able to decide the controversy. But the author had a clear meaning in his mind, and the only difficulty is to decide which of the several meanings presented by varied punctuation and emphasis, is the one intended. The punctuation adopted in the text is that first suggested by Upton and Warburton, which adds so much beauty and force, that it has at last obtained general reception even among those critics most tenacious of the original readings. Warburton thus comments on his reading:

"The meaning is-I will put out the light, and then proceed to the execution of my purpose. But the expression of putting out the light bringing to mind the effects of the extinction of the light of life, he breaks short, and questions himself about the effects of this metaphorical extinction, introduced by a repetition of his first words, as much as to say-But hold, let me first weigh the reflections which this expression so naturally excites."

But the learned Dr. Farmer treats this as a fanciful refinement, "giving a spirit which was never intended by the author." He says "It seems a mere play upon words; to put the light out, was a phrase for to kill." Malone supports this opinion warmly, maintaining that the Poet meant merely to say, "I will now put out the lighted taper which I hold, and then put out the light of life." He conjectures, too, the true reading to be "and then put out thy light." But the internal evidence of the connection of thought, the Shakespearian characteristics of manner, and the increased impressiveness and pathos, have overcome these objections, and now give very general acceptance to the later reading. Knight, averse as he is to innovation upon the folio, agrees with Singer and Collier in adopting the amended punctuation; and the younger Boswell, while he leaves Malone's text unaltered, thus comments upon it :

"Broken sentences, as I have had occasion more than once to observe, are much in our Poet's manner, and are surely natural in the perturbed state of Othello's mind. I am unwilling to persuade myself that a regulation of the text which contains so much beauty could be merely the refinement of a critic, and that our great author, in one of his most highly-wrought scenes, instead of it, intended nothing but a cold conceit."

"And mak'st me call, what I intend to do,
A murder-"

"This line is difficult. Thou hast hardened my heart, and makest me kill thee with the rage of a murderer when I thought to have sacrificed thee to justice with the calmness of a priest striking a victim.

"One of the quartos reads-thou dost stone thy heart; which I suspect to be genuine. The meaning then will be-thou forcest me to dismiss thee from the world in the state of the murdered without preparation for death, when I intended that thy punishment should have been a sacrifice atoning for thy crime.

"I am glad that I have ended my revisal of this dreadful scene. It is not to be endured."-JOHNSON. "Thy heart' is the reading of the original quarto, 1622." MALONE.

Singer's alteration of the punctuation is ingenious, and may possibly be right:

'And mak'st me call, what I intend to do
(A murder which I thought) a sacrifice.'

i. e. Thou dost harden my heart, and mak'st me call what I before thought a murder, now only a sacrifice.

"So, so!"-There is no stage-direction at this place in the original copies; but it is most probable that the Poet intended Othello here to stab Desdemona, according to the practice of the modern stage. His previous resolution, "I'll not shed her blood," is forgotten in the agony and terror of the moment, when he says"Not dead! not yet quite dead ?”

"α THOUSAND times committed."-Dr. Johnson

thinks that this and other passages seem to suppose a longer space comprised in the action of this play than the scene includes. Mr. Tollet has adduced several instances in support of this opinion, as that in act iii. scene 3:

'I slept the next night well, fed well, was free and merry;

I found not Cassio's kisses on her lips.' "On Othello's wedding night, he and Cassio embarked from Venice, where Desdemona was left under the care of Iago. They all met at Cyprus; and since their arrival there, the scenes include only one night, the night of the celebration of their nuptials. What night was there to intervene between Cassio's kisses and Othello's sleeping the next night well? Iago has said, 'I lay with Cassio lately,' which he could not well have done, unless they had been longer at Cyprus than is represented in this play; nor could Cassio have kept away for the space of a whole week from Bianca." Stevens obviates one objection, by supposing that what Othello mentions might have passed before he was married, when Cassio went between them, and that a thousand times is only an aggravated term for many times.

The laws of dramatic writing as to time, are founded on the degree of acquiescence the mind can give to any imaginary prolongation of the supposed period of dramatic action beyond that which actually passes, as the spectator witnesses the representation. The classic and regular French drama, somewhat arbitrarily, confined the duration of the plot to twenty-four hours. In the English, German, and what is called generally the Romantic drama, there is given great allowance for a lapse of time of days and weeks in those intervals between the acts and scenes when the stage is empty; and the spectator may as well believe a day to have elapsed as an hour. To this the imagination readily lends itself. But ordinarily the mind is not ready to give assent to a very much greater lapse of time, claimed by the poet as necessary for his story, than actually passes while the stage is occupied by the same continuous dialogue.

