it falls more readily in with his favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope to his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion-an insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind. "Our ancient" is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has inflicted on others. He is an amateur of tragedy in real life; and instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters, or long-forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more desperate course of getting up his plot at home, casts the principal parts among his nearest friends and connections, and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady nerves and unabated resolution. We will just give an illustration or two. One of his most characteristic speeches is that immediately after the marriage of Othello. 66 Roderigo. What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe, If he can carry 't thus! Rouse him (Othello); make after him, poison his delight, And tho' he in a fertile climate dwell, Plague him with flies: though that his joy be joy, Yet throw such changes of vexation on 't, As it may lose some colour."1 In the next passage, his imagination runs riot in the [1 Act i., sc. 1.] mischief he is plotting, and breaks out into the wildness and impetuosity of real enthusiasm. 66 Roderigo. Here is her father's house: I'll call aloud. As when, by night and negligence, the fire Is spied in populous cities." One of his most favourite topics, on which he is rich indeed, and in descanting on which his spleen serves him for a Muse, is the disproportionate match between Desdemona and the Moor. This is a clue to the character of the lady which he is by no means ready to part with. It is brought forward in the first scene, and he recurs to it, when in answer to his insinuations against Desdemona, Roderigo says, "I cannot believe that in her-she's full of most blest conditions." 1 Iago. Blessed fig's end! The wine she drinks is made of grapes. If she had been blest, she would never have loved the Moor."2 And again with still more spirit and fatal effect afterwards, when he turns this very suggestion arising in Othello's own breast to her prejudice. "Othello. And yet how nature erring from itself— Iago. Ay, there's the point;-as-to be bold with you— Of her own clime, complexion, and degree," &c.3 This is probing to the quick. Iago here turns the character of poor Desdemona, as it were, inside out. It is certain that nothing but the genius of Shakespear could have preserved the entire interest and delicacy of the part, and have even drawn an additional elegance and dignity from the peculiar circumstances in which she is placed. The habitual licentiousness of Iago's conversation is not to be traced to the pleasure he takes in gross or lascivious images, but to his desire of finding out the 1 Mr. Dyce reads "condition."-ED. [Act ii., sc. 1.] [3 Act iii., sc. 3.] worst side of everything, and of proving himself an over. match for appearances. He has none of "the milk of human kindness" in his composition. His imagination rejects everything that has not a strong infusion of the most unpalatable ingredients; his mind digests only poisons. Virtue or goodness or whatever has the least "relish of salvation in it," is, to his depraved appetite, sickly and insipid: and he even resents the good opinion entertained of his own integrity, as if it were an affront cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his character. Thus at the meeting between Othello and Desdemona, he exclaims : "O, you are well tun'd now! But I'll set down the pegs that make this music, As honest as I am"-1 his character of bonhommie not sitting at all easy upon him. In the scenes where he tries to work Othello to his purpose, he is proportionably guarded, insidious, dark, and deliberate. We believe nothing ever came up to the profound dissimulation and dexterous artifice of the well-known dialogue in the third act, where he first enters upon the execution of his design. "Iago. My noble lord.— Othello. What dost thou say, Iago? lago. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo'd my lady, Othello. He did from first to last. Why dost thou ask? No further harm. Othello. Why of thy thought, Iago? Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her. Iago. Indeed! Othello. Indeed? Ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught in that? Is he not honest? [1 Act ii., sc. 1.] Iago. Honest, my lord? Othello. Honest? Ay, honest. Othello. What dost thou think? Iaga. Othello. By heaven, he echoes me, Think, my lord! Think, my lord! As if there was some monster in his thought Too hideous to be shown."—1 The stops and breaks, the deep workings of treachery under the mask of love and honesty, the anxious watchfulness, the cool earnestness, and if we may so say, the passion of hypocrisy, marked in every line, receive their last finishing in that inconceivable burst of pretended indignation at Othello's doubts of his sincerity: -"O grace! O Heaven forgive me! Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? God be wi' you! take mine office.-O wretched fool, O monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world! I thank you for this profit, and from hence I'll love no friend, since love breeds such offence." If Iago is detestable enough when he has business on his hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into a swoon, is perfectly diabolical: “Iugo. How is it, General? Have you not hurt your head? Othello. Dost thou mock me? Iago. I mock you! No, by Heaven," &c.3 The part indeed would hardly be tolerated, even as a foil to the virtue and generosity of the other characters in the play, but for its indefatigable industry and inexhaustible resources, which divert the attention of the spectator (as well as his own) from the end he has in [Act iii., sc. 3.] [ Ibid.] [3 Act iv., sc. 1.] view to the means by which it must be accomplished. Edmund the Bastard in Lear' is something of the same character, placed in less prominent circumstances. Zanga1 is a vulgar caricature of it. TIMON OF ATHENS." 'TIMON OF ATHENS' always appeared to us to be written with as intense a feeling of his subject as any one play of Shakespear. It is one of the few in which he seems to be in earnest throughout, never to trifle nor go out of his way. He does not relax in his efforts, nor lose sight of the unity of his design. It is the only play of our author in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind. It is as much a satire as a play: and contains some of the finest pieces of invective possible to be conceived, both in the snarling, captious answers of the cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and more terrible imprecations of Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the force and swelling impetuosity of the moral declamations in Juvenal, while the former have all the keenness and caustic severity of the old Stoic philosophers. The soul of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the lips of Apemantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy in the cynic is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in Timon, and also with the soldier-like and determined resentment of Alcibiades against his countrymen, who The hero of The Revenge,' a tragedy by Edward Young, Lond. 1721, 8vo.-ED. 2 First printed in the folio of 1623. There is a second drama on the same subject from an anonymous pen, of uncertain date, but conjectured to have been written about 1590. One or two of the incidents are similar to incidents in Shakespear's drama, the composition of which is assigned to 1610 or thereabout. The story itself is in Painter's Palace of Pleasure,' 1566, and in North's Plutarch,' 1579.-ED. |