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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 -the precise verse, 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

and the passionless sensualist tainted with impurity to the extremest depth of his will and his understanding. We have seen, too, at the very commencement of the play, his hatred to Othello exhibited in the rousing up of Desdemona's father. We have learned 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 aloud, or, as we call it, soliloquizing, to disclose 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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It is his dependence upon this constant, | But when the meeting comes at Cyprus, loving, noble nature, it is upon Othello's after their separation and their danger, the freedom from all low suspicion, that Iago depth of his affection bursts forth in irrerelies for his power to pressible words

"Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me,

For making him egregiously an ass,
And practising upon his peace and quiet
Even to madness."

But let Othello speak for himself. Not vain, but proud;-relying upon himself, his birth, his actions, he is calm at the prospect of any injury that Brabantio can do him. He is bold when he has to confront those who come as his enemies :—

"I must be found;

My parts, my title, and my perfect soul,
Shall manifest me rightly."

When the old senator exclaims, " down with him-thief!" how beautiful is his self-command!

"Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them."

It was his forbearance and self-restraint, bottomed upon the most enthusiastic energy, that made him a hero. When he is wrought into frenzy, Iago himself is surprised at the storm which he has produced; and he looks upon the tempest of passion as a child does upon some machine which he has mischievously set in motion for damage and destruction, but which under guidance is a beautiful instrument of usefulness. "Can he be angry?" Ludovico, in the same way, does justice to his habitual equanimity :"Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate Call all-in-all sufficient? Is this the nature Whom passion could not shake?"

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"If it were now to die,

"T were now to be most happy; for, I fear
My soul hath her content so absolute,
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate."

Such are the materials upon which Iago has to work in Othello. But, had Desdemona been otherwise than she was, his success would not have been so assured. Let us dwell for a moment upon the elementary character of this pure and gentle being. Desdemona's father first describes her :

"A maiden never bold;

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion Blush'd at herself."

Yet upon her very first appearance she does not shrink from avowing the strength of her affections:

"That I love the Moor to live with him,

My downright violence and storm of fortunes May trumpet to the world."

But she immediately adds the reason for this:

"My heart's subdued

Even to the very quality of my lord." The impressibility of Desdemona is her distinguishing characteristic. With this key, the tale of Othello's wooing is a most consistent one. The timid girl is brought into immediate contact with the earnest warrior. She hears of wonders most remote from her experience; caves and deserts, rocks and hills, in themselves marvels to an inhabitant of the city of the sea,

"Of most disastrous chances; Of moving accidents by flood and field.” How exquisite is the domestic picture which follows:

"But still the house affairs would draw her thence;

Which ever as she could with haste despatch, She'd come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse."

But this impressibility, this exceeding sym

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possessed by Shakspere, that Iago does not, even for a moment, entertain the thought of tampering with the virtue of Desdemona, either through Cassio, or Roderigo, or any other instrument. Coleridge has boldly and truly said 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 Shaksperean Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his situation,

and under his circumstances."

But Othello was not only betrayed by his reliance on 66 Iago's honesty," but also by his confidence in Iago's wisdom:— "This fellow's of exceeding honesty, And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit, Of human dealings."

Again,

"O thou art wise; 't is certain.”

The equivocation about the handkerchief is the result of the same impressibility. She is terrified out of her habitual candour. song of 'Willow,' and the subsequent dialogue with Emilia, are evidences of the same subjection of the mind to external impressions. But her unassailable purity is above all. "I do not think there is any such woman,' is one of those minute touches which we in vain seek for in any other writer but Shak-breath of the slanderer. His confidence in

spere.

