And then the death of Desdemona! My dear Smith—I appeal to your own noble feelings, as a husband and a Christian,—if you thought Mrs Smith a little too fond of Cassio—or any other lieutenant,—if you even found she had given him one of your best handkerchiefs to make him a nightcap—nay, if you had determined even to achieve widowerhood with your own hands, would you take the instrument Othello uses for the purpose? I ask you as a man and a gentleman. You would borrow a pistol—you would take up a knife—you would purchase arsenic—but you would not undergo the personal fatigue of Burking her in her bed! But it is not with you I have to do just now. I go back to Shakspeare and his times—and I maintain that the manner of Desdemona's murder could only be tolerable in the state of society at the time it was presented. I suspect the very appliances of the modern stage bring the repulsiveness of the incident more prominently forward. There is a beautifully furnished room—a dressing-table beside the bed—nice curtains drawn all round it—snow-white sheets, and a pair of very handsome bed-room candles. The bed-room is brought too prominently forward; and when Desdemona is discovered asleep, it needs all the magic of Shakspeare's name, and the reverence that his genius has created and maintains, even upon the shilling gallery, to prevent the tragic interest from turning into another channel. The contrast is too great between the truthfulness of the bed-curtains and easy-chair, and the horrid purpose—which ought to be idealized, and not realized—for which the Moor enters the room. It is a frightful, blackfaced murderer—designed in the seventeenth century, and considered true to nature then, coming into the open daylight of the nineteenth, casting his Elizabethan energies into forms repulsive to the sentiments of our Victorian time; and we should also feel, if the play were presented to us for the first time, that an Othello created by Shakspeare—if he had been left for these latter times—would not have murdered his wife with a pillow—if he had murdered her at all—and would not have brought forward on the stage the bed-room of a jealous husband, with his wife expecting his approach. The barrenness of the stage in Shakspeare's time was an advantage in a scene like this;—when people were told to fancy that old bench was a bed, and that the close-shaved stripling reclining on it was a woman—the imagination was set down to a feast of its own: the scanty scenery became an accessory—not a realization—all that was palpable was the innocence and sacrifice of the heroine—and the awful and inexpressible struggles of the man.
Do you see what I mean? Do you agree with me that it was a misfortune to the British drama that the summit of its glory was reached by Shakspeare so long ago;—a Shakspeare that knew the whole secrets of the human heart, as the human heart existed before his time—or at least as it was supposed in his time to exist;—a Shakspeare who was ignorant of the Great Rebellion—of the Restoration—of the Revolution—of the glorious First of June—of the Guillotine—of Napoleon—of Trafalgar—of Waterloo;—a Shakspeare who had never seen a telegraph—a mail-coach—a steam-boat—a railway. What sort of a man must this have been, that still maintains possession of the stage—that keeps (as I maintain) the British taste in a state of almost mediæval roughness, and chains the dramatic art itself to the slab over his grave? Perhaps, my dear Smith, the immortal Bunn is right after all. Perhaps, if all managers were to follow his example for forty years—if for forty years mankind were condemned to the wilderness of operas, and divertisements, and farces—we should forget the flavour of the flesh-pots (furnished by Shakspeare) which has so completely mastered our taste;—some Joshua would lead us into a chosen land, and feed us with all manner of delights;—the stage, I mean, would come, like the aloe, to a second flower, only resembling its ancient crown in its life and beauty, but smelling of the present time.
For no beer, you will grant, is so pleasant as that which has the froth on. Its freshness even compensates for its want of strength. But if, in addition to being fresher by two hundred years than the tap of William Shakspeare of Stratford, it were as strong—as cunningly mixed of malt and hops—and had as beautiful a flavour as his had when it was first brewed—eh! Smith? What do you think, then? Isn't it worth while to live forty years on the chance? isn't it worth while to be teetotallers in the meantime? to live upon slops and gruel? Gentlemen, I propose the health of Mr Lumley and Mr Bunn.
I remain, my dear Smith,
Your admirer and friend,
BIRBONIANA; OR, ITALIAN ANTIQUARIES AND ANTICHITÀ.
"Birbone—a Jew, a cheat, a rogue, a vagabond, a liar, a coiner, an utterer of all things base and false—an Antiquary!"—Baretti's Italian Dict.
"Ah me! it is a dangerous freak,
When men will dabble with Antique."—Hudibras(?)