Mihalid's
Credulity

relations with the courtesan, Bianca. To hear his wife, his beloved, thus derided, stings the Moor to frenzy.

It is such a consistently sustained imposture that there is, perhaps, only one at all comparable to it in history-the intrigue of the diamond necklace, in which Cardinal de Rohan was as utterly duped and ruined as Othello is here.

And now Othello has reached the stage at which he can no longer think coherently, or speak except in ejaculations (iv. 1) :—

"Iago. Lie with her.

"Othello. With her?

Iago. With her, on her, what you will.

"Othello. Lie with her! lie on her!-We say, lie on her when they belie her. Lie with her! that's fulsome.-Handkerchief,-confessions, -handkerchief.-To confess, and be hanged for his labour.-First, to be hanged, and then to confess. . . . It is not words, that shakes me thus.-Pish-Noses, ears, and lips.-Is it possible ?-Confess!Handkerchief 1-O devil!"

With the mind's eye he sees them in each other's arms. He is seized with an epileptic fit and falls.

This is not a representation of spontaneous but of artificially induced jealousy; in other words, of credulity poisoned by malignity. Hence the moral which Shakespeare, through the mouth of lago, bids the audience take home with them:

NB!

"Thus credulous fools are caught;

And many worthy and chaste dames even thus,
All guiltless, meet reproach."

It is not Othello's jealousy, but his credulity that is the prime cause of the disaster; and even so must Desdemona's noble simplicity bear its share in the blame. Between them they render possible the complete success of a man like Iago.

When Othello bursts into tears before Desdemona's eyes, without her suspecting the reason (iv. 2), he says most touchingly that he could have borne affliction and shame, poverty and cap tivity-could even have endured to be made the butt of mockery and scorn-but that he cannot bear to see her whom he worshipped the object of his own contempt. He does not suffer most from jealousy, but from seeing "the fountain from the which his

1 The development of this passage exactly corresponds to Spinoza's classic definition of jealousy, written seventy years later. See Ethices, Pars III., Propositio XXXV., Scholium: "Præterea hoc odium erga rem amatam majus erit pro ratione Lætitiæ, qua Zelotypus ex reciproco rei amatæ Amore solebat affici, et etiam pro ratione affectus, quo erga illum, quem sibi rem amatam jungere imaginatur, affectus erat. Nam si eum oderat, eo ipso rem amatam odio habebit, quia ipsam id, quod ipse odio habet, Lætitia afficere imaginatur; et etiam ex eo, quod rei amatæ imaginem imagini ejus, quem odit, jungere cogitur, quæ ratio plerumque locum habet in Amore erga foeminam; qui enim imaginatur mulierem, quam amat, alteri sese prostituere, non solum ex eo, quod ipsius appetitus coercetur, contristabitur, sed etiam quia rei amatæ maginem pudendis et excrementis alterius jungere cogitur, eandem aversatur."

C

current runs" a dried-up swamp, or "a cistern for foul toads to knot and gender in." This is pure, deep sorrow at seeing his idol sullied, not mean frenzy at the idol's preferring another worshipper.

Them

And with that grace which is an attribute of perfect strength, Shakespeare has introduced as a contrast, directly before the terrible catastrophe, Desdemona's delicate little ditty of the willowtree-of the maiden who weeps because her lover is untrue to her, but who loves him none the less. Desdemona is deeply 3. touching when she pleads with her cruel lord for but a few moments' respite, but she is great in the instant of death, when she expires with the sublime lie, the one lie of her life, upon her lips, designed to shield her murderer from his punishment.

Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia-what a trefoil! Each has her characteristic features, but they resemble one another like sisters; they all present the type which Shakespeare at this point loves and most affects. Had they a model? Had they perhaps one and the same model? Had he about this time encountered_a young and charming woman, living, as it were, under a cloud of sorrow, injustice, misunderstanding, who was all heart and tenderness, without any claims to intellect or wit? We may suspect this, but we know nothing of it.

The figure of Desdemona is one of the most charming Shakespeare has drawn. She is more womanly than other women, as the noble Othello is more manly than other men. So that after all there is a very good reason for the attraction between them; the most womanly of women feels herself drawn to the manliest of men.

The subordinate figures are worked out with hardly less skill than the principal characters of the tragedy. Emilia especially is inimitable-good-hearted, honest, and not exactly light, but still sufficiently the daughter of Eve to be unable to understand Desdemona's naïve and innocent chastity.