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Understanding, then, the native characters of Othello and Desdemona, we shall appreciate the marvellous skill with which Shaksperc has conducted the machinations of Iago. If the novel of Cinthio had fallen into common hands to be dramatized, and the dramatist had chosen to depart from the motive of revenge against Desdemona which there actuates the villain, the plot would probably have taken this course: -The Desdemona would have been somewhat less pure than our Desdemona; the Cassio would have been somewhat more presumptuous than our Cassio, and have not felt for Desdemona the religious veneration which he feels; the Othello would have been "easily jealous," and would have done something "in hate," but not "all in honour," as our Othello. It is a part of the admirable knowledge of human nature

When Othello thus bows his own lofty nature before the grovelling but most acute worldly intellect of Iago, his habitual view of "all qualities" had been clouded by the

purity and innocence had been destroyed. The sensual judgment of "human dealings" had taken the place of the spiritual. The enthusiastic love and veneration of his wife had been painted to him as the result of gross passion:

66

'Not to affect many proposed matches," &c. His belief in the general prevalence of virtuous motives and actions had been degraded to a reliance on the libertine's creed that all are impure:

"there's millions now alive," &c. When the innocent and the high-minded submit themselves to the tutelage of the man of the world, as he is called, the process of mental change is precisely that produced in the mind of Othello. The poetry of life is gone. On them never more

"The freshness of the heart can fall like dew.” They abandon themselves to the betrayer,

and they prostrate themselves before the
energy of his "gain'd knowledge." They
feel that in their own original powers of
judgment they have no support against the
dogmatism, and it may be the ridicule, of
experience. This is the course with the
young when they fall into the power of
the tempter.
But was not Othello in all
essentials young? Was he not of an en-
thusiastic temperament, confiding, loving,-
most sensitive to opinion,-jealous of his
honour, truly wise, had he trusted to his
own pure impulses ?-But he was most
weak, in adopting an evil opinion against
his own faith, and conviction, and proof, in
his reliance upon the honesty and judgment
of a man whom he really doubted and had
never proved. Yet this is the course by
which the highest and noblest intellects are
too often subjected to the dominion of the
subtle understanding and the unbridled will.
It is an unequal contest between the prin-
ciples that are struggling for mastery in
the individual man, when the attributes of
the serpent and the dove are separated, and
become conflicting. The wisdom which be-
longed to Othello's enthusiastic temperament

was his confidence in the truth and purity of the being with whom his life was bound up, and his general reliance upon the better part of human nature, in his judgment of his friend. When the confidence was destroyed by the craft of his deadly enemy, his sustaining power was also destroyed;—the balance of his sensitive temperament was lost;-his enthusiasm became wild passion;—his new belief in the dominion of grossness over the apparently pure and good shaped itself into outrage; his honour lent itself to schemes of cruelty and revenge. But, even amidst the whirlwind of this passion, we every now and then hear something which sounds as the softest echo of love and gentleness. Perhaps in the whole compass of the Shaksperean pathos there is nothing deeper than “But yet the pity of it, Iago! Oh, Iago, the pity of it, Iago!" It is the contemplated murder of Desdemona which thus tears his heart. But his "disordered power, engendered within itself to its own destruction," hurries on the catastrophe. We would ask, with Coleridge, "As the curtain drops, which do we pity the most?"

CHAPTER VI.

KING LEAR.

Two other

Other of

THE first edition of 'King Lear' was pub- | neere St. Austins Gate, 1608.'
lished in 1608; its title was as follows:-
'Mr. William Shake-speare his True Chronicle
History of the Life and Death of King Lear,
and his three Daughters. With the un-
fortunate Life of Edgar, Sonne and Heire
to the Earle of Glocester, and his sullen
and assumed Humour of Tom of Bedlam.
As it was plaid before the King's Majesty
at White-Hall, uppon S. Stephens Night;
in Christmas Hollidaies. By his Majesties
Servants playing usually at the Globe on the
Banck-side. Printed for Nathaniel Butter,
and are to be sold at his Shop in Paul's
Church-yard at the Signe of the Pied Bull

editions were published by Butter in the
same year. It is remarkable that a play of
which three editions were demanded in one
year should not have been reprinted till it
was collected in the folio of 1623.
the plays, which were originally published in
a separate form during the poet's life-time,
were frequently reprinted before the folio
collection. Whether 'Lear' was piratical, or
whether a limited publication was allowed, it
is clear, we think, that by some interference
the continued publication was stopped.

