But his efforts are vain; his defiance is fruitless; at the first onslaught he sees his mighty courage fail, at the first shock of battle he knows himself to be vanquished; he turns a last fond look toward that which has so long charmed him; he remembers dreamily the courser and the trumpet, the assault and the victory:
"O now forever
Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner; and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And O, you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove's dread clamors counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!"
After this cry, all the struggle within him ceases. In proportion as jealousy spreads its ravages in this spirit which is already wrecked, we can watch the reappearance under all the most hideous forms of the semi-brutish nature; we may see its growth; we may hear its roar; a creature not to be controlled by reason, deaf to the accents of truth, insensible to utterances of tenderness, unapproachable by moral evidence, which, in the wildness of its fury, passes from one extreme to another, now delighting, with savage joy, in its own detailed recital, in terms of the most revolting barbarity, of the outrage which it contemplates, crying out,
"O, blood, Iago, blood!"
And then, in conclusion, falling, without knowing how or why, from rage down to despair.
Humanity has altogether forsaken him, except it be in his frequently returning fits of emotion, pity, or regret; but these are always provoked by the remembrance of Desdemona's charms—by ideas which are connected with sensual enjoyments; and perhaps, also, it may yet lurk in certain glimmerings of a rough equity, such as may be found under the Bedouin's tent or in a bandit's cavern: "For she had eyes and chose me." And when Iago proposes to him to "strangle her in her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated," he replies, "Good, good; the justice of it pleases; very good."
There is, however, no trace of the sentiments which he ought to have imbibed by his connection with civilized and polite society; no respect for himself or for others, no remembrance of kindnesses; he gives directions for a base act of assassination—that of Cassio; he strikes Desdemona brutally, in presence of the messengers of the Senate and of his own officers, in public, and in his own private interviews with her; he treats her as the most abandoned of women, heaping upon her the bitterest sarcasms and the most degrading epithets.
The sight of an heroic soul thus debased by its ferocity down to the level of the mere animal would almost of necessity contaminate the dignity of art, had not the poet brought it into constant contrast with the graceful, pure, and truly celestial figure of Desdemona. Never has any artist portrayed with greater delicacy that astonishment which is felt by an innocent soul when, for the first time, the overflow of its warm affection is repulsed by a hard word or a severe look—its timid efforts to turn the repulse into wanton playfulness, to renew a tender and free exchange of sentiment and thought, to exercise for some moments that pleasant and transient ascendency which shall afford the young spouse many bright recollections in days yet to come.