"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."

There is one fine compliment paid to her by Cassio, who exclaims triumphantly when she comes ashore at Cyprus after the storm,

"Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,

As having sense of beauty, do omit
Their mortal natures, letting safe go by

The divine Desdemona."

In general, as is the case with most of Shakspeare's females, we lose sight of her personal charms in her attachment and devotedness to her husband. "She is subdued even to the very quality of her lord ;" and to Othello's "honors and his valiant parts her soul and fortunes consecrates." The lady protests so much herself, and she is as good as her word. The truth of conception, with which timidity and boldness are united in the same character, is marvellous. The extravagance of her resolutions, the pertinacity of her affections, may be said to arise out of the gentleness of her nature. They imply an unreserved reliance on the purity of her own intentions, an entire surrender of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to the fate of another. Bating the commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and headstrong (though even that may perhaps be consistently accounted for from her ina

bility to resist a rising inclination *), her whole character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part of her disposition; and, instead of following Othello to the wars, she would gladly have "remained at home a moth of peace," if her husband could have stayed with her. Her resignation and angelic sweetness of temper do not desert her at the last. The scenes in which she laments and tries to account for Othello's estrangement from her are exquisitely beautiful. After he has struck her, and called her names, she

says,

"O good Iago,

What shall I do to win my lord again?

Good friend, go to him; for by the light of heaven,

I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel:

If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his lov›,

Either in discourse, or thought, or actual deed,

Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any serse
Delighted them on any other form;
Or that I do not, and ever did,

And ever will, though he do shake me off

To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly,

Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much,
And his unkindness may defeat my life,

But never taint my love.

IAGO. I pray you be content; 't is but his humor.
The business of the state does him offence.

DESDEMONA. If 't were no other!"

The scene which follows with Æmilia 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.

"ÆMILIA. 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 favor in them," &c.

"IAGO. Ay, too gentle.

OTHELLO. Nay, that's certain."

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 Emilia, on the common behavior 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 lago is one of the supererogations of Shakspeare's genius. Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought this whole character unnatural, because his villainy is without a sufficient motive. Shakspeare, 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. We might ask those who think the character of Iago not natural, why they go to see it performed, but from the interest it excites, the sharper edge which it sets on the curiosity and imagination? Why do they go to see tragedies in general? Why do we always read the accounts in the newspapers of dreadful fires and shocking murders, but for the same reason? Why do so many persons frequent trials and executions, or why do the lower classes almost universally take delight in barbarous sports and cruelty to animals, but because there is a natural tendency in the mind to strong excitement, a desire to have its faculties roused and stimulated to the utmost? Whenever this principle is not under the restraint of humanity, or the sense of moral obligation, there are no excesses to which it will not of itself give rise, without the assistance of any other motive, either of passion or self-interest. Iago in fact belongs to a class of characters common to Shakspeare, 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 favorite propensity, gives greater zest to his

thoughts and scope to his actions. Be it observed, too (for the sake of those who are for squaring all human actions by the maxims of Rochefoucauld), that he is quite or nearly as indif ferent 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. Now this, though it be sport, yet is dreadful sport. There is no room for trifling and indifference, nor scarcely for the appearance of it; the very object of his whole plot is to keep his faculties stretched on the rack, in a state of watch and ward, in a sort of breathless suspense, without a moment's interval of repose. He has a desperate stake to play for, like a man who fences with poisoned weapons, and has business enough on his hands to call for the whole stock of his sober circumspection, his dark duplicity, and insidious gravity. He resembles a man who sits down to play at chess, for the sake of the difficulty and complication of the game, and who immediately becomes absorbed in it. His amusements, if such they may be called, are severe and saturnine— even his wit blisters. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has inflicted on others.

Even if other circumstances permitted it, the part he has to play with Othello requires that he should assume the most serious concern, and something of the plausibility of a confessor. "His cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam." He is repeatedly called "honest Iago," which looks as if there were something suspicious in his appearance which admitted a different construction. The tone which he adopts in the scenes with Roderigo, Desdemona, and Cassio, is only a relaxation from the more arduous business of the play, yet there is in all his conversation an inveterate misanthropy, a licentious

keenness of perception, which is always sagacious of evil, and snuffs up the tainted scent of its quarry with rancorous delight. The general ground-work of the character, however, is not absolute malignity, but a want of moral principle, or an indifference to the real consequences of the actions, which the meddling perversity of his disposition, and love of immediate excitement, lead him to commit. He is an amateur of tragedy in real life, and instead of exercising his ingenuity 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. The character is a complete abstraction of the intellectual from the moral being; or, in other words, consists in an absorption of every common feeling in the virulence of his understanding, the deliberate wilfulness of his purposes, and his restless, untameable love of mischievous contrivance.

In the general dialogue and reflections, which are an accompaniment to the progress of the catastrophe, there is a constant overflowing of gall and bitterness. The acuteness of his malice fastens upon everything alike, and pursues the most distant analogy of evil with provoking sagacity. His mirth is not natural and cheerful, but forced and extravagant, partaking of the intense activity of mind and cynical contempt of others in which it originates. Iago is not, like Candide, a believer in optimism, but seems to have a thorough hatred or distrust of everything of the kind, and to dwell with gloating satisfaction on whatever can interrupt the enjoyment of others, and gratify his moody irritability.

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 't thus!

IAGO. Call up her father:

Rouse him (Othello), make after him, poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen :

And though he in a fertile climate dwell,

Plague him with flies: though that his joy be joy,