PR 
 
 
OT H E LLO 
 
 An MttrpnUtmn 
 
 "By 
 MABELLE PHILIPS WEBB 
 
 Author of "Questions on Othello 
 for Clubs." 
 
 lb 
 
 WARRENSBURG, MO. 
 MABELLE PHILIPS WEBB 
 
 ^^^,. 
 
cA' 
 
 ■■ii-»'^vinrMr' 1*'" '* ' I' 
 
 UBRARYof CONQRESSI 
 Two Copies Beceived 
 
 DEC 16 3 907 
 
 Oopyngni tntry 
 
 ^^ 9 / f ^7 
 0LAS5 v^ XXc. No. 
 
 COPY B. 
 
 ■imrr-gTH 
 
 Sii^kii^^^^^ 
 
 Copyright, 1907 
 Mabelle Philips Webb 
 
15 
 I) 
 
 OF 
 
 Central 
 
 AND OF 
 
 CoTTEY College 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This little work is written for the 
 good reader, because the good reader 
 makes the good book. In writing I had 
 in view not only the discussion of those 
 difficulties and differences of opinion 
 that must be faced by the club studying 
 this drama, but also the hope of inter- 
 esting some who might not otherwise 
 become interested in this the last of the 
 four great tragedies with which indi- 
 vidual students and clubs become ac- 
 quainted. 
 
 "Shakespeare Again," Lowell was 
 not afraid to christen his little book. 
 And why? Because though old, he 
 knew that a study in Shakespeare is 
 always new and always different. Each 
 
 5 
 
6 jforelijorti 
 
 written life bears more or less the stamp 
 of the personality which produces it; 
 every new viewpoint gives a new facet. 
 How many Hamlets have been written, 
 and yet no two are alike ! And because 
 there remain undiscovered regions of 
 thought, there is room for other Ham- 
 lets and Othellos which may fulfill our 
 conception more perfectly than any 
 heretofore written. This is my Othello. 
 May I hope that the same will find 
 favor with my reader? 
 
 M. P. V^EBB. 
 
 Warrensburg, Mo. 
 
Othello: An Interpretation 
 
 Among readers of books and people 
 of thought studies in Shakespeare, intro- 
 duced with worshipful remarks about 
 the poet, are honored in proportion to 
 their absence. They take it most un- 
 kindly having mere platitudes forced 
 upon their notice, and cry out against 
 such offenses, as did Montaigne when 
 he declared, 'T do not need to be told 
 what death and pleasure are!" Gener- 
 ally, though, they have never come to 
 terms about which is greatest of Shake- 
 speare's plays, and for this reason the 
 question never loses its interest. "Eng- 
 land has but two books," said Victor 
 Hugo; ''one of these is Shakespeare." 
 It is no marvel, then, that such a ques- 
 
 7 
 
8 #tt)ello: 2in 3f|nterpmatton 
 
 tion should command, and receive, some 
 attention. At one time or another it 
 is discussed by the old and the young, 
 by those commencing a study of the 
 poet and those leaving off, without any 
 exact hope of coming to an agreement. 
 It is universally conceded, however, that 
 the dramas include four tragedies of the 
 first rank of genius: "Hamlet," the 
 tragedy of thought-concentration with- 
 out expression; "Macbeth," the tragedy 
 of hunger and ambition; "Lear," the 
 tragedy of greed; and "Othello," the 
 tragedy of intellect. When it comes to 
 deciding which of these is superior, dif- 
 ferences of opinion again prevail. Every 
 thoughtful student has a preference, and 
 one may not hope with any choice to 
 satisfy more than the likeminded. Ul- 
 rici says that Englishmen consider 
 "O t h e 1 1 o" Shakespeare's unrivaled 
 drama. By way of corroborating this, 
 it niight almost seem, Macaulay wrote, 
 
g^t^ello: Sin Blnterptetation 9 
 
 " 'Othello' Is, perhaps, the greatest 
 work In the world;" and Wordsworth 
 reckons it with two others as the most 
 pathetic of human compositions. Car- 
 lyle characteristically speaks of "Time- 
 defying Othellos." 
 
 Goethe said that the rude man re- 
 quires only to see something going on; 
 the man of more refinement must be 
 made to feel; while the truly cultured 
 man requires also to be made to think. 
 One may get nothing but the moving 
 picture from "Othello;" and he gets 
 much, but only to get this is to suffer the 
 eye to become a monopolist, to play the 
 cheat. Though one hidden brush is the 
 painter, the drama provides for all three 
 classes in abundance. As it moves 
 swiftly across the field of vision, swept 
 onward by the winds of passion, it has 
 that within it which awakes every Imag- 
 inable mood of heart and brain. Here 
 it "is barbarous enough to excite, there 
 
10 (Bt\)tllox 0n 3f|nterprmtion 
 
 tender enough to assuage." The hurri- 
 cane of hfe sweeps through the pages, 
 tossing lives like leaves to and fro, as the 
 cold, cutting force of intellectuality pits 
 itself against the blind infinitude of love. 
 
 Shakespeare exhibits love in its widest 
 range in this drama, including every 
 mental condition, every tone, from the 
 slightest kindliness up to the most ear- 
 nest covenant; from the first perception 
 of sensible presence up to the fierceness 
 of all-destroying passion. Lessing says 
 that he gives a living picture of all the 
 most minute and secret artifices by 
 which a feeling steals into our soul, of 
 all the imperceptible advantages which 
 it there gains, of all the stratagems by 
 which every other passion is made sub- 
 servient to it, till it becomes the sole 
 tyrant of our desires and our aversions. 
 
