Othello's speech of self-vindication in the council chamber, in which he explains to the Duke how he came to win Desdemona's sympathy and tenderness, has been universally admired.
Having gained her father's favour, he was often asked by him to tell the story of his life, of its dangers and adventures. He told of sufferings and hardships, of hairbreadth 'scapes from death, of imprisonment by cruel enemies, of far-off strange countries he had journeyed through. (The fantastic catalogue, it may be noted, is taken from the fabulous books of travel of the day.) Desdemona loved to listen, but was often called away by household cares, always returning when these were despatched to follow his story with a greedy ear. He "found means" to draw from her a request to tell her his history, not in fragments, but entire. He consented, and often her eyes were filled with tears when she heard of the distresses of his youth. With innocent candour she bade him at last, if ever he had a friend that loved her, to teach him how to tell her Othello's story—"and that would woo her."
In other words, she is not won through the eye, though we must take Othello to have been a stately figure, but through the ear—"I saw Othello's visage in his mind." She becomes his through her sympathy with him in all he has suffered and achieved:—
"She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I lov'd her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have us'd.
Duke. I think, this tale would win my daughter too."
Such, then, is the relation in which the poet has decreed that these two shall stand to each other. This is no love between two of the same age and the same race, whom only family enmity keeps apart, as in Romeo and Juliet. Still less is it a union of hearts like that of Brutus and Portia, where the perfect harmony is the result of tenderest friendship in combination with closest kinship, added to the fact that the wife's father is her husband's hero and ideal. No, in direct contrast to this last, it is a union which rests on the attraction of opposites, and which has everything against it—difference of race, difference of age, and the strange, exotic aspect of the man, with the lack of self-confidence which it awakens in him.
Iago expounds to Roderigo how impossible it is that this alliance should last. Desdemona fell in love with the Moor because he bragged to her and told her fantastical lies; does any one believe that love can be kept alive by prating? To inflame the blood anew, "sympathy in years, manners, and beauties" is required, "all which the Moor is defective in."
The Moor himself is at first troubled by none of these reflections. And why not? Because Othello is not jealous.
This sounds paradoxical, yet it is the plain truth. Othello not jealous! It is as though one were to say water is not wet or fire does not burn. But Othello's is no jealous nature; jealous men and women think very differently and act very differently. He is unsuspicious, confiding, and in so far stupid—there lies the misfortune; but jealous, in the proper sense of the word, he is not. When Iago is preparing to insinuate his calumnies of Desdemona, he begins hypocritically (iii. 3):
"O beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster...."
Othello answers: