This is a foul line. I should like to discover documentary proof that it is not Shakespeare’s, but the gag of some actor desirous of pleasing court folk!
The Promos and Cassandra from which Measure for Measure is taken is certainly worse, for Promos (Angelo) is made to marry Cassandra (Isabella) and after the marriage is to die, but Cassandra, ‘tyed in the greatest bondes of affection to her husband, becomes an earnest suter for his life.’
Henry VIII.—The scene in which Katherine appears before the court is perhaps the finest in the play. To what noble use is her Spanish pride turned! The last line of the following quotation from Katherine’s reply to Wolsey is infinite:
‘For it is you
Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me,
Which God’s dew quench.’
Othello is pure tragedy, for the judgment which falls on Othello and Desdemona, although it is disproportionate to the character or life of either, is necessary from the beginning. Brabantio was not wholly without justification in thinking the marriage unnatural, and Desdemona’s desertion of him without a word was unfeeling. The depth of the tragedy is increased by his death.
‘Poor Desdemon I am glad thy father’s dead.
Thy match was mortal to him.’
Iago feels the necessity of obtaining motives for his conduct. He tries to find them in the supposed infidelity of his wife with Othello and in his supersession by Cassio. Neither is sufficient, but he partly believes in them, and they partly serve their purpose.
Coleridge says Othello was not jealous: he lacked the suspicion that is essential to jealousy. Perhaps so, but in that case we want a name for the passion which rushes to belief of that which it prays may be false. The very intensity of love, so far from inducing careful examination of slander against the divinity I worship, prevents reflection by anxiety; by terror lest the love should be disturbed. Iago’s evidence, thinks Coleridge, was so strong that Othello could not have done otherwise; but would he have acted in war on evidence equally weak?
How mad Iago is with all his cunning! What a fool! Had he been anything but the maddest fool, he would have seen that in the end his plans must break down. Intellect? Yes, of a kind he had it pre-eminently, but intellect becomes folly when it is inhuman.
‘Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars.’