And when in his desperate pain and fury, maddened by the poison working within, he drags Iago to the front of the stage, and holding him by the throat speaks Shakespeare's meaning, if not Shakespeare's words, thick and fast, as if he were not an actor, but Othello himself, and while his audience listen with bated breath and quick-beating hearts, he hurls him to the ground, and in the uncurbed fury of his mood raises his foot to spurn him like a dog,—then he rises far above ordinary dramatic effect: his art does "hold the mirror up to Nature." We feel that we have seen Othello.
Again, in the fourth act, when Iago brings home to him the realization of his wife's infidelity, what can be finer than the sharpening of his voice from stress of pain, changing from the full roundness of its usual masculine robustness to a high womanish key, as he asks the fatal questions, "Che disse? Che? Che fece?" What words could have said so much as the dumb show with which he signifies that terrible fact of which he can neither ask nor hear in words? And who can doubt when he hears that cry of agony that bursts from his lips at Iago's gross confirmation of his suggestion that it is the cry of a man stabbed to the heart? His suffering is as real to us as the agony of a lion would be if we stood by and saw some one drive a knife into the beast up to the hilt. It equals in reality any exhibition of simple unfeigned bodily pain, with all its intensity of violence. The word "rant" never once comes into our minds.
Salvini expresses everything. He demands nothing from his audience but eyes and ears; he acts the part in every detail; he does just what he aims to do. His motion is as unconscious and unfettered as that of a deer or a tiger: whether he paces with a stealthy, restless tread up and down the back of the stage, reminding us irresistibly of a caged wild beast, or whether he half crouches, then drags himself along, and then darts upon Iago in the last scene, it is always plain that his body is the servant of his mind: he moves in harmony with his mood.
Despite, therefore, the natural tendency to scrutinize closely the claims of a foreigner seeking to rule over our hearts as the vicegerent of Shakespeare's sovreignty, there has been, and happily can be, no question in regard to one essential point. That Salvini is a born actor, a great tragedian, none will be bold enough to dispute. In that rare combination of intellectual and physical qualities without which no particular gift would justify his pretensions—intensity of emotion, subtlety of perception, a power of impersonation implying of itself the union of all the natural requirements with a mastery in their display attainable only by consummate art—it is hard to believe that he can ever have been excelled; though doubtless the mingled fire and pathos of Kean transcended in their effect any like exhibition ever witnessed on the stage. Except for the few—if any still survive—who can remember the Othello of Kean, living recollection affords no opportunity for a judgment founded on comparison.
The only question therefore which it is possible to raise relates to Salvini's conception of the character—a question such as must always exist in the case of any representation of Shakespeare, with whose creations no actor can ever hope to identify himself, however he may modify our former impressions. Let it be remembered, too, that an actor's conception of a character must never be vague, undefined or shadowy, as that of a mere reader may well be, and probably will be in the exact degree in which he is a keen and appreciative student. The actor must not strive to suggest all possible solutions, but must hold firmly to one, and that the most dramatic; he must seize upon the salient points; his subtleties must not be too subtle for gesture, glance and tone to express; he must choose which meaning out of many meanings he shall enforce, which mood out of many moods he shall make predominate.
The exceptions which have been taken to Salvini's performance all rest upon the notion that he has misconceived the character. It is superb, we are told, but it is not Shakespeare. It is a representation not of Othello the Moor, but of a Moor named Othello. The idea that dominates throughout is that of race: the character loses its individuality and becomes a mere type, an embodiment of the tropical nature, an illustration of Byron's lines:
Africa is all the sun's,
And as her earth her human clay is kindled.
The unbridled passion, the revengeful fury, is that of a savage. The anguish and indignation of a noble spirit believing itself outraged and wronged are transformed into the blind rage and capricious fury of a wild beast.
This objection seems to us to spring from the state of mind often induced by long familiarity with a subject, in which the gain of minute knowledge is accompanied by a loss of the force and vividness of the first impression. People study Shakespeare as they study the Bible, softening whatever they find revolting until they have convinced themselves that it does not exist. Actors in general share in this sentiment or strive to gratify it. Othello's complexion is forgotten in the reading, and becomes in the representation such that the spectator feels no repugnance to his marriage with the fair Desdemona. Betrayed through the mere openness and generosity of his nature, he acts only as a sensitive and vehement nature would be compelled to act in so terrible a complication, and the emotions kindled by his demeanor and conduct are never those of horror and repulsion, but only of pity and admiration.