Upon what pedestal does Othello stand now—engaging another to kill Cassio in the dark, for his own revenge? I repeat it, surely the Noble Moor is now very much disennobled.
TALBOYS.
I rejoice, my dear sir, that you have so completely got rid of that nasty cough—your voice is as clear as a bell. Lungs sound—
NORTH.
As those of a prize bagpiper. Talboys, I cannot help thinking that Shakspeare shows up in Othello, foul passions—that you see in him two natures conjoined—the moral Caucasian White, and the animal tropical Black. In the Caucasian, the spiritual or angelical in us attains its manifestation. In the offspring of the tropics, amongst the sands, and under the suns of Africa, the animal nature takes domination. The sands and suns that breed Lions, breed Men with Lion's hearts in them. The Lion is for himself noble, but blood of the Irrational in the veins of the Rational is a contradiction. The noblest moral nature and the hot blind rage of animal blood!
TALBOYS.
Ay, the noblest moral nature, and high above every other evidence of it, his love of Her—which, what it was, and what it would have remained, or become—and what he was and would have been, had Iago not been there—we may imagine! With all the power of a warrior, and a ruler, he has the sensibility of a Lover—with all spontaneous dignity and nobility, he has the self-mastery of reason—before his overthrow.
NORTH.
Wherefore, my dear Sheriff, I prefer Othello as a specimen of the Ethical Marvellous. Like, as in another kingdom, a Winged Horse or a Centaur—the meeting of two natures which readily hold asunder. All this has under the Æthiop complexion its full force—less if you mitigate—if not mitigate merely, but take away, where are we all? The innate repugnance of the White Christian to the Black Moorish blood, is the ultimate tragic substratum—the "must" of all that follows. Else—make Othello White—and, I say again, see where we are!