 While the essence of this tragedy is 
 action — the soul in action, in its collision 
 
^tbtllox Sin ginterpretatton 11 
 
 with a stronger force — all feeling, all 
 thought goes out to the victim. In its 
 tragical working out of human destiny, 
 ' "never was more intensity put into book 
 before; never, perhaps, will more burn 
 on any later page." The fact that lago 
 is one of the two most intellectual of 
 Shakespeare's creations requires thought 
 for comprehension merely. The ambi- 
 tion of Faust, universal desire, enters to 
 a great extent into lago. He adds an- 
 other chapter to the race in which it 
 records its horror of its prison. All of 
 the dramas written during this period 
 of Shakespeare's life comprise dark 
 tragedies, black contradictions of life. 
 The keynote of them is: What do we 
 know? what ultimate knowledge do we 
 possess? There he leaves the question. 
 As much as to say that the mysteries of 
 life are more satisfying for our human 
 needs than man's answers to those mys- 
 
12 g^tl^ello: Sin ^nmpttmtion 
 
 teries. The muse of comedy kissed the 
 poet only on the lips, but the muse of 
 tragedy on the heart. 
 
 In reference to the moral scope of 
 the view of life which "Othello" pre- 
 sents, Sydney Lanier places it in what he 
 designates as the "Real Period," For 
 this reason, he says, it appeals to all 
 nations and times. In another classifica- 
 tion of the plays made by Professor 
 Dowden as follows: "In the Work- 
 shop;" "In the World;" "Out of the 
 Depths;" "On the Heights," — this falls 
 into that period known as "Out of the 
 Depths." 
 
 When it is understood that this re- 
 markable work represents the genius of 
 Shakespeare at its height — for at this 
 time his powers rode the zenith — it will 
 readily be comprehended that whoso- 
 ever undertakes to write of its beauties, 
 its meaning, and the differences of opin- 
 ion in regard to it, essays no easy task. 
 
(Dtlbellot 3in 31nterpmatton 13 
 
 Hamilton Wright Mabie says that no 
 one ever gets to the bottom of Shake- 
 speare's thought. We shall only attempt 
 to interpret here a line, there a line. 
 Personally, however, we do not care for 
 those departments of human inquiry that 
 have no depths, no difficulties. There 
 may be places where we can find neither 
 latitude nor longitude, much less show 
 others the way; but be that as It may, 
 with Carlyle we count it more profitable 
 to have to do with men of depth than 
 men of shallowness. If we have an oc- 
 casional fall, however, those who read 
 may profit by our missteps, and will not 
 refuse their indulgence. 
 
 "Othello" is a contest between man 
 and circumstances, in which circum- 
 stances are victorious. The resolution 
 is in sorrow and death without recon- 
 ciliation, and purposely it bears the 
 name of a single individual. Tragedy 
 as conceived by Shakespeare is concerned 
 
14 0tf^tl\ox an ginterpmation 
 
 not with the outer, but the inner life; 
 the ruin and restoration of the soul, its 
 stress and recovery. Success here means 
 neither practical achievement in the 
 world nor material prosperity, but the 
 perfected life of the soul; and failure 
 its ruin, through ''passion or weakness, 
 calamity or crime." 
 
 No more surely, in the "Ancient Mar- 
 iner," was the course of the phantom 
 ship, sailing the phantom sea, deter- 
 mined by the phantom man, who held 
 the tiller, than that lago, by the pulse 
 of his will, causes every action in this 
 play to go forward to its tragic consum- 
 mation. The opening scene reveals the 
 motive intrigues embodied in lago; an 
 atmosphere of adventure; the Turkish 
 war enveloping all. We can not fail to 
 notice with what art the dramatist pre- 
 pares beforehand for the catastrophe 
 by presenting the germ of all the after 
 events. A shadow chases the reader 
 
(Dtljello: 0n iflnterprrtation 17 
 
 account, — the material universe and 
 man. His vision falls ; he retreats baffled 
 from God. Blindness Is only a relative 
 term, however, for the vision of each 
 of us gives out at a certain point. With 
 Shakespeare nature was furthermore al- 
 ways subsidiary to the chief personages; 
 man was, therefore, pre-eminently his 
 theme. For a background In "Othello" 
 he gives Venice, war, adventure; out of 
 that should steal the main picture. First 
 you look for the central figure ; without 
 doubt that is lago. It is no difficult 
 matter to put the other characters into 
 place. In the contrast of the character 
 of lago with that of Othello lies the 
 central point of the spiritual Import. 
 Far as the poles apart are Othello, the 
 great heart, and lago, the proud Intel- 
 lect. The latter, however, is the central 
 figure, the dramatic hero, and the mo- 
 tive personage. 
 
 Other writers aimed their satire at 
 2 
 
18 (j^ttiello: an glntetpmatton 
 
 individuals; Shakespeare at one stroke 
 in lago lashed thousands. Men idolize 
 intellect. It has become the Moloch to 
 which life itself is sacrificed. Bright- 
 ness is rated above goodness, and intel- 
 lectuality above fidelity. Mind is held 
 supreme over spirit; brains are on the 
 throne. Every man who has attained to 
 any of the higher degrees of intellect has 
 at times but to place his finger on his 
 pulse to feel throbbing there the blood 
 of lago; for lago believed in the ade- 
 quacy of intellect alone and unsupported, 
 so only that intellect was great enough. 
 This creation, therefore, in his inability 
 to value moral beauty and worth, and in 
 his immoderate prizing of brain, exalt- 
 ing it above everything else in the world, 
 is to-day one of the most universally 
 true in literature and life. This fact 
 gives to the drama the stamp of mod- 
 ernness, makes it like the twentieth cen- 
 tury itself. So instead of a picture of a 
 
#tfiello: an 31ncerpretacion 19 
 
 dead past, we have a leaf torn from the 
 living present. 
 