At the end of Act iv. (in the bedroom scene) Desdemona asks Emilia if she believes that there really are women who do what Othello accuses her of. Emilia answers in the affirmative. Then her mistress asks again: "Would'st thou do such a deed for all the world?" and receives the jesting answer, "The world is a huge thing; 'tis a great price for a small vice:

"Marry, I would not do such a thing for a joint-ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any petty exhibition; but, for the whole world! . . . Why, the wrong is but a wrong i' the Sine world; and, having the world for your labour, 'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right."

In passages like this a mildly playful note is struck in the very midst of the horror. And according to his habit and the custom of the times, Shakespeare also introduces, by means of

pollion of play

the Clown, one or two deliberately comic passages; but the Clown's merriment is subdued, as Shakespeare's merriment at this period always is.

The composition of Othello is closely akin to that of Macbeth. In these two tragedies alone there are no episodes; the action moves onward uninterrupted and undissipated. But the beautiful proportion of all its parts and articulations gives Othello the advantage over the mutilated Macbeth which we possess. Here the crescendo of the tragedy is executed with absolute maestria; the passion rises with a positively musical effect; Iago's devilish plan is realised step by step with consummate certainty; all details are knit together into one firm and well-nigh inextricable knot; and the carelessness with which Shakespeare has treated the necessary lapse of time between the different stages of the action, has, by compressing the events of months and years into a few days, heightened the effect of strict and firm cohesion which the play produces.

There are some inaccuracies in the text as we have it. At the close of the play there is a passage, to account for which we must almost assume that part of a vitiated text, adapted to some special performance, has been interpolated. In the full rush of the catastrophe, when only Othello's last speeches are wanting, Lodovico volunteers some information as to what has happened, which is not only superfluous for the spectator, but quite out of the general style and tone of the play:

"Lodovico. Sir, you shall understand what hath befall'n, Which, as I think, you know not.

Here is a letter,

Found in the pocket of the slain Roderigo;
And here another: the one of them imports
The death of Cassio to be undertook

By Roderigo.

Othello. O villain!

Cassio.

Most heathenish and most gross!

Lod. Now, here's another discontented paper,
Found in his pocket too," &c., &c.

These speeches, and yet a third, are all aimed at making Othello understand how shamefully he has been deceived; but they are nerveless and feeble and detract from the effect of the scene. This passage ought to be expunged; it is not Shakespeare's, and it forms a little stain on his flawless work of art.

For flawless it is. I not only find several of Shakespeare's greatest qualities united in this work, but I see hardly a fault in it.

It is the only one of Shakespeare's tragedies which does not treat of national events, but is a family tragedy,-what was later known as tragédie domestique or bourgeoise. But the treatment is anything but bourgeois; the style is of the very grandest. One

1

XXV

KING LEAR-THE FEeling underlying IT-THE CHRONICLE - SIDNEY'S ARCADIA

AND THE

OLD PLAY

IN King Lear, Shakespeare's vision sounded the abyss of horror to its very depths, and his spirit showed neither fear, nor giddiness, nor faintness at the sight..

On the threshold of this work, a feeling of awe comes over one, as on the threshold of the Sistine Chapel, with its ceilingfrescoes by Michael Angelo-only that the suffering here is far more intense, the wail wilder, the harmonies of beauty more definitely shattered by the discords of despair.

Othello was a noble piece of chamber-music-simple and easily apprehended, powerfully affecting though it be. This work, on the other hand, is the symphony of an enormous orchestra-all earth's instruments sound in it, and every instrument has many stops.

King Lear is the greatest task Shakespeare ever set himself, the most extensive and the most imposing all the suffering and horror that can arise from the relation between a father and his children, expressed in five acts of moderate length.

No modern mind has dared to face such a subject; nor could any one have grappled with it. Shakespeare did so without even a trace of effort, by virtue of the overpowering mastery which he now, in the meridian of his genius, had attained over the whole of human life. He handles his theme with the easy vigour that belongs to spiritual health, though we have here scene upon scene of such intense pathos that we seem to hear the sobs of suffering humanity accompanying the action, much as one hears by the sea-shore the steady plash and sob of the waves.

Under what conditions did Shakespeare take hold of this subject? The drama tells plainly enough. He stood at the turning-point of human life; he had lived about forty-two years; ten years of life still lay before him, but of these certainly not more than seven were intellectually productive. He now brought that which makes life worse than death face to face with that which makes life worth living-the very breath of our lungs and Cordelia