Part 40 (1/2)

_Oth._ No, his mouth is stopp'd: Honest Iago hath ta'en order for 't.

_Des._ O! my fear interprets: what, is he dead?

_Oth._ Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all.

_Des._ Alas! he is _betray'd_ and _I_ undone.

It is a ghastly idea, but I believe Shakespeare means that, at the mention of Iago's name, Desdemona suddenly sees that _he_ is the villain whose existence he had declared to be impossible when, an hour before, Emilia had suggested that someone had poisoned Oth.e.l.lo's mind. But her words rouse Oth.e.l.lo to such furious indignation ('Out, strumpet! Weep'st thou for him to my face?') that 'it is too late.'

(2) V. ii. 286 f.

_Oth._ I look down towards his feet; but that's a fable.

If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.

[_Wounds Iago._

_Lod._ Wrench his sword from him.

_Iago._ I bleed, sir, but not killed.

Are Iago's strange words meant to show his absorption of interest in himself amidst so much anguish? I think rather he is meant to be alluding to Oth.e.l.lo's words, and saying, with a cold contemptuous smile, 'You see he is right; I _am_ a devil.'

NOTE O.

OTh.e.l.lO ON DESDEMONA'S LAST WORDS.

I have said that the last scene of _Oth.e.l.lo_, though terribly painful, contains almost nothing to diminish the admiration and love which heighten our pity for the hero (p. 198). I said 'almost' in view of the following pa.s.sage (V. ii. 123 ff.):

_Emil._ O, who hath done this deed?

_Des._ n.o.body; I myself. Farewell: Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell! [_Dies._

_Oth._ Why, how should she be murdered?[267]

_Emil._ Alas, who knows?

_Oth._ You heard her say herself, it was not I.

_Emil._ She said so: I must needs report the truth.

_Oth._ She's, like a liar, gone to burning h.e.l.l: 'Twas I that kill'd her.

_Emil._ O, the more angel she, And you the blacker devil!

_Oth._ She turn'd to folly, and she was a wh.o.r.e.

This is a strange pa.s.sage. What did Shakespeare mean us to feel? One is astonished that Oth.e.l.lo should not be startled, nay thunder-struck, when he hears such dying words coming from the lips of an obdurate adulteress. One is shocked by the moral blindness or obliquity which takes them only as a further sign of her worthlessness. Here alone, I think, in the scene sympathy with Oth.e.l.lo quite disappears. Did Shakespeare mean us to feel thus, and to realise how completely confused and perverted Oth.e.l.lo's mind has become? I suppose so: and yet Oth.e.l.lo's words continue to strike me as very strange, and also as not _like_ Oth.e.l.lo,--especially as at this point he was not in anger, much less enraged. It has sometimes occurred to me that there is a touch of personal animus in the pa.s.sage. One remembers the place in _Hamlet_ (written but a little while before) where Hamlet thinks he is unwilling to kill the King at his prayers, for fear they may take him to heaven; and one remembers Shakespeare's irony, how he shows that those prayers do _not_ go to heaven, and that the soul of this praying murderer is at that moment as murderous as ever (see p. 171), just as here the soul of the lying Desdemona is angelic _in_ its lie. Is it conceivable that in both pa.s.sages he was intentionally striking at conventional 'religious'