 Shakespeare, the seer, understanding 
 fully the power of intellect, has here, 
 working with intensest impulse, flung 
 forth a masterpiece ; and to his work of 
 art he has given the name "Othello,'' 
 "for he was great of heart." 
 
 In science the intention of a thing is 
 the purpose it really serves, which is 
 discoverable by analysis. ( So the pur- 
 pose of this tragedy, when analyzed, is 
 to show that the heart is the only source 
 of power which masters men for good; \ 
 that the history of each life worth record 
 is the history of its loves; that a full 
 head does not compensate for a foul 
 heart; but that the heart should beat in 
 the brain. 
 
 The poet in his youth found great 
 pleasure in the sparkle of intellect, the 
 play of thought. After he had seen 
 more of the deep sorrow of the world, 
 
20 (Bt\)tlh: 0n Jlnterpmation 
 
 and its deeper evil, he came to realize 
 that intellect is tributary, not sovereign; 
 and not only that morals and mind 
 should be in everlasting bond, but that 
 the superior of these should be kept su- 
 preme. He realized also that "out of 
 the heart are the issues of life," instead 
 of out of the will or understanding. 
 
 Carlyle does not believe that a man 
 able to originate deep thoughts is unable 
 to see them when originated; Lowell, 
 with what courage we know not, said 
 that Shakespeare was no inspired idiot. 
 Intentionally or not, however, he teaches 
 through lago that to lift intellect alone 
 is to put whitewash on the rascal, to 
 furnish forth the villain. It must be 
 conceded that the ethical and intellectual 
 have always been correlated in history, 
 whether the question is studied in the 
 follower of Brahma or Confucius; in 
 Greek or Jew ; in Buddhist monastery or 
 medieval monasticism. Each nation's 
 
(Bt\)dlo: an ^Interpretation 21 
 
 history reveals their inseparability, and 
 that morality is the basis of all sound 
 intellectual culture, and its only safe con- 
 servator. A sympathetic study of the 
 poet in this work reveals the essential 
 moral nature of his teaching in regard 
 to truth, intellect, life, and love. His 
 message is a message for every century. 
 Emerson said, "Intellect and morals 
 meet in the man if he is to be great." In 
 lago we see the tragedy of an intellect 
 which has cast off all moral allegiance. 
 In Richard III, in Falstaff, and in lago, 
 pride of intellect without moral feeling 
 is the ruling impulse. In the most des- 
 perate, in the most dissolute, and in the 
 most consummate of Shakespeare's vil- 
 lains is found the same distinguishing 
 characteristic — a supreme prizing of in- 
 tellect. 
 
 / Out of lago's own mouth In the first 
 scene we get the key by which we unlock 
 the motive of the play. Sodden with 
 
22 (|^t!)eUo: 2in glnterpretation 
 
 suspicion, he conceives, and then pro- 
 ceeds to nurse, what he himself half-way 
 believes to be a baseless idea that 
 Othello had wronged him with his wife, 
 Emilia. Whether true or false, he re- 
 solves in the following words to make 
 Othello know every pang of jealousy :\ 
 
 "I have it; it is engendered: Hell and Night 
 Must bring this monstrous birth to the 
 world's light." 
 
 Man sees what he has trained him- 
 self to see, what he is interested in see- 
 ing. And what is lived in the thought- 
 world sooner or later becomes objectified 
 in the life. Nursed in the lowest ranks, 
 intrigue has shaped his intellect till he 
 had become so subtle to suspect that 
 suspicion goes beyond all bounds, and 
 makes himself its victim. Too long he 
 breathed this air of hell — he was at last 
 consumed by its flames; and this is the 
 
&t\)tllox 3in glntrrpretatton 23 
 
 motive of the tragedy, lago's suspicious, 
 consuming jealousy. 
 
 He feared neither to soil his fingers 
 nor sicken his heart In any black laby- 
 rinth of wickedness. His aims were 
 never of a simple sort, or easy of attain- 
 ment; but to the utmost degree he was 
 expert In pursuing them. He spared no 
 pains in making each evil produce a 
 maximum of results ; for he looked upon 
 Iniquity as altogether too precious to be 
 thrown away. He compassed this by a 
 concentration, a drawing of all the in- 
 trigues Into unity. By such economy of 
 villainy he brings it about that all done 
 toward racking Othello's heart with mis- 
 ery is so much done toward the ruin of 
 Cassio. T In plotting against Desdemona 
 he wishes to remove . Cassio and be 
 even'd with Othello.'^/iHe seeks to be rid 
 of Cassio for two reasbrrs ; first, he wants 
 his office; then the beauty of his life 
 makes him so ugly, the sun's rays reveal 
 
24 O^tljello: 2in ^Interpretation 
 
 the dust! Brutus is never so honorable 
 as when Caesar is not by! Mere intellect 
 brought into the presence of character 
 casts a shadow, f Where Cassio passed, 
 there went a silent judgment upon cor- 
 ruption. A standard of character 
 seemed unconsciously to accompany him, 
 commanding and compelling discrimina- 
 tion between the base and noble. lago's 
 peculiar villainies found in Cassio their 
 peculiar antagonist. * 
 