Now, to my mind, there are two distinct grounds of defence for our Poet in his alleged breach of the common law of the English stage; for no one pretends that he is amenable to the stricter statute of the classic drama. The English commentators have quite overlooked the first and most obvious defence, which is strange. There is an interval of a sea-voyage between the first and second acts, after the marriage. There is again an interval between the first and third scenes of the third act, quite sufficient to allow as large an interval as an imagination at all excited by the interest of the plot, could require. Cassio, after requesting an opportunity to solicit Desdemona's intercession for him, is not of necessity immediately admitted to an interview. For aught that appears, a week may have elapsed in the two intervals, between the first and third scenes, while the stage is twice vacant. There is also an indefinite interval after the first strong suspicions have been infused into Othello's breast, between the third and fourth acts. To my understanding this is quite sufficient for Shakespeare's vindication, upon the naked literal facts of the case, to the most matter-of-fact and unpoetical comprehension.

But the higher ground of the Poet's justification is, that even the fault charged does not offend against the principle and intent of the dramatic law. It is the purpose of the rule that the reader or spectator should not be offended by palpable impossibility, so as to prevent him from giving that transient assent to the reality of the scene, which is necessary for any lively interest or deep emotion. Now in every scene of quick and exciting action, whether it be the torrent-like rapidity of events in Macbeth, or the crowded interest of the Agamemnon of Eschylus, or Corneille's Cid, or even the colder succession of incident in Addison's Cato, the events occurring as related are such as by no possi

bility could occur within the limits of the actual representation; yet these are all received by the mind as at least probable or conventional truths, sometimes even as living realities. Their suggestions are filled out by the workings of our thoughts, as the eye fills up for itself the outline of a masterly sketch with the details necessary for truth of imitation. When the imagination is warmed, the feelings engaged, the attention fixed, the intellect busy, we do not stop to look at the watch. Therefore it is that we follow Iago's machinations, and Othello's wrath kindling till it blazes into a devouring flame, not as the mere witness of so many minutes' dialogue, but as made privy to a plot of which this dialogue is but the outline, and which may have occupied days, and weeks, and even months, in its progress. When the Poet has once subjected us to his control on the stage, there seems no reason why we should be more sensible of the short space of time into which he crowds his events, than the reader is in pursuing any imaginative and impassioned narrative. It does not occur to us to inquire whether the catastrophe was attained in an hour or two, or in as many weeks.

Such is certainly the experience as to OTHELLO; for until it became the subject of minute criticism by professed critics and laborious commentators, it had been the delight of the stage and the closet, for a century and a half, before it occurred to any one that there was the smallest incongruity as to the time of action.

If my own experience can add any thing to the general suffrage, I can say that after thirty years' admiration and study of this drama, the difficulty above suggested never attracted my attention until the preparation of this edition led to a more minute examination of the commentators.

"IAGO stabs EMILIA, then runs out," etc.-The old stage-direction is "The Moor runs at Iago; Iago kills his wife;" but his exit is not marked until after Emilia's next speech, although Gratiano before says "He's gone." It appears from the text that Montano disarms Othello. Wishing to preserve the author's original idea of the stage action, I have restored so much of the old stage-direction as had been omitted.

"the ICE-BROOK's temper."-Thus the folio; but as it was printed in the quartos "isebrookes," Pope and Sir W. Blackstone would read, the "Ebro's temper." The folio is right, and the other a misprint, for the swords or blades of Spain were famous in these days, as we may learn from Ben Jonson and others, and it was the common practice to temper steel by putting it red-hot into very cold water. Stevens has shown from Justin and Martial, that in ancient Spain this was done by plunging weapons hot from the forge in the icy waters of the Salo and the Chalybes. "Gelidis hunc Salo tinxit aquis." It is not necessary to suppose that Shakespeare got this knowledge from classic reading, for the mode of tempering a "Toledo" in those days, when every gentleman wore a sword and was curious as to its quality, must have been a common topic of information.

"-towards his feet"-To see (observes Johnson) if, according to the common opinion, his feet were cloven.

