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 Iago, 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 Iago 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 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 intreat you wear your gloves,
Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm ;
Or sue to you to do peculiar profit

E

To your own person. Nay, when I have a suit,
Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed,
It shall be full of poise and difficulty,
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 Heaven 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,* 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 I do blow to Heav'n.

Tis gone.

* See the passages beginning, "It is impossible you should see this, were they as prime as goats," &c.

Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow cell;
Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne
To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught;
For 'tis of aspics' 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 the pity of it, Iago !—O, Iago, the pity of it, Iago!" But this returning fondness 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:

66

'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 mine 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 Emilia 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.

Emilia.

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 Emilia's, there occurs one of those side-intimations of the fluctuations of passion which we seldom meet with but in Shakspeare. After Othello has resolved upon the death of his wife, and bids her dismiss her attendant for the night, she answers,

"I will, my Lord.

Emilia. How goes it now? He looks gentler than he did."

Shakspeare has here put into half a line what some authors would have spun out into ten set speeches.

The character of Desdemona herself is inimitable both in itself, and as it contrasts with Othello's groundless jealousy, and with the foul conspiracy of which she is the innocent victim. Her beauty and external graces are only indirectly glanced at; we see "her visage in her mind;" her character everywhere predominates over her person.

"A maiden never bold:

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion
Blushed at itself."