CHARACTER OF OTHELLO—SCHILLER'S ROBBERS-SHAKSPEARE —SCOTCH NOVELS—LORD BYRON—JOHN KEMMBLE—MATHEWS
Othello must not be conceived as a negro, but a high and chivalrous Moorish chief. Shakspeare learned the sprit of the character from the Spanish poetry, which was prevalent in England in his time.[1]
Jelousy does not strike me as the point in his passion; I take it to be rather an agony that the creature, whom he had believed angelic, with whom he had garnered up his heart, and whom he could not help still loving, should be proved impure and worthless. It was the struggle not to love her. It was a moral indignation and regret that virture should so fall:—"But yet the pity of it, Iago!—O Iago! the pity of it, Iago!" In addition to this, his hourour was concerned: Iago would not have succeeded but by hinting that this honour was compromised. There is no ferocity in Othello; his mind is majestic and composed. He deliberately determines to die; and speaks his last speech with a view of showing his attachment to the Venetian state, though it had superseded him.
[Footnote 1:
Caballaeros Granadinos,
Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo—ED.]
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Schiller has the material Sublime; to produce an effect he sets you a whole town on fire, and throws infants with their mothers into the flames, or locks up a father in an old tower.[1] But Shakspeare drops a handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow.
[Footnote 1: This expression—"material sublime"—like a hundred others which have slipped into general use, came originally from Mr. Coleridege, and was by him, in the first instatnce, applied to Schiller's Robbers— See Act iv, sc. 5.—ED.]
Lear is the most tremendous effort of Shakspeare as a poet; Hamlet as a philosopher or meditater; and Othello is the union of the two. There is something gigantic and unformed in the former two; but in the latter, every thing assumes its due place and proportion, and the whole mature powers of his mind are displayed in admirable equilibrium.
I think Old Mortality and Guy Mannering the best of the Scotch novels.
It seems, to my ear, that there is a sad want of harmony in Lord Byron's verses. Is it not unnatural to be always connecting very great intellectual power with utter depravity? Does such a combination often really exist in rerum naturae?