 In regard to woman — and lago was 
 ever what he willed to be — he holds the 
 maxims of the Turk^ Coleridge cries 
 out in repugnance: r Cassio is an enthu- 
 siastic admirer, almost a worshiper, of 
 Desdemona. O that detestable :ode 
 that excellence can not be loved in any 
 form that is female, but it must needs be 
 selfish! ... It ought to be impossible 
 that the dullest auditor should not feel 
 Cassio's religious love for Desdemona's 
 purity. \ lago's answers are the sneers 
 
(!^tl)ello: 2in Jinttxpvtmion 25 
 
 which a proud, bad Intellect feels toward 
 a woman and expresses to a wife. Surely 
 it ought to be considered a very excellent 
 compliment to woman that all the sar- 
 casms on them in Shakespeare are put in 
 the mouths of villains." 
 r^Cassio's morals do not altogether 
 tally with our ideas of virtue. But his 
 morals were ahead of his time, and his 
 regard for Desdemona was all that 
 Coleridge — Shakespeare's truest critic 
 — teaches. In respect to virtue in itself, 
 the world was ages behind what it is 
 to-day. For the story of virtue, like the 
 history of the race, the life of the indi- 
 vidual, is a growth, a progress, a Bible. 
 To intelligently comprehend any past 
 age, whether barbarous or enlightened, 
 the pendulum of life must be drawn 
 back across the dividing centuries. 
 
 In knowledge of character, in expres- 
 sion of passion and tone-play, the third 
 act in this drama is hardly paralleled in 
 
26 <i^tt)gilo: an ^ntttpvtmtion 
 
 literature. Here is found the famous 
 "Suggestion Scene," where lago goes 
 nigher the wind than any other villain, 
 and, without really affirming anything, 
 ^ drives his victim with suspense and suf- 
 fering to insensibility. 
 
 lago had roamed the earth from 
 Smyrna to England; his course diversi- 
 fied with many vicissitudes; his life spent 
 on the open theater of the world, f^ In 
 reading character he had becomd an 
 adept; he could spy out with perfect 
 acuteness where another's weak side lay. 
 In the cold north-light of his intellect 
 he seems to have exactly calculated 
 Othello's vulnerable spot; whilef Othello 
 lacked nothing less than everything in 
 his ability to see through lago. Though 
 Othello had been hardened by twenty 
 years of wars and shipwrecks, at lago's 
 words he swoons for grief. lago knew 
 just how to manufacture more than the 
 plausible, whitewash the false; or, as a 
 
 ^"i 
 
(^tftelio: ^n ^Interpretation 27 
 
 Dumas might say, he made the false 
 truer than truth. From this on, the plot 
 thickens; his medicine works. He un- 
 derstood but too well that every man is 
 led and misled in a way that is personal 
 and individual to himself. With the 
 perfection of skill he keeps Othello, 
 Desdemona, Cassio, Roderigo, on the 
 road to ruin; so that, partakers or not 
 of his crime, they must share his punish- 
 ment.! His head is as acute as his heart 
 is callous. He finds especial joy in 
 probing Othello to the quick. ''He 
 hates him as a man,'^ says Froude, "be- 
 cause his nature is the perpetual opposite 
 and perpetual reproach of his own." 
 I He takes pleasure in the worst side of 
 everything, and in proving himself 
 an overmatch for circumstances^ | He 
 shrinks from nothing which will serve 
 his turn. His villainies were combined 
 in far other order in his own mind, we 
 must say in fairness, than we have 
 
28 (Dt^ello: an ^Interpretation 
 
 painted them; under colors which did 
 not, indeed, paint them up, but exhibited 
 them as virtues. References to his own 
 integrity he takes as an affront to be 
 resented. Will and intellect were the 
 only faculties recognized in his world. 
 No other creature ever showed a hun- 
 grier avidity of evil than seemed to sting 
 him; his end in life was evil, and noth- 
 ing but evil. He drained dry the cup of 
 iniquity, yet remained unsated. 
 
 Mr. Green's notes concerning him 
 say: "Crime is pleasant to him. I will 
 not assert that such a man can not exist; 
 but I know that he is improbable." 
 Shakespeare did not altogether invent 
 lago; he summoned him froni out the 
 world, and has given us a career which 
 is a type. Take villains individually, 
 and no one of them ever was an lago; 
 sum up villainy, and you have him. It 
 is a type which lives ; but in which there 
 is nothing that cries out "Beware!" to 
 
(Dt^ello: Sin glnterpmation 29 
 
 warn you, as in the less perfect villain. 
 It is not without its significance that 
 Shakespeare makes him only twenty- 
 eight years old. He was a villain 
 born, not the result of sad experience. 
 He has no heart to love; no bowels to 
 suffer; no eyes to weep, — nothing of 
 man except the form. To such a being 
 neither the intensity of joy of which the 
 soul is capable, nor the cross and passion 
 of a human heart could be understood; 
 his only human quality was a subtle, 
 penetrating intellect. The great moral- 
 ist would have us know there is some- 
 thing worse in life than suffering, — an 
 incapacity to feel. Those alone capable 
 of great suffering are capable of loving 
 greatly. For this reason the resolution 
 in sorrow and suffering is ethical and 
 spiritual.^;* 
 
 If we put together in the play all that 
 lago had to say of himself, and all that 
 others say and appear to feel about him. 
 
30 (J^tljello: an 31ncerpmatton 
 
 we get a truer Idea of him than any 
 other way. That will be the correct 
 reading of his character, as far as we 
 shall ever read it; account for, and in 
 some way reconcile, what is represented. 
 p'^We know from what he himself says 
 and does that he is the most insufferable 
 creature in soul that ever trod the stage 
 — a very flame of hell; that no white- 
 washing of his name is possible; it is a 
 blot on the human race. '■ We learn from 
 the text that in personal appearance and 
 in reputation he was the exact opposite 
 of all this. 
 
