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how. Some one has suggested a polite Have we lost anything? Then we should ceremonial on the part of Hamlet, by which, not have had the Hamlet who is "the darling the foils might be exchanged with perfect of every country in which the literature of consistency. We would rather not know how England has been fostered;" then we they were exchanged. "The catastrophe," should not have had the Hamlet who is "a says Johnson, "is not very happily produced; concentration of all the interests that belong the exchange of weapons is rather an ex- to humanity; in whom there is a more intense pedient of necessity than a stroke of art. conception of individual human life than A scheme might easily be formed to kill perhaps in any other human composition: Hamlet with the dagger, and Laertes with that is, a being with springs of thought, and the bowl." No doubt. A tragedy terminated feeling, and action, deeper than we can by chance appears to be a capital thing for search;" then we should not have had the the rule-and-line men to lay hold of. But Hamlet, of whom it has been said, "Hamlet they forget the poet's purpose. Had Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the been otherwise, his will would have been the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What, then, predominant agent in the catastrophe. The are they not real? They are as real as our empire of chance would have been over-ruled; own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's the guilty would have been punished; the mind. It is we who are Hamlet."‡ innocent perhaps would have been spared.

* Coleridge.

+ Blackwood, vol. ii.

Hazlitt.

CHAPTER V.

OTHELLO.

On the 6th of October, 1621, Thomas Walk- | it to the general censure. Yours, Thomas ley entered at Stationers' Hall 'The Tragedie Walkley." of Othello, the Moore of Venice.' In 1622, Walkley published the edition for which he had thus claimed the copy. It is, as was usual with the separate plays, a small quarto, and it bears the following title: The Tragoedy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. As it hath beene diverse times acted at the Globe, and at the Black-Friars, by his Majesties Servants. Written by William Shakespeare.' It contains, also, a prefatory address, which is curious :-" The Stationer to the Reader. To set forth a book without an Epistle were like to the old English proverb, a blue coat without a badge; and the author being dead, I thought good to take that piece of work upon me: to commend it I will not for that which is good, I hope every man will commend, without entreaty: and I am the bolder, because the author's name is sufficient to vent his work. Thus leaving every one to the liberty of judgment, I have ventured to print this play, and leave

'The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice,' commences on page 310 of the Tragedies in the first folio collection. It extends to page 339; and after it follow, 'Antony and Cleopatra,' and 'Cymbeline.' It is not entered at Stationers' Hall by the proprietors of the folio edition, which affords some presumption that Walkley was legally entitled to his copy. But it is by no means certain to our minds that Walkley's edition was published before the folio. The usual date of that edition is, as our readers know, 1623; but there is a copy in existence bearing the date of 1622. We have, however, no doubt, that the copy of 'Othello' in the folio was printed from a manuscript copy, without reference to the quarto; for there are typographical errors in the folio, arising. no doubt, from illegibility in the manuscript, which would certainly have been avoided had the copy been compared with an edition printed from another manuscript. The fair

these joyous occasions for the amusement of Elizabeth were usually new and popular performances. 'Othello' was unquestionably popular, and most likely new, in 1602."*

inference, therefore, is, that the 'Othello' of | presume that the dramas represented on the folio was printed off before the quarto of 1622 appeared. Had it been the last play in the book, we should have retained the same opinion, from internal evidence. As two plays succeed it in the volume, we are strengthened in the belief that the original quarto and folio editions were printing at one and the same time. The folio edition is regularly divided into acts and scenes; the quarto edition has not a single indication of any subdivision in the acts, and omits the division between Acts II. and III. The folio edition contains 163 lines which are not found in the quarto, and these some of the most striking in the play: the number of lines found in the quarto which are not in the folio do not amount to 10.

The date of the first production of 'Othello' is settled as near as we can desire it to be. The play certainly belongs to the most vigorous period of Shakspere's intellect

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at its very point of culmination." Chalmers, upon the very questionable belief that the expression new heraldry refers to the creation by James I. of the order of baronets, gave it to 1614; Malone, in the early editions of his Essay,' to 1611; Drake, to 1612. In the later edition of Malone's 'Essay,' published by Boswell, in 1821, Malone says, without any explanation, we know it was acted in 1604, and I have therefore placed it in that year." Mr. Collier, however, has been able most satisfactorily to place it two years earlier. There are detailed accounts preserved at Bridgewater House, in the handwriting of Sir Arthur Mainwaring, of the expenses incurred by Sir Thomas Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, in entertaining Queen Elizabeth and her court three days at Harefield. Amongst the entries in these accounts is the following:

