NORTH.
What a desolating of the Manners of the Play! Will you then, in order to evade a difficulty of the mechanical construction, clog and whelm the poetry, and moral greatness of the Play, with a preliminary debasement? Introduce your Hero and Heroine under a cloud?
TALBOYS.
And how can you show that Othello could not at any moment have taken her away, as at last you suppose him to do, having a motive? Mind—he knows that the wars are on—he does not know he shall be sent for that night. He does not know that he may not have to keep her a week at his quarters.
NORTH.
My dear Seward—pray, meditate but for a moment on these words of Desdemona in the Council Chamber—
"My noble Father,
I do perceive here a divided duty:
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you; you are the Lord of Duty,
I am hitherto your Daughter: But here's my Husband;
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her Father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor, my Lord."
These are weighty words—of grave and solemn import—and the time has come when Desdemona the Daughter is to be Desdemona the Wife. She tells simply and sedately—affectionately and gratefully—the great primal Truth of this our human and social life. Hitherto her Father has been to her the Lord of Duty—the Lord of Duty henceforth is to be her Husband. Othello, up to that night, had been but her Lover; and up to that night—for the hidden wooing was nothing to be ashamed of or repented—there had been to her no "divided Duty"—to her Father's happiness had been devoted her whole filial heart. But had she been a married woman for weeks or months before, how insincere—how hypocritical had that appeal been felt by herself to be, as it issued from her lips! The Duty had, in that case, been "divided" before—and in a way not pleasant for us to think of—to her Father violated or extinct.
TALBOYS.
I engage, Seward, over and above what our Master has made manifest, to show that though this Theory of yours would remove some difficulties attending the time in Cyprus, it would leave others just where they are—and create many more.