 Shakespeare seems to take pains to 
 show us for a purpose that even his wife 
 had no idea of anything but his honesty 
 and warmth of heart. Though she had 
 even aided him in his great villainies, 
 she was ignorant of them. Emilia was 
 not a woman to be easily imposed upon, 
 and yet she was imposed upon, and had 
 
(^tl&ello: Sin gintetpmatton 31 
 
 confidence in his goodness of heart from 
 the first to very near the last. Early in 
 the tragedy, speaking of Cassio's dis- 
 grace, she says she knows it grieves her 
 husband as if the case were his ; then at 
 the end we witness her utter astonish- 
 ment when she learns that lago is the 
 villain who spoiled Desdemona's life 
 and caused her death. 
 
 He is easily the most popular young 
 man in Venice; this we know from the 
 way his friends, '^great ones," interest 
 themselves in getting him an office. He 
 wins every one to trust him, the good as 
 well as the bad, that he may profit by 
 their confidence. He lays himself out to 
 make friends, and accomplishes his pur- 
 pose any way at all so that it is effected. 
 To one he is imperious, to another ob- 
 sequious; he bends to occasion; blows 
 hot and blows cold; prefers cunning to 
 force; is quick of scent and sharp of 
 
32 (Pttiello: an glnterpretatton 
 
 tooth ; everything and nothing by turns ; 
 at one and the same time human and un- 
 human. (He has no good principles, ab- 
 solutely noneT/ Since in such vast ability 
 he was hindered by nothing in the way 
 of scruples, there was no end to the evil 
 he could do, except the end of him. All 
 he needed was life.; his powers were 
 boundless — limited only by that. He 
 is, necessarily, therefore, Shakespeare's 
 most consummate villain — the most per- 
 fect which has marked the world's his- 
 tory. 
 
 "One first question," said a philos- 
 opher, "I ask of every man: Has he an 
 aim which, with undivided soul, he fol- 
 lows and advances towards? Whether 
 his aim be a right one or a wrong one 
 forms but my second question." lago 
 marked out a path for himself to travel, 
 and traveled the same like a will In- 
 carnated. Though he be a villain of 
 the first water, It should not hinder us 
 
g^t^ello: ^n glnterpretatton 33 
 
 from running to see how he managed It, 
 and what befell in the end. Such lives 
 are, insignificant, and deserve study. It 
 is man's merit to rule external circum- 
 stances, and as little as possible be ruled 
 by them. Without us are the elements, 
 — within us force. Whosoever strives 
 In our sight with all his powers to reach 
 an object, whether it Is one that we 
 praise or blame, may count on exciting 
 our interest. In such cases usually, as 
 Dr. Johnson says, there Is danger "lest 
 wickedness conjoined with abilities 
 should steal upon esteem, though it 
 misses approbation ; but the character of 
 lago is so conducted that he is, from the 
 first scene to the last, hated and de- 
 spised." In word, act, and thought he 
 did nothing but lie. When the play 
 opens he has reached sure perfection In 
 the art; there Is nothing like It. He Is 
 the king of liars. Yet he Is labeled no 
 less than about twoscore times with 
 3 
 
34 (Dtfiello: ^n glmerpmatton 
 
 "honest" and "good" by his future vic- 
 tims. After the murder of Desdemona, 
 Emilia exclaims: 
 
 " My husband say that she was false !" 
 
 Othello repeats his words: 
 
 "He, woman; 
 I say thy husband: dost understand the word? 
 My friend, thy husband, honest, honest lago." 
 
 In the old story from which Othello 
 is taken, it is through the tenderness 
 Desdemona feels for the child of lago, 
 whom her father teaches to steal the 
 handkerchief, that he takes occasion to 
 destroy her. For a child to have stolen 
 the pledge of love under such circum- 
 stances, and with such results, Shake- 
 speare seems to have felt, would have 
 been to have heaped the measure, to 
 have exaggerated horror, to have sinned 
 against art as well as nature. "Mon- 
 
<Dtl^ello : Sin 31nterpretacton 35 
 
 sters should not propagate," said an 
 Englishman; *'a child of lago is not to 
 be endured by man." 
 
 When Desdemona in deep distress 
 sends for lago and asks: 
 
 "Alas, lago, 
 What shall I do to win my lord again? 
 Good friend, go to him/' 
 
 He goes to him. Not, however, to 
 reconcile, but to trade upon her confid- 
 ing trustfulness by rousing a fiend of 
 wrath in Othello. It stands written 
 upon his front, as it is said to have been 
 upon Mephistopheles, that he never 
 loved a living soul. 
 
 From the time when lago kneels with 
 the Moor and includes himself in the 
 oath of vengeance, all has gone forward 
 as he wished. His sin, like a fire, has 
 completely encircled the innocent, — 
 Shakespeare knew that crime was not 
 simple in its consequences. Fate hides 
 
36 (Dtl^ello: an 3|ntei:pmatton 
 
 till he thinks he has made an end of 
 those he hates; then Nemesis plays with 
 lago. The turning point of the drama 
 begins in the second scene of the last act, 
 one hundred and fortieth line. There the 
 tragic consummation gives way to reac- 
 tion. The intrigues one by one react 
 upon the head of the Intriguer, while 
 blood flows like water ; for such sin will 
 not be satisfied with a single victim. He 
 has tortured Othello into slaying Des- 
 demona, and he in turn is goaded into 
 taking Emilia's life; and thus his words 
 come true, he Is "even'd with Othello 
 wife for wife." i He made a tool and 
 fool of Roderigo, then cast him aside, 
 but the contents of Roderigo's pocket 
 furnish the evidence against him.i He 
 plotted to take the office and File of 
 Cassio, but Casslo lives to demand his 
 for the sake of justice. ( 
 