"6 Aug. 1602. Rewardes to the

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When Shakspere first became acquainted with the Moor of Venice' of Giraldi Cinthi (whether in the original Italian, or the French translation, or in one of the little story-books that familiarized the people with the romance and the poetry of the south), he saw in that novel the scaffolding of Othello.' There was formerly in Venice a valiant Moor, says the story. It came to pass that a virtuous lady of wonderful beauty, named Desdemona, became enamoured of his great qualities and noble, virtues. The Moor loved her in return, and they were married in spite of the opposition of the lady's friends. It happened too (says the story) that the senate of Venice appointed the Moor to the command of Cyprus, and that his lady determined to accompany him thither. Amongst the officers who attended upon the General was an ensign, of the most agreeable person, but of the most depraved nature. The wife of this man was the friend of Desdemona, and they spent much of their time together. The wicked ensign became violently enamoured of Desdemona; but she, whose thoughts were wholly engrossed by the Moor, was utterly regardless of the ensign's attentions. His love then became terrible hate, and he resolved to accuse Desdemona to her husband of infidelity, and to connect with the accusation a captain of Cyprus. That officer, having struck a sentinel, was discharged from his command by the Moor; and Desdemona, interested in his favour, endeavoured to reinstate him in her husband's good opinion. The Moor said one day to the ensign, that his wife was so importunate for the restoration of the officer, that he must take him back. "If you would open your eyes, you would see plainer," said the ensign. The romance-writer continues to display the perfidious intrigues of the ensign against Desdemona. He steals a handkerchief which

*New Particulars,' &c.

the Moor had given her, employing the agency of his own child. He contrives with the Moor to murder the captain of Cyprus, after he has made the credulous husband listen to a conversation to which he gives a false colour and direction; and, finally, the Moor and the guilty officer destroy Desdemona together, under circumstances of great brutality. The crime is, however, concealed, and the Moor is finally betrayed by his accomplice.

Mr. Dunlop, in his 'History of Fiction,' has pointed out the material differences between the novel and the tragedy. He adds, "In all these important variations, Shakspere has improved on his original. In a few other particulars he has deviated from it with less judgment; in most respects he has adhered with close imitation. The characters of Iago, Desdemona, and Cassio are taken from Cinthio with scarcely a shade of difference. The obscure hints and various artifices of the villain to raise suspicion in the Moor are the same in the novel and the drama." M. Guizot, with the eye of real criticism, has seen somewhat further than Mr. Dunlop. "There was wanting in the narrative of Cinthio the poetical genius which furnished the actors-which created the individuals-which imposed upon each a figure and a character-which made us see their actions, and listen to their words which presented their thoughts and penetrated their sentiments:- that vivifying power which summons events to arise, to progress, to expand, to be completed :-that creative breath which, breathing over the past, calls it again into being, and fills it with a present and imperishable life-this was the power which Shakspere alone possessed, and by which, out of a forgotten novel, he has made 'Othello.'"

Before we can be said to understand the idea of Shakspere in the composition of 'Othello,' we must disabuse ourselves of some of the commonplace principles upon which he has been interpreted. The novel, be it observed, is a very intelligible and consistent story, of wedded happiness, of unlawful and unrequited attachment, of revenge growing out of disappointment, of jealousy

too easily abused, of confederacy with the abuser, of most brutal and guilty violence, of equally base falsehood and concealment. This is a story in which we see nothing out of the common course of wickedness; nothing which licentious craft might not prompt, and frenzied passion adopt. The Iago of the tragedy, it is said, has not sufficient motives for his crimes. Mr. Skottowe tells us that in the novel, except as a means of vengeance on Desdemona, the infliction of pain upon the Moor forms no part of the treacherous officer's design. But, with regard to the play, he informs us, that it is surely straining the matter beyond the limits of probability to attribute Iago's detestation of Othello to causes so inadequate and vague as the dramatist has assigned *. We have here the two principles upon which the novelist and the dramatist worked thoroughly at issue; and the one is to be called natural, and the other unnatural. The one would have produced such an 'Othello' as is cleverly described in the introduction to a French translation of the play recently publishedt: in which the nature of jealousy and all its cruel effects would have been explained, with great pomp of language, by a confidante in an introductory monologue; and the same subject would have served for a continued theme, until the fatal conclusion, which was long foreseen, of an amiable wife becoming the victim of a cruel oppressor. This is the Zaire of Voltaire. Upon the other principle, we have no explanations, no regular progress of what is most palpable in human action. We have the "motiveless malignity" of Iago,-" a being next to devil, and only not quite devil, and yet a character which Shakspeare has attempted and executed without scandal," as the main spring of all the fearful events which issue out of the unequal contest between the powers of grossness and purity, of falsehood and truth. This is the Othello of Shakspere.

If it had been within the compass of

*The Life of Shakspeare.' By Augustine Skottowe. Vol. ii. p. 76.

+ Chefs-d'œuvre de Shakspeare. Tomeil. Paris, 1839. Coleridge.

