NORTH.
Grant that Othello and Desdemona must be married for two months before he murders her—that our hearts and imaginations require it. The resemblance to the ordinary course of human affairs asks it. We cannot bear that he shall extinguish her and himself—both having sipped only, and not quaffed from the cup of hymeneal felicity. Your soul is outraged by so harsh and malignant a procedure of the Three Sisters. Besides, in proper poetical equilibration, he should have enjoyed to the full, with soul and with body, the happiness which his soul annihilates. And men do not kill their wives the first week. It would be too exceptional a case. Extended time is required for the probability—the steps of change in the heart of Othello require it—the construction and accumulation of proofs require it—the wheel of events usually rolls with something of leisure and measure. So is it in the real World—so must it seem to be on the Stage—else no verisimilitude—no "veluti in speculum." "Two mouths shall elapse between marriage and murder," says Shakspeare—going to write. They must pass at Venice, or they must pass at Cyprus. Place Shakspeare in this position, and which will he choose? If at Venice, a main requiring condition is not satisfied. For in the fits and snatches of the clandestine marriage, Othello has never possessed with full embrace, and heart overflowing, the happiness which he destroys. If an earthquake is to ruin a palace, it must be built up to the battlements and pinnacles; furnished, occupied, made the seat of Pleasure, Pomp, and Power; and then shaken into heaps—or you have but half a story. Only at Cyprus Othello possesses Desdemona. There where he is Lord of his Office, Lord over the Allegiance of soldier and civilian—of a whole population—Lord of the Island, which, sea-surrounded, is as a world of itself—Lord of his will—Lord of his Wife.
TALBOYS.
I feel, sir, in this view much poetical demonstration—although mathematical none—and in such a case Poetry is your only Principia.
NORTH.
Your hand. But if, my dear Seward, Shakspeare elects time at Venice, he wilfully clouds his two excellent Persons with many shadows of indecorum, and clogs his Action with a procedure and a state of affairs, which your Imagination loses itself in attempting to define—with improbabilities—with impracticabilities—with impossibilities. If he was resolute to have a well-sustained logic of Time, I say it was better for him to have his Two Months distinct at Cyprus. I say that, with his creative powers, if he was determined to have Two Calendar Months, from the First of May to the First of July, and then in One Day distinctly the first suspicion sown and the murder done, nothing could have been easier to him than to have imagined, and indicated, and hurried over the required gap of time; and that he would have been bound to prefer this course to that inexplicable marriage and no marriage at Venice.
BULLER.
How he clears his way!
NORTH.
But Shakspeare, my dear Boys, had a better escape. Wittingly or unwittingly, he exempted himself from the obligation of walking by the Calendar. He knew—or he felt that the fair proportionate structure of the Action required liberal time at Cyprus. He took it; for there it is, recognised in the consciousness of every sitting or standing spectator. He knew, or he felt, that the passionate expectation to be sustained in the bosoms of his audience required a rapidity of movement in his Murder-Plot, and it moves on feet of fire.