"'Tis not to make me jealous,
To say—my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous:
Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw
The smallest fear, or doubt of her revolt;
For she had eyes, and chose me."
Thus not even his exceptional position causes him any uneasiness, so long as things take their natural course. But there is no escaping the steady pursuit of which he, all unwitting, is the object. He becomes as suspicious towards Desdemona as he is credulous towards Iago—"Brave Iago!" "Honest Iago!" Brabantio's malison recurs to his mind—"She has deceived her father, and may thee;" and close on it crowd Iago's reasons:
"Haply, for I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or, for I am declin'd
Into the vale of years;—yet that's not much."
And the torment seizes him of feeling that one human being is a sealed book to the other—that it is impossible to control passion and appetite in a woman, though the law may have given her into one's hand—until at last he feels as if he were stretched on the rack, and Iago can exult in the thought that not all the drowsy syrups of the world can procure him the untroubled sleep of yesterday. Then follows the mournful farewell to all his previous life, and on this sadness once more follows doubt, and despair at the doubt:—
"I think my wife be honest and think she is not;
I think that thou art just and think thou art not,"
—until all his thoughts are centred in the craving for revenge and blood.
Not naturally jealous, he has become so through the working of the base but devilishly subtle slander which he is too simple to penetrate and spurn.
In these masterly scenes (the third and fourth of the third act) there are more reminiscences of other poets than we find elsewhere in Shakespeare within such narrow compass; and they are of interest as showing us what he knew, and what his mind was dwelling upon in those days.
In Berni's Orlando Innamorato (Canto 51, Stanza I), we come upon Iago's declaration:—
"Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed."