... “Of one, whose hand,
Like the base _Indian_, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe,” &c.
Theobald’s note from Warburton.
Thus it is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make
Othello say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed
Mariamne!—O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to the
ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Othello wishes to excuse
himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse himself,—to
excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is finely conveyed in
the word “base,” which is applied to the rude Indian, not in his own
character, but as the momentary representative of Othello’s. “Indian”—for
I retain the old reading—means American, a savage _in genere_.
Finally, let me repeat that Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy,
but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago,
such a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who had
believed Iago’s honesty as Othello did. We, the audience, know that Iago
is a villain, from the beginning; but in considering the essence of the
Shakespearian Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his
situation, and under his circumstances. Then we shall immediately feel the
fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the noble Moor, and the
wretched fishing jealousies of Leontes, and the morbid suspiciousness of
Leonatus, who is, in other respects, a fine character. Othello had no life
but in Desdemona:—the belief that she, his angel, had fallen from the
heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war in his heart. She is
his counterpart; and, like him, is almost sanctified in our eyes by her
absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy entireness of love. As the curtain
drops, which do we pity the most?
_Extremum hunc_——. There are three powers:—Wit, which discovers partial
likeness hidden in general diversity; subtlety, which discovers the
diversity concealed in general apparent sameness;—and profundity, which
discovers an essential unity under all the semblances of difference.
Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit; to a deep man imagination,
and he is a philosopher. Add, again, pleasurable sensibility in the
threefold form of sympathy with the interesting in morals, the impressive
in form, and the harmonious in sound,—and you have the poet.
But combine all,—wit, subtlety, and fancy, with profundity, imagination,
and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable,—and let the
object of action be man universal; and we shall have—O, rash prophecy!
say, rather, we have—a SHAKESPEARE!