In the folio text of Lear,' as compared with the text of the quarto, there are verbal

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corrections, and additions and omissions; but | After the accession of James, when he was proclaimed King of Great Britain, it was usual to merge the name of England in that of Britain. Bacon thus explains the completion of the old prophecy, "When hempe is sponne, England's donne." The ancient metrical saying, "Fy, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an English man,” becomes in ‘Lear,' "I smell the blood of a British man;" and in the quarto editions (Act IV., Scene 6) we have

in the quarto text of that play the metrical arrangement is one mass of confusion. This circumstance appears to us conclusive that these quarto copies could not have been printed from the author's manuscript; and yet they might have been printed from a genuine playhouse copy. The text of the folio, in one material respect, differs considerably from that of the quartos. Large passages which are found in the quartos are omitted in the folio: there are, indeed, some lines found in the folio which are not in the quartos, amounting to about fifty. These are scattered passages, not very remarkable when detached, but for the most part essential to the progress of the action or to the development of character. On the other hand, the lines found in the quartos which are not in the folio amount to as many as two hundred and twenty-five; and they comprise one entire scene, and one or two of the most striking connected passages in the drama. It would be easy to account for these omissions by the assumption that in the folio edition the original play was cut down by the editors; for Lear,' without the omissions, is one amongst the longest of Shakspere's plays. But this theory would require us to assume, also, that the additions to the folio were made by the editors. These comprise several such minute touches as none but the hand of the master could have superadded.

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The period of the first production of Lear' may be fixed with tolerable certainty. We collect, from the registers of the Stationers' Company, that Lear' was played before King James, at Whitehall, upon St. Stephen's night, in the year 1606—that is, on the 26th of December. Here is the limit in one direction.

"And give the letters, which thou find'st about me,

To Edmund, earl of Gloster; seek him out
Upon the British party."

The allusions derived from Harsnet's book fix the date of the tragedy as near as we can desire it to be fixed. All that we can hope for in these matters is an approximation to a date. It is sufficient for us to be confirmed, through such a fact, in the belief, derived from internal evidence, that Lear' was produced at that period when the genius of Shakspere was "at its very point of culmination."

The story of Lear' belongs to the popular literature of Europe. It is a pretty episode in the fabulous chronicles of Britain; and, whether invented by the monkish historians, or transplanted into our annals from some foreign source, is not very material. In the 'Gesta Romanorum,' the same story is told of Theodosius, "a wise emperor in the city of Rome." Douce has published this story from the manuscript in the Harleian Collection. It may be sufficient to give the beginning of this curious narrative, to show how clearly all the histories have been derived from a

common source:

In the other direction we have the publi-
cation, in 1603, of Harsnet's 'Declaration
of egregious Popish Impostures,' from which
book Shakspere undoubtedly derived some
materials which he employed in the assumed
madness of Edgar. It is pretty clear, also,
from two passages in the text of the quarto
editions, that the author or the actors of the
tragedy, "as it was played before the king's
majesty," were careful to make two minute how moche lo vist thou me?
changes which would be agreeable to James. | she seid, as I do myself.

eite of Rome, and myghti he was of power; the
"Theodosius regned, a wys emperour in the
whiche emperour had thre doughters. So hit
liked to this emperour to knowe which of his
doughters lovid him best. And tho he seid to
the eldest doughter, how moche lovist thou me?
fforsoth, quod she, more than I do myself, there-
fore, quod he, thou shalt be hily avaunsed, and
maried her to a riche and myghti kyng. Tho
he cam to the secund, and seid to her, doughter,
As moche forsoth,
So the emperour

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