Certainly it was false. High characters, as Coriolanus, Hotspur, Othello, are, by a native majesty of spirit, saved and exalted from the pursuit of illicit pleasure.
TALBOYS.
They are. But let his jealousy of Othello—sincere or assumed—or mixed or alternating—enter as an element into the hatred.
NORTH.
Let it. Iago was, you said truly, a stout Soldier—and I add, a hard, unfeeling, unprincipled Soldier. Of all trades in the world, that of a Soldier is the worst and the best—witness an Iago—an Othello. The same trade helped to make both. In Othello we almost see Wordsworth's Happy Warrior—in Iago one—
"Yet ill he lived, much evil saw,
'Mongst men to whom no better law
Nor better life was known;
Deliberately and undeceived,
Those bad men's vices he received
And gave them back his own!"
You are convinced, without a hint, that he is infidel—atheist: everything shaped like religion, like moral conscience—his mind shakes off and rejects with scorn. He does not, however, as I said, disbelieve in Virtues. He believes in them, and uses them to the destruction of the havers. What he disbelieves is the worth of Virtues. To that savage Idol, Self, the more bleeding and noble victims, the more grateful the sacrifice.
TALBOYS.
A singular combination in him, sir, is his wily Italian wit—like Iachimo's—and his rough—soldierlike—plain, blunt, jovial manners—the tone of the Camp, and of the wild-living, reckless Camp—plenty of hardihood—fit for toil, peril, privation. You never for a moment doubt his courage—his presence of mind—his resources—he does not once quail in presence of Othello at his utmost fury. He does not stir up the Lion from without, through the bars of his cage, with an invisible rod of iron—that is, a whip of scorpions; he lashes up the Wild Beast, and flinches not an inch from paw that would smite, or tusk that would tear—a veritable Lion Queller and King.