 Every man will make for himself the 
 most wicked man that he, by the power 
 
d^elicllo: an glnterpmatton 37 
 
 of his will and imagination, can create; 
 but the secret of the abyss of lago lies 
 deeper than ever plummet sounded save 
 Shakespeare's. Compare this incarna- 
 tion with Goethe's Mephistopheles, the 
 majestic spirit of Milton's invention; or, 
 compare him with Shakespeare's other 
 villains ; and one and all are spirits of 
 less deep damnation than that incarnated 
 in "Othello." He might be said to be 
 the great dramatist's idea of the won- 
 derful power that lies between a man's 
 two temples, and, also, the wonderful 
 potential evil when power rests in the 
 mind alone. 
 
 Father Vaughan, the lecturer, says 
 "lago is the great mystery. Can a 
 soul be absolutely given over to evil?" 
 But no matter how incomprehensible the 
 characters of Hamlet and lago may be 
 — and in this respect they are true to 
 nature, for there is much in every life 
 to elude and baffle inquiry — they possess 
 
38 (i^tl)ello: an glnterpmatton 
 
 a tantalizing charm for the thoughtful 
 man, and, though they balk him, he will 
 continue to work upon them as upon all 
 insoluble problems. They do not an- 
 swer, however, because life does not an- 
 swer. There is a kind of fitness; after 
 all our inquiries it seems right that what 
 has so much power to offend as this un- 
 paralleled lago should be left in semi- 
 darkness, unresolved. It is little we 
 know except that he warred against the 
 whole world, owning no man for friend. 
 
 In turning to Othello, the passive 
 hero of the play, we can not do better 
 than introduce him with a few lines by 
 an anonymous critic: 
 
 " 'Othello' is no love story; all that 
 is below tragedy in the passion of love 
 is taken away at once by the awful char- 
 acter of Othello; for such he seems to 
 us designed to be. He appears never as 
 a lover. . . . His love itself, as long as 
 it is happy, is perfectly calm and serene, 
 
(Dtl)ello: gn 3|nterpmatton 39 
 
 — the protecting tenderness of a hus- 
 band. It is not till it is disordered that 
 it appears as a passion: then is shown a 
 power in contention with itself, — a 
 mighty being struck with death, and 
 bringing up from all the depths of life 
 convulsions and agonies. It is no ex- 
 hibition of the power of the passion of 
 love, but of the passion of life, vitally 
 wounded and self-overmastering. . . . 
 His happy love was heroic tenderness; 
 his injured love is terrible passion; and 
 disordered power engendered within it- 
 self to its own destruction, is the height 
 of all tragedy. [ 
 
 ''The character of Othello is perhaps 
 the most greatly drawn, the most heroic 
 of any of Shakespeare's actors ; but it Is, 
 perhaps, that one also of which his 
 readers last acquire the intelligence. 
 The intellectual and warlike energy of 
 his mind; his tenderness of affection, his 
 loftiness of spirit; his frank, generous 
 
40 q^t^dlo: ^n gintrrpmatton 
 
 magnanimity; impetuosity like a thun- 
 derbolt; and that dark, fierce flood of 
 boiling passion, polluting even his imag- 
 ination, — compose a character entirely 
 original, most difficult to delineate, but 
 perfectly delineated.'* 
 
 We now come to the main action of 
 the play, the story of the love of Othello 
 and Desdemona. This, in large meas- 
 ure, is an assertion of the superiority of 
 that which is seemingly a lesser part of 
 life; namely, emotion. It passes by the 
 achievements of the chief personages to 
 assert, apparently, that the important 
 thing is neither the great action, nor the 
 great intellect, but that love is the great 
 thing in living. In the immolation of 
 intellect at this shrine of the heart 
 Shakespeare gave his verdict, — gave 
 goodness precedence of everything else; 
 elected it as the clue to which man must 
 cling in this labyrinthine life. 
 
 The Moor was an esteemed and 
 
^t\}tllot 2ln JinttxptttRtion 41 
 
 trusted soldier whom the City of the Sea 
 had engaged in her service. For twenty 
 long years his life had been one of hair- 
 breadth accidents by land and sea. In 
 that far-off time, though a favorite in all 
 tenses, even a greater fascination clung 
 round the wanderer than does to-day. 
 Brabantio, the senator, repeatedly in- 
 vited Othello to his home, that he might 
 hear again and again the thrilling nar- 
 rative of one who not only feared no 
 danger, but courted life's vicissitudes. 
 And Desdemona, though unnoticed by 
 her father, was likewise an intensely In- 
 terested listener. She prayed Othello 
 privately that he would *'all his pil- 
 grimage dilate," so that she might the 
 better understand ; for to her untraveled 
 thought the world outside of Venice was 
 but a dim conception. Othello, gener- 
 ous to a fault, was more than willing to 
 teach one so very anxious to learn, for 
 her sympathetic interest in his narrative 
 
42 #tl)ello: 0n glnterpretatton 
 
 had not been unobserved. His heart 
 was wholly unoccupied, and for a time 
 it remained untouched. In the daily re- 
 cital of his wanderings, which in many 
 places were pitiful to tears, it was un- 
 known to him that he was thereby win- 
 ning the compassionate heart of his re- 
 ceptive pupil. He learned of her secret 
 love by her telling him that if he had a 
 friend, and would but teach him to tell 
 his story, that would woo her. His 
 sterner, warlike qualities were at once 
 tempered by a feeling he had never 
 known before, and, taking the hint, he 
 says, he spake. 
 