"Like the base INDIAN"-The first quarto reads distinctly Indian; the first folio, Iudean. The controversy as to reading Indian, or Judean, and who was the base Judean, occupies six pages of the Variorum Editions, which Knight thus sums up:

"Theobald maintained that he was 'Herod, who, in a fit of blind jealousy, threw away such a jewel of a wife as Mariamne was to him.' Stevens brings forward an old story of a Jew, who threw a pearl into the Adriatic. This story looks excessively like a forgery, in which art Stevens dabbled. He will not have the Indian, because he thinks base' an improper epithet. Malone rejects him, because the word tribe appears to

'Behold my queen

Who with no more concern I'll cast away
Than Indians do a pearl, that ne'er did know
Its value.'

Coleridge prefers Indian. He says 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.""

To these observations it may be added, that the rhythm agrees better with Indian, unless the accent is laid upon the first syllable of Judean, which (though not without example) is not usual. Thus stood the question, the better critical opinion inclining to the quarto reading, when Collier settled this with several other doubtful readings in this play, by showing conclusively that the quarto of 1630 was a separate and distinct authority, bearing internal evidence that the two quartos and the folio were all from separate manuscripts. This last edition of original authority agrees with the first in "Indian," showing therefore that Judean was clearly a misprint, as well it might be.

[Estradiot, or Greek Soldier, in service of Venice.]

"The beauties of this play impress themselves so strongly upon the attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical illustration. The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless, and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge ;

the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his interest and his vengeance;-the soft simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit and conscious of innocence; her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected ;—are such proofs of Shakespeare's skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is in vain to seek in any modern writer. The gradual progress which lago makes in the Moor's conviction, and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him, are so artfully natural, that though it will not, perhaps, be said of him, as he says of himself, that he is a man 'not easily jealous,' yet we cannot but pity him when at last we find him 'perplexed in the extreme.' There is always danger lest wickedness, conjoined with abilities, should steal upon esteem, though it misses of approbation but the character of Iago is so conducted that he is, from the first scene to the last, hated and despised.

"Even the inferior characters of this play would be very conspicuous in any other piece, not only for their justness but their strength. Cassio is brave, benevolent, and honest; ruined only by his want of stubbornness to resist an insidious invitation. Roderigo's suspicious credulity and impatient submission to the cheats which he sees practised upon him, (and which by persuasion he suffers to be repeated,) exhibit a strong picture of a weak mind betrayed by unlawful desires to a false friend :-and the virtue of Emilia is such as we often find,-worn loosely, but not cast off; easy to commit small crimes, but quickened and alarmed at atrocious villanies.

"The scenes, from the beginning to the end, are busy, varied by happy interchanges, and regularly promoting the progress of the story: and the narrative in the end, though it tells but what is known already, yet is necessary to produce the death of Othello. Had the scene opened in Cyprus, and the preceding incidents been occasionally related, there had been little wanting to a drama of the most exact and scrupulous regularity."– JOHNSON.

Johnson has left little to be added to his just and discriminating criticism; unless it be to observe that if the scene of the play throughout had been laid in Cyprus, according to his wish, the drama would have indeed acquired the arbitrary unity of the classic stage as to time and place, but nothing would be gained as to the more important unity of action and interest; while mere narrative could hardly have given us that familiar acquaintance with the personages of the drama, and that deep respect for Othello's lofty and generous nature, which we derive from the actual exhibition of the prior part of his story during the first act at Venice. Within a few years, a new view of Othello's character has been maintained by Schlegel, which has found favour with several English critics, who have repeated it in various forms. It is that in Othello the Poet has painted not general nature, but the half-civilized African Prince. Schlegel recognizes in him "the wild nature of that glowing zone which generates the most furious beasts of prey, and the most deadly poisons, tamed only in appearance by the desire of fame, by foreign laws of honour, and by gentler manners.— His jealousy," says the German critic, "is not of the heart, which is compatible with the tenderest feeling and adoration of the beloved object; it is of that sensual sort which in torrid climes gives birth to the imprisonment of wives and other barbarous usages. A drop of this poison flows in the Moor's veins, and all his blood is inflamed. He seems, and is noble, frank, confiding, grateful, a hero, a worthy general, a faithful servant of the State; but the physical force of passion puts to flight at once all his acquired and accustomed virtues, and gives the savage within him the rule over the moral man. The tyranny of the blood over the will betrays itself in his desire of revenge against Cassio. In his repentant sorrow, a genuine tenderness for

his murdered wife bursts forth, with the painful sentiment of annihilated reputation, and he assails himself with the rage which a despot displays in punishing a runaway slave. He suffers as a double man; at once in the higher and the lower sphere into which his being is divided."