Shakspere's great scheme of the exposition | mon, also, that they each seek to destroy of human actions and the springs of action, their victims through their affections, and to have made Iago a supernatural incarna- each is successful in the attempt. If Shaktion of the principle of evil, he would not spere had made Iago actually exhibit the have drawn him very differently from what vulgar attributes of the fiend, when Othello he is. In all essentials he is "only not exclaimsquite devil." He is very much less "than archangel ruined." Milton, when he paints his Satan as about to plunge our first parents in irretrievable misery, makes him exhibit "signs of remorse :"

cence

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"I look down towards his feet "

would the character have been a particle more real? Fiends painted by men are but reflections of the baser principles of humanity. Shakspere embodied those prin"Should I at your harmless inno- ciples in Iago; and, it being granted that

Melt, as I do, yet public reason just,
Honour and empire with revenge enlarged,
By conquering this new world, compels me

now

To do what else, though damn'd, I should abhor.

So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds." When Iago beholds a picture of happiness, not much inferior to that upon which the Satan of Milton looked, he has no compunctious visitings at the prospect of destroying it :

"Oh, you are well tuned now!

But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,

As honest as I am."

But there is another great poetical creation to which Iago bears more resemblance-the Mephistophiles of Goethe. Take away the supernatural power in Mephistophiles, and the sense of the supernatural power in Faust, and the actions of the human fiend and of the real fiend are reduced to pretty much the same standard. It could not be otherwise. Goethe, to make the incarnation of the evil principle intelligible in its dealing with human affairs, could only paint what Shakspere has painted-a being passionless, self-possessed, unsympathizing, sceptical of all truth and purity, intellectually gross and sensual,―of a will uncontrolled by fear for himself or respect for others, the abstract of the reasoning power in the highest state of activity, but without love, without veneration, without hope, unspiritualized, earthy. Mephistophiles and Iago have this in com

great talent combined with an utter destitution of principle, and a complete denudation of sympathy, has produced the monsters which history has described, who shall say that the character is exaggerated?

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The list of "persons represented," affixed to the folio edition of Othello, and called "the names of the actors," is as little wanted for the information of the reader of this tragedy as any preparatory scenic description of the characters. In this list we have "Iago, a villain,"- Roderigo, a gull'd gentleman." But Shakspere has given us very clear indications by which to know the gull from the rogue. We have not read a dozen sentences before we feel the intellectual vigour of Iago, and the utter want of honour, which he is not ashamed to avow. He parries in an instant the complaint of Roderigo,—

"That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse," and commands a sympathy with his own complaints against the Moor. He is not nice in the avowal of his principles of ac

tion:

"In following him I follow but myself." He lays bare, without the slightest apprehension, the selfish motives upon which he habitually acts. And is not this nature? Roderigo, blinded by his passion and vanity, overlooks, as all men do under similar circumstances, the risk which he himself runs from such a confederate; and Iago knows that he will overlook it. He never makes a similar exposition of himself directly to persons of nice honour and sensitive morality. To Othello he is the hypocrite :

"I lack iniquity,

Sometime to do me service."

And therefore, in Othello's opinion,

and the passionless sensualist tainted with impurity to the extremest depth of his will and his understanding. We have seen, too, "A man he is of honesty and trust." at the very commencement of the play, his And even to the "gull'd gentleman," while hatred to Othello exhibited in the rousing he is counselling the most abominable wicked-up of Desdemona's father. We have learned ness, he is a sort of moralist, up to the point of securing attention and belief:-"our bodies are our gardens." When he is alone, he revels in the pride of his intellect :-"Thus do I ever make my fool my purse:

something, also, of the motive of this hatred -the preferment of Cassio :

"Now, sir, be judge yourself, Whether I in any just term am affined To love the Moor."

But it remained for Iago himself, thinking

For I mine own gain'd knowledge should pro-aloud, or, as we call it, soliloquizing, to dis

fane,

If I would time expend with such a snipe,
But for my sport and profit."

--

To Desdemona, in the first scene at Cyprus, he is "nothing if not critical," according to his own account, but retailing "old fond paradoxes," to conceal his real opinions. When he tasks his understanding to meet Desdemona's demand of "What praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed?" he exhibits the very perfection of satirical verse, - the precise model of the poetry of smartness and antithesis, the light without warmth of cleverness without feeling. To Cassio, a frank and generous soldier, somewhat easily tempted to folly, and with morals loose enough, but not so loose as to destroy his native love of truth and purity, he ventures to exhibit himself more openly. The dialogue in the third scene of the second act, where they discourse of Desdemona, is a key to the habitual grossness of his imagination. His sarcasm to Cassio after the anger of Othello, "As I am an honest man, I had thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation,"-discloses the utter absence from his mind of the principle of honour. And then, again, he can accommodate himself to all the demands of the frankest joviality:

"And let me the canakin clink, clink." Other dramatists would have made him gloomy and morose, but Shakspere knew that the boon companion, and the cheat and traitor, are not essentially distinct characters. In these lighter demonstrations of his real nature we have seen the clever scoundrel

close the entire scope of his villainy. He is to get Cassio's place, and "to abuse Othello's ear." To justify even to himself this second fiendish determination, he shows us, as Coleridge has beautifully expressed it, "the motive hunting of a motiveless malignity." We may well add with Coleridge, "how awful it is!" To understand the confidence with which Iago exclaims, "I have it, it is engender'd," we must examine the elements

of Othello's character.

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