 Desdemona, being motherless, and 
 for that reason needing a father's 
 friendly counsel, had grown to woman- 
 hood ignorant of her father's love, — a 
 love so great and sincere that her loss 
 robbed him of his life, — through that 
 timidity born of fear she failed to take 
 . him into her confidence ; and was guilty 
 
(Bt\)tllo: an ^nttxpttmion 43 
 
 of that deception towards him which is 
 the peculiar temptation of the timid, lov- 
 ing nature. Never knowing, therefore, 
 the companion a daughter may find in a 
 father, she had lived comparatively 
 alone in the palace, where only old 
 echoes lingered, only old friends came, 
 undrowned by any new voice till 
 Othello's was heard. Then, as day fol- 
 lowed day, they became more and more 
 attached to each other, so that she 
 wished always to hear, and he to repeat 
 to one listener only. The reciprocation 
 was most sweet and helpful. But from' 
 the days of Abelard and Heloise not 
 only the most violent love, but as much 
 unhappiness as happiness, has arisen 
 from such an intercourse of two beings. 
 The contrast between the outward 
 and inward man, — the one battle- 
 scarred, unprepossessing, the other lov- 
 ing and lovable, — has rarely been more 
 impressively disclosed than in this story. 
 
44 0t\)tllox 0n 3[meiymation 
 
 The personal anguish following the giv- 
 ing of this fatal love to Desdemona 
 lends that spell to Othello which some- 
 where finds an echo in almost every ex- 
 perience, and to which no human heart 
 can be wholly indifferent ; for few indeed 
 have reached maturity and w^holly es- 
 caped some visitation of love-sorrow. 
 The very completeness of the shipwreck 
 of his happiness only adds to our in- 
 terest. 
 
 Desdemona's youthfulness made her 
 impatient for complete self-surrender, 
 impatient that a newer authority might 
 supersede the old. Her love for Othello 
 was not merely a girl's fancy. He was 
 a warrior, without those graces women 
 are wont to admire. His manner was 
 grave, reserved. There was a side of 
 his nature which made Desdemona 
 tremble; and yet they were attracted by 
 the wojiders of this very unlikeness, for 
 contrasts "like in unlike" are wont to 
 
(Dtftello: Sin glntetyretation 45 
 
 love each other. A natural affinity of 
 soul seemed to draw together the 
 swarthy Moor and the fair girl of Ven- 
 ice. For this reason their love is a type 
 of that fundamental love which attracts 
 opposites into the closest bonds. No 
 matter, therefore, how wide the chasm 
 by which circumstances separated their 
 lives, they were sure to try for each 
 other. Reciprocal love is not the most 
 common thing in the world; for those 
 we love and those who love us are some- 
 times two very different things. For 
 this reason, if you leave but this story 
 of the love of each for each to this play, 
 you might take everything else away, 
 and it would still retain and deserve its 
 undying interest. Nothing in art is 
 perennially influential which does not 
 appeal to the primal, the elemental, for 
 human sympathy. 
 
 Othello knows that he has found his 
 fate in Desdemona ; yet he leaves her to 
 
46 a^tt)ello: an ^ntttpmntion 
 
 challenge his heart, make the first ad- 
 vance. And because there was some- 
 thing precipitate in her nature, and for 
 the further reason that she recognized 
 in the Moor her conqueror, she yielded 
 without even a summons to submit. In 
 marrying, she married the man she 
 loved, but in doing so she violated the 
 inviolable right of paternal authority, 
 from whose will a daughter can not 
 sever herself without calling forth the 
 demon of tragedy. In choosing, she 
 chose not according to the blind charm 
 of the senses, — she saw Othello's visage 
 in his mind; and her choice is thoroughly 
 justified, for the earnestness of love 
 should be marriage. She sacrificed, 
 however, a daughter's obedience to her 
 love, and, for this reason, storm threat- 
 ens their union from its very commence- 
 ment, which by-and-by will relieve itself 
 in lightning, r^uch conflict as this of 
 right against 'right, of daughter against 
 
0t}^tllox ain glnterpmatton 47 
 
 father, makes tragedy which tears the 
 heart-strings. The very first suspicion 
 that finds lodgment, then takes root, in 
 Othello's soul, is, that as a daughter, she 
 deceived her father. It was lago's 
 dwelling on this fact that convinced 
 Othello that his love was trampled 
 upon ; /when there awoke forces in his 
 nature* he least of any one suspected; 
 whose momentum he least of any one 
 understood. He was no such psycholo- 
 gist or philosopher as that one who said: 
 "There is no crime in the universe that 
 I might not have committed had certain 
 influences played upon me." 
 
 " My heart *s subdued 
 Even to the very quality of my lord, — " 
 
 sums up Desdemona's love. She is tim- 
 idity itself where her father is con- 
 cerned, — brave only in loving Othello. 
 "Every man," said Coleridge, "wants a 
 Desdemona for a wife, — one who can 
 
48 #t]^ello; an 31ntgrpmatton 
 
 feel for you and feel with you." From 
 the love and protection of a sheltered 
 home we see her go to the unaccustomed 
 life of camp and fortified town. She 
 spoke truly when she said, "I did love 
 the Moor to live w^ith him." J The col- 
 lision of daughter and father, her leav- 
 ing Venice and accompanying her hus- 
 band to a foreign shore, leaves her no 
 world but her love. As it is wrought 
 out against such a dark background, 
 here we are to watch the working out 
 of Othello's and Desdemona's destiny, 
 as they represent blind Love in contest 
 with wide-eyed Hate embodied in lago. 
 After the initial incident of the drun- 
 kenness, Desdemona is disturbed and 
 alarmed, which gives us in Othello's ex- 
 clamation a beautiful illustration of na- 
 ture being fine in love. It takes the 
 strong to be thus gentle ; never was affec- 
 tion more shielding than the Moor's. 
 From this night we behold him between 
 
0t\)tllox art Blnterpictation 49 
 
 his unquenchable love and the nightmare 
 of lago's hellish suggestions to arouse 
 his jealousy. Rochefoucauld said that 
 no one escapes causing jealousy who is 
 worthy of exciting it. 
 
