Oth. O! a thousand, a thousand times. And, then of so gentle a condition!
Iago. 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 lament for traitorism: “The pity of it, Iago! O, Iago, the pity of it!” Othello's jealous passion is at its height in the scene with Desdemona when he gives his accusations precise words, and flings money to Emilia as the guilty 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 bedchamber is clear enough in all conscience, but it has been so mangled by unintelligent actors such as Salvini that it cries for explanation. Every one will remember how Salvini and others playing this part stole into the room like murderers, and then bellowed so that they would have waked the dead. And when the foolish mummers were criticised for thus misreading the 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 perform: he keeps his resolution to the sticking-point by thinking of the offence; he says solemnly:
“It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul—”
and, Englishman-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 comes to hearing again: