WHEN Shakspere first became acquainted with the 'Moor of Venice' of Giraldi Cinthio (whether in the original Italian, or the French translation, or in one of the little story-books that familiarized the people with the romance and the poetry of the south), he saw in that novel the scaffolding of Othello. There was formerly in Venice a valiant Moor, says the story. It came to pass that a virtuous lady of wonderful beauty, named Desdemona, became enamoured of his great qualities and noble virtues. The Moor loved her in return, and they were married in spite of the opposition of the lady's friends. It happened too (says the story), that the senate of Venice appointed the Moor to the command of Cyprus, and that his lady determined to accompany him thither. Amongst the officers who attended upon the General was an ensign, of the most agreeable person, but of the most depraved nature. The wife of this man was the friend of Desdemona, and they spent much of their time together. The wicked ensign became violently enamoured of Desdemona; but she, whose thoughts were wholly engrossed by the Moor, was utterly regardless of the ensign's attentions. His love then became terrible hate, and he resolved to accuse Desdemona to her husband of infidelity, and to connect with the accusation a captain of Cyprus. That officer, having struck a centinel, was discharged from his command by the Moor; and Desdemona, interested in his favour, endeavoured to reinstate him in her husband's good opinion. The Moor said one day to the ensign, that his wife was so importunate for the restoration of the officer, that he must take him back. 'If you would open your eyes, you would Bee plainer,' said the ensign. The romance-writer continues to display the perfidious intrigues of the ensign against Desdemona. He steals a handkerchief which the Moor had given her, employing the agency of his own child. He contrives with the Moor to murder the captain of Cyprus, after he has made the credulous husband listen to a conversation to which he gives a false colour and direction; and, finally, the Moor and the guilty officer destroy Desdemona together, under circumstances of great brutality. The crime is, however, concealed, and the Moor is finally betrayed by his accomplice.

Mr. Dunlop, in his 'History of Fiction, has pointed out the material differences between the novel and the tragedy. He adds, "In all these important variations, Shakspere has improved on his original. In a few other particulars he has deviated from it with less judgment; in most respects he has adhered with close imitation. The characters of Iago, Desdemona, and Cassio, are taken from Cinthio with scarcely a shade of difference. The obscure hints and various artifices of the villain to raise suspicion in the Moor are the same in the novel and the drama." M. Guizot,

with the eye of real criticism, has been somewhat further than Mr. Dunlop. "There was wanting in the narrative of Cinthio the poetical genius which furnished the actors-which created the individuals-which imposed upon each a figure and a character-which made us see their actions, and listen to their words-which presented their thoughts and penetrated their sentiments:—that vivifying power which summons events to arise, to progress, to expand, to be completed :—that creative breath which, breathing over the past, calls it again into being, and fills it with a present and imperishable life: this was the power which Shakspere alone possessed, and by which, out of a forgotten novel, he has made Othello."

Before we can be said to understand the idea of Shakspere in the composition of Othello, we must disabuse ourselves of some of the commonplace principles upon which he has been interpreted. It is with this object that we have here, instead of in our Introductory Notice, given a rapid sketch of the source from which he derived this tragedy. The novel, be it observed, is a very intelligible and consistent story, of wedded happiness, of unlawful and unrequited attachment, of revenge growing out of disappointment, of jealousy too easily abused, of confederacy with the abuser, of most brutal and guilty violence, of equally base falsehood and concealment. This is a story in which we see nothing out of the common course of wickedness; nothing which licentious craft might not prompt, and frenzied passion adopt. The Iago of the tragedy, it is said, has not sufficient motives for his crimes. Mr. Skottowe tells us that in the novel, except as a means of vengeance on Desdemona, the infliction of pain upon the Moor forms no part of the treacherous officer's design. But, with regard to the play, he informs us, that it is surely straining the matter beyond the limits of probability to attribute Iago's detestation of Othello to causes so inadequate and vague as the dramatist has assigned. We have here the two principles upon which the novelist and the dramatist worked thoroughly at issue; and the one is to be called natural and the other unnatural. The one would have produced such an Othello as is cleverly described in the introduction to a French translation of the play recently published :† in which the nature of jealousy and all its cruel effects would have been explained, with great pomp of language, by a confidante in an introductory monologue; and the same subject would have served for a continued theme, until the fatal conclusion, which was long foreseen, of an amiable wife becoming the victim of a cruel oppressor. This is the Zaire of Voltaire. Upon the other principle, we have no explanations, no regular progress of what is most palpable in human action. We have the "motiveless malignity" of Iago,-"a being next to devil, and only not quite devil, and yet a character which Shakspeare has attempted and executed without scandal," as the main spring of all the fearful events which issue out of the unequal contest between the powers of grossness and purity, of falsehood and truth. This is the Othello of Shakspere.

If it had been within the compass of Shakspere's great scheme of the exposition of human actions and the springs of action, to have made Iago a supernatural incarnation of the principle of evil, he would not have drawn him very differently from what he is. In all essentials he is "only not quite devil." He is very much less "than archangel ruined." Milton, when he paints his Satan as about to plunge our first parents in irretrievable misery, makes him exhibit "signs of

remorse:

་་

-Should I at your harmless innocence

Melt, as I do, yet public reason just,
Honour and empire with revenge enlarg'd,

By conquering this new world, compels me now
To do what else, though damn'd, I should abhor.

So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excus'd his devilish deeds."

When Iago beholds a picture of happiness, not much inferior to that upon which the Satan of Milton looked, he has no compunctious visitings at the prospect of destroying it :—

"O, you are well tun'd now!

But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am."

But there is another great poetical creation to which Iago bears more resemblance-the Mephistophiles

The Life of Shakspeare. By Augustine Skottowe. Vol. ii. p. 76.
Chefs-d'Œuvre de Shakspeare. Tome ii. Paris .1839.

1 Coleridge.

of Goethe. Take away the supernatural power in Mephistophiles, and the sense of the supernatural power in Faust, and the actions of the human fiend and of the real fiend are reduced to pretty much the same standard. It could not be otherwise. Goethe, to make the incarnation of the evil principle intelligible in its dealing with human affairs, could only paint what Shakspere has painted-a being passionless, self-possessed, unsympathising, sceptical of all truth and purity, intellectually gross and sensual,-of a will uncontrolled by fear for himself or respect for others, the abstract of the reasoning power in the highest state of activity, but without love, without veneration, without hope, unspiritualized, earthy. Mephistophiles and Iago have this in common, also, that they each seek to destroy their victims through their affections, and each is successful in the attempt. If Shakspere had made lago actually exhibit the vulgar attributes of the fiend, when Othello exclaims

"I look down towards his feet "

would the character have been a particle more real? Fiends painted by men are but reflections of the baser principles of humanity. Shakspere embodied those principles in Ingo; and, it being granted that great talent combined with an utter destitution of principle, and a complete denudation of sympathy, has produced the monsters which history has described, who shall say that the character is exaggerated?

The list of "persons represented," affixed to the folio edition of Othello, and called "the names of the actors," is as little wanted for the information of the reader of this tragedy, as any preparatory scenie description of the characters. In this list we have "Iago, a villain,”— "-" Roderigo, a gull'd gentleman." But Shakspere has given us very clear indications by which to know the gull from the rogue. We have not read a dozen sentences before we feel the intellectual vigour of lago, and the utter want of honour, which he is not ashamed to avow. He parries in an instant the complaint of Roderigo,—

"That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse,"

and comman is a sympathy with his own complaints against the Moor. He is not nice in the avowal of his principles of action:

"In following him, I follow but myself."

He lays bare, without the slightest apprehension, the selfish motives upon which he habitually acts. And is not this nature? Roderigo, blinded by his passion and vanity, overlooks, as all men do under similar circumstances, the risk which he himself runs from such a confederate; and Iago knows that he will overlook it. He never makes a similar exposition of himself directly to persons of nice honour and sensitive morality. To Othello he is the hypocrite :—

"I lack iniquity, Sometimes to do me service."

And therefere, in Othello's opinion,

"A man he is of honesty and trust."

And even to the "gull'd gentleman," while he is counselling the most abominable wickedness, he is a sort of moralist, up to the point of securing attention and belief:-"our bodies are our gardens." When he is alone he revels in the pride of his intellect :

"Thus do I ever make my fooi my purse:

For I mine own gain'd knowledge should profane,

If I would time expend with such a snipe,
But for my sport and profit."

To Desdemona, in the first scene at Cyprus, he is "nothing if not critical," according to his own account; but retailing "old fond paradoxes," to conceal his real opinions. When he tasks his understanding to meet Desdemona's demand of, "What praise could'st thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed?" he exhibits the very perfection of satirical verse, the precise model of what used to be called poetry, the light without warmth of cleverness without feeling. To Cassio, a frank and generous soldier, somewhat easily tempted to folly, and with morals just loose enough not to destroy his native love of truth and purity, he ventures to exhibit himself more openly. The dialogue in the third scene of the second act, where they discourse of Desdemona, is a key to the habitual grossness of his imagination. His sarcasm to Cassio after the anger of Othello, "As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation," -discloses the utter absence from his mind of the principle of honour. And then, again, he can accommodate himself to all the demanas of the frankest joviality :

"And let me the cannakin, clink, clink."

Other dramatists would have made him gloomy and morose, but Shakspere knew that the boon companion, and the cheat and traitor, are not essentially distinct characters. In these lighter demonstrations of his real nature we have seen the clever scoundrel and the passionless sensualist tainted with impurity to the extremest depth of his will and his understanding. We have seen, too, at the very commencement of the play, his hatred to Othello exhibited in the rousing up of Desdemona's father. We have learned something, also, of the motive of this hatred-the preferment of Cassio :-

Now, sir, be judge yourself,

Whether I in any just term am affin'd

To love the Moor."

But it remained for Iago himself, thinking aloud, or, as we call it, soliloquizing, to disclose the entire scope of his villainy. He is to get Cassio's place, and "to abuse Othello's ear." To justify even to himself this second fiendish determination, he shows us, as Coleridge has beautifully expressed it, "The motive hunting of a motiveless malignity." We may well add with Coleridge, "how awful it is" To understand the confidence with which Iago exclaims, “I have it, it is engender'd," we must examine the elements of Othello's character.

Iago paints the Moor with bitter satire, as one "loving his own pride and purposes." He exhibits him lofty and magniloquent, using "a bombast circumstance." This is the mode in which a cold, calculating man of the world looks upon the imaginative man. The practical men, as they are called, regard with dislike those who habitually bring high thoughts and forcible expressions into the commerce of life. And yet Iago is compelled to do justice to the Moor's high talent :—

"Another of his fathom they have none,

To lead their business."

The frankness and generosity of the Moor, on the contrary, is a subject for his utter scorn. has no sympathy with him :--

Again,

"The Moor is of a free and open nature,

That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by the nose
As asses are."

"The Moor-howbeit that I endure him not

Is of a constant, loving, noble nature."

Here he

It is his dependence upon this constant, loving, noble nature, it is upon Othello's freedom from all low suspicion, that Iago relies for his power to

"Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me,

For making him egregiously an ass;

And practising upon his peace and quiet,
Even to madness."

But let Othello speak for himself. Not vain, but proud;-relying upon himself, his birth, his actions, he is calm at the prospect of any injury that Brabantio can do him. He is bold when he has to confront those who come as his enemies :

When the old senator exclaims,

"I must be found;

My parts, my title, and my perfect soul,

Shall manifest me rightly."

"down with him-thief!" how beautiful is his self-command!"Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them."

It was this forbearance and self-restraint, bottomed upon the most enthusiastic energy, that made him a hero. When he is wrought into frenzy, Iago himself is suprised at the storm which he has produced; and he looks upon the tempest of passion as a child does upon some machine which he has mischievously set in motion for damage and destruction, but which under guidance is a beautiful instru ment of usefulness. "Can he be angry?" Lodovico, in the same way, does justice to his habitual equanimity :

"Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate

Call all-in-all sufficient? This the nature
Whom passion could not shake?"

The senate scene is the triumph of Othello's perfect simplicity and fearless enthusiasm :

"I think this tale would win my daughter too."

And then his affection for Desdemona. Before the assembled senators he puts on no show of violence -no reality, and, unquestionably, no affectation, of warmth and tenderness :