You said, sir, the noble Moor must have been much disennobled ere he could have cried to Iago, "Now thou art my lieutenant."
NORTH.
I did, and you think so too.
TALBOYS.
I do. Othello and Iago, are joint conspirators to two double murders. Can you conspire to a murder—a private assassination—without lowering yourself—even on the Stage? Othello takes on himself the murder of Desdemona—act, responsibility, consequences; but does he not seem to hire Iago to assassinate Cassio?
NORTH.
What did Othello intend to do—after all was accomplished? Consequences indeed! He was stone-blind to the future. What does he expect? that when he has killed his wife, everything is to go on as smoothly as before? That no notice will be taken of it? or that he will have to make another speech to the Senate? He has told them how he married her—the counterpart will be to relate "a plain unvarnished tale of my whole course" of smothering and stabbing her with bolster and dagger. "Now thou art my lieutenant"—shows—if not stone-blindness—a singular confidence in the future.
TALBOYS.
The Personages who come in at the End look at the matter contrariwise. Othello exalts the killing of his wife into a sacrifice to Justice. But Cassio? That is mere—pure Revenge. "O that the slave had forty thousand lives,—one is too poor, too weak for my revenge."