Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion
Blush’d at itself.’
She is not a painted idol, carved out of the poet’s brain, but is herself a worshipper at the shrine of duty. As Milton dashes the luxurious effect of his descriptions by a moral, Shakespear qualifies it by the interest of the story, as in the scene where Othello takes Desdemona by the hand. The truth of conception, with which timidity and boldness are united in the same character, is marvellous. The extravagance of her actions, the pertinacity of her affections, in a manner arises out of the gentleness of her nature. It is an unreserved reliance on the purity of her intentions, a surrender of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to the fate of another. Bating the commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and self-willed (though that may be accounted for in the same way from an inability to resist a rising inclination) her whole character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part of her disposition; and instead of following Othello to Cyprus, she would rather have remained at home, ‘a moth of peace,’ if her husband could have staid with her. Her resignation and angelic sweetness of nature do not desert her at the last. The scenes in which she laments and tries to account for Othello’s harsh usage of her are exquisitely managed. After he has struck her and called her names, she says:
——‘Alas, Iago,
What shall I do to win my lord again?
Good friend, go to him; for by this light of Heaven,
I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel;
If e’er my will did trespass ’gainst his love,
Either in discourse, or thought, or actual deed,
Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense