has attempted and executed, without disgust
and without scandal!
Dr. Johnson has remarked that little or nothing is wanting to render the
_Othello_ a regular tragedy, but to have opened the play with the arrival
of Othello in Cyprus, and to have thrown the preceding act into the form
of narration. Here then is the place to determine whether such a change
would or would not be an improvement;—nay (to throw down the glove with a
full challenge), whether the tragedy would or not by such an arrangement
become more regular,—that is, more consonant with the rules dictated by
universal reason, on the true common-sense of mankind, in its application
to the particular case. For in all acts of judgment, it can never be too
often recollected, and scarcely too often repeated, that rules are means
to ends, and, consequently, that the end must be determined and understood
before it can be known what the rules are or ought to be. Now, from a
certain species of drama, proposing to itself the accomplishment of
certain ends,—these partly arising from the idea of the species itself,
but in part, likewise, forced upon the dramatist by accidental
circumstances beyond his power to remove or control,—three rules have been
abstracted;—in other words, the means most conducive to the attainment of
the proposed ends have been generalised, and prescribed under the names of
the three unities,—the unity of time, the unity of place, and the unity of
action—which last would, perhaps, have been as appropriately, as well as
more intelligibly, entitled the unity of interest. With this last the
present question has no immediate concern: in fact, its conjunction with
the former two is a mere delusion of words. It is not properly a rule, but
in itself the great end not only of the drama, but of the epic poem, the
lyric ode, of all poetry, down to the candle-flame cone of an
epigram,—nay, of poesy in general, as the proper generic term inclusive of
all the fine arts as its species. But of the unities of time and place,
which alone are entitled to the name of rules, the history of their origin
will be their best criterion. You might take the Greek chorus to a place,
but you could not bring a place to them without as palpable an equivoque
as bringing Birnam wood to Macbeth at Dunsinane. It was the same, though
in a less degree, with regard to the unity of time:—the positive fact, not
for a moment removed from the senses, the presence, I mean, of the same
identical chorus, was a continued measure of time;—and although the
imagination may supersede perception, yet it must be granted to be an
imperfection—however easily tolerated—to place the two in broad
contradiction to each other. In truth, it is a mere accident of terms; for
the Trilogy of the Greek theatre was a drama in three acts, and
notwithstanding this, what strange contrivances as to place there are in
the Aristophanic Frogs. Besides, if the law of mere actual perception is
once violated—as it repeatedly is, even in the Greek tragedies—why is it
more difficult to imagine three hours to be three years than to be a whole
day and night?