Part 31 (1/2)

The feminine tenderness in Shakespeare comes to perfect expression in the next lines; no woo_ She's the worse for all this

_Oth_ O! a thousand, a thousand tio_ Ay, too gentle

_Oth_ Nay, that's certain:--but yet the pity of it, Iago!--O, Iago, the pity of it, Iago!”

The tenderness shrills to such exquisite poignancy that it becomes a universal cry, the soul's lao, the pity of it!” Othello's jealous passion is at its height in the scene with Desdes uilty confidante And yet even here, where he delights to soil his love, his tenderness reaches its most passionate expression:

”O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet, That the sense aches at thee--would thou hadst ne'er been born!”

As soon as jealousy reaches its end, and passes into revenge, Shakespeare tries to get back into Othello the captain again Othello's first speech in the bedchah in all conscience, but it has been so ent actors such as Salvini that it cries for explanation Every one will re this part stole into the room like murderers, and then bellowed so that they would have waked the dead And when the foolishthe character, they answered boldly that Othello was a Moor, that his passion was Southern, and I know not what besides It is clear that Shakespeare's Othello enters the room quietly as a justicer with a duty to perfor of the offence; he says solemnly:

”It is the cause, it is the cause, lishman-like, finds a moral reason for his intended action:

”Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men”

But the reason fades and the resolution wavers in the passion for her ”body and beauty,” and the tenderness of the lover co her_”] O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade Justice to break her sword!--one more, one more-- Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, And love thee after--One more, and this the last

So sas ne'er so fatal I must weep, But they are cruel tears; this sorrow's heavenly; It strikes where it doth love--She wakes”

So gentle a murderer was never seen save Macbeth, and the ”heavenly sorrow” that strikes where it doth love is one of the best exalishman's capacity for hypocritical self-deception

The subsequent dialogue shows us in Othello the short, plain phrases of iable resolution; in this scene Shakespeare coth than anywhere else in all his work But even here his nature shows itself; Othello has to be , which he takes to be sorrow for Cassio's death, before he can pass to action, and as soon as the rets:

”O, insupportable! O heavy hour!”

His frank avowal, however, is excellently characteristic of the soldier Othello:

”'Twas I that killed her”

A moment later there is a perfect poetic expression of his love:

”Nay, had she been true If Heaven would make me such another world Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I'd not have sold her for it”

Then comes a revelation of sensuality and physical fastidiousness so peculiar that by itself it proves much of what I have said of Shakespeare:

”_OthAy 'twas he that told me first; An honest man he is, and hates the sli-space now before he is convinced of his fatal error, Othello speaks as the soldier, but in spite of the fact that he has fulfilled his revenge, and should be at his sincerest, we have no word of profound self-revealing But as soon as he realizes his ret becoical in expression:

”Cold, cold, irl!

Even like thy chastity”

Another proof that Shakespeare discards the captain, Othello, in order to give utterance to his own jealousy and love, is to be found in the similarity between this speech of Othello and the corresponding speech of Posthumus in ”Cymbeline” As soon as Posthumus is convinced of his mistake, he calls Iachiious ht justicer” to punish him as he deserves with ”cord or knife or poison,”