All this is ingenious, original and eloquent; yet to my mind widely different from the Poet's intention, and the actual character he has so vividly pourtrayed.

So far as the passions of Love and Jealousy are the results of our common nature, their manifestations must be alike in the Moor and the European; differing only as modified by the more quickly excited and inflammable temperament of the children of the sun, or the slower and steadier temperament of the men of the north. But the critic confounds with this difference another one, that resulting from the degraded and enslaved state of woman in the half-civilized nations of the East. There the jealous revenge of the masterhusband, for real or imagined evil, is but the angry chastisement of an offending slave, not the terrible sacrifice of his own happiness involved in the victim's punishment. When woman is a slave, a property, a thing, all that jealousy may prompt is done, to use Othello's own distinction, "in hate" and "not in love.” But Othello is pourtrayed with no single trait in common with the tyrant of the Eastern or African seraglio. His early love is not one of wild passion, but of esteem for Desdemona's gentle virtue, of gratitude for her unlooked-for interest in himself and his history, and of pride in her strong attachment. The Poet has laboured to show that his is the calm and steady affection of "a constant, noble nature;" it is respectful, confiding, "wrapt up in measureless content," and manifesting a tender and protecting superiority which has in it something almost parental. In his jealousy and revenge, he resembles not the Mahometan so much as the proud and sensitive Castilian. He is characterized by all the higher qualities of European chivalry, and especially by that quick sense of personal reputation "which feels a stain like a wound," and makes his own life and that of others alike cheap in his eyes compared with his honour. It is this, together with the other habits and characteristics of one trained in an adventurous military life, by which he is individualized. He is made a Moor, not because that is at all necessary to the story, but because the Poet found it in the tale from which he derived the outline of his plot; and it was adopted as an incident plastic to his purpose, and by its peculiarity giving that air of reality to the story which accidental and unessential circumstances, such as pure imagination would not have indicated, can alone confer. It is on this account indeed that the original tale itself, to my mind, has not the appearance of a product of fancy, but seems, like many of our traditionary romantic narratives, founded upon some occurrence in real life.

Othello's Moorish blood is thus (to use a logical phrase) an accident, distinguishing the individual character, and adding to it the effect of life and reality; but it is not in any sense essential to its sentiment or passion. The tone of chivalrous honour and military bearing is much more so, and yet that serves only to modify and colour the exhibition of passions common to civilized man. The history and domestic traditions and legal records of Spain and Italy,—and even of Germany, England, and America,-can exhibit many an instance, in coarser and unpoetical forms, of jealous revenge as fatal as that of the Moor. Even while this edition is passing through the press, the newspapers relate two such bloody stories as having recently occurred in private life within the United States; and the jealous murderer was in one instance an Englishman, and in the other a Frenchman.

Were Othello but the spirited portrait of a half-tamed barbarian, we should view him as a bold and happy poetical conception, and, as such, the Poet's work might

satisfy our critical judgment; but it is because it depicts a noble mind, wrought by deep passion and dark devices to agonies such as every one might feel, that it awakens our strongest sympathies. We see in this drama a grand and true moral picture; we read in it a profound ethical lesson; for (to borrow the just image of the classical Lowth) while the matchless work is built up to the noblest height of poetry, it rests upon the deepest foundations of true philosophy.

These notes upon OTHELLO cannot be more appropriately closed than by the remarkable criticism of Bishop Lowth, (just alluded to,) contained in his Lectures on Hebrew Poetry, which, often before quoted in its original exquisite Latinity, deserves to be more familiarly known to the English reader :

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"He whose genius has unfolded to him the knowledge of man's nature and the force of his passions; has taught him the causes by which the soul is moved to strong emotions, or calmed to rest; has enabled him not only to explain in words those emotions, but to exhibit them vividly to other eyes; thus ruling, exciting, distracting, soothing our feelings,-this man, however little aided by the discipline of learning, is, in my judgment, a philosopher of the highest rank. In this manner, in a single dramatic fable of our own Shakespeare, the passion of jealousy, its causes, progress, incidents, and effects, have been more truly, more acutely, more copiously, and more impressively delineated than has been done by all the disquisitions of all the philosophers who have treated on this dark argument."