 There is no better way to take up the 
 two most difficult questions in Othello 
 than by investigating what others have 
 said on these subjects. We quote with- 
 out apology, holding with Goethe that 
 the most interesting articles are critiques. 
 Victor Hugo, while he was a very great 
 man, yet he was French, and partly for 
 that reason we believe he missed the 
 interpretation rather than found It. It 
 Is so difficult for those of one country 
 to understand the writers of another 
 that when the task has difficulties of Its 
 own, to them It becomes doubly so. If 
 their conclusions are different from the 
 wisest of Insight of the author's own 
 country, it always leaves open a paren- 
 thesis. Or, If they depict a character 
 4 
 
}6^ 
 
 50 #t^ello: 0n ginterprrtaeion 
 
 acting out of accord with what we have 
 been made to believe at the outset the 
 actions of such a character would be, by 
 the creator of that character, we deny 
 the title of excellence to the critic in 
 that particular instance. There are 
 three things worth contesting for, — 
 
 ^"^ beauty, virtue, and truth. We give the 
 quotation, though we believe he failed 
 
 ^. to get inside the English mind: 
 r^'What is Othello? He is night. An 
 immense fatal figure. Night, is amorous 
 of Day. Darkness loves the dawn. 
 The African adores the white woman. 
 Othello has, for his light and his frenzy, 
 Desdemona. And then how easy to him 
 is jealousy ! He is great, he is dignified, 
 he is majestic, he soars above all heads; 
 he has an escort, bravery, battle, the 
 braying of trumpets, the banners of war, 
 renown, glory; he is radiant with twenty 
 victories; he is studded with stars, this 
 Othello : but he is black. And thus how 
 
g^tbello: ^n ginterpretation 51 
 
 soon, when jealous, the hero becomes 
 the monster, the black becomes the ne- 
 gro 1 How speedily has night beckoned 
 to death! 
 
 "By the side of Othello, who is night, 
 there is lago, who is evil, — evil, the 
 other form of darkness. Night is but 
 the night of the world; evil is the night 
 of the soul. How deeply black are per- 
 fidy and falsehood! It is all one, 
 whether what courses through the veins 
 be ink or treason. Whoever has jostled 
 against imposture and perjury, knows 
 it; one must blindly grope one's way 
 with knavery. Pour hypocrisy upon the 
 break of day, and you put out the sun; 
 and this, thanks to false religions, is 
 what happens to God. 
 
 "lago near Othello is the precipice 
 near the landslip. 'This way!' he says 
 in a low voice. The snare advises blind- 
 ness. The lover of darkness guides the 
 black. Deceit takes it upon itself to 
 
52 (^tlftello: 2in ^ntttputmon 
 
 give what light may be required by 
 night. Falsehood serves as a blind 
 man's dog to jealousy. Othello the 
 negro and lago the traitor pitted against 
 whiteness and candor: what more for- 
 midable? These ferocities of darkness 
 act in unison. These two incarnations 
 of the eclipse conspire, the one roaring, 
 the other sneering, for the tragic suffo- 
 cation of light. Sound this profound 
 thing, Othello Is night, and being night, 
 and wishing to kill, what does he take 
 to slay with? Poison? the club? the 
 ax? the knife? No; the pillow. To 
 kill is to lull to sleep. Shakespeare him- 
 self, perhaps, did not take this Into ac- 
 count. The creator sometimes, almost 
 unknown to himself, yields to the type, 
 so truly is that type a power. And It Is 
 thus that Desdemona, spouse of the 
 man Night, dies, stifled by the pillow 
 upon which the first kiss was given, and 
 which receives the last sigh." 
 
(Dttiello: 0n glnterpretatton 53 
 
 Ulrici, being a German, had similar 
 difficulties to contend with that Victor 
 Hugo did. He thought that Othello 
 was black, but morally a great man ; but 
 he believed, to attain that greatness, he 
 
 y' had struggled and overcome his natural 
 temperament. Schlegel, too, saw in the 
 Moor, not the white man, but one with 
 Cain's brand on his forehead, who un- 
 avoidably falls Into the jealousy and 
 thirst for revenge peculiar to his race. 
 The true excellence of the German mind 
 Is Its subtlety of Intellect. In their own 
 language they dig, we know, very deep ; 
 but we likewise know that difficulties 
 are manifold when one tries to gain the 
 point of view of those of another coun- 
 try. No great English writer believes 
 
 ' in a black Othello. We can but feel a 
 throb of gratitude that Shakespeare's 
 language Is our mother-tongue, for 
 there Is a more certain and sure sym- 
 pathy of understanding between those of 
 
54 #t!)ello: an glnterpretatton 
 
 a common descent and common lan- 
 
 ^Kpage. 
 
 j Roderlgo uses the term "thick-lips" 
 contemptuously; the rivalry is sufficient 
 to account for his confusion of negro 
 and Moor, aside from his ignorance. 
 He was head-over-ears in love with the 
 most beautiful woman in Venice, while 
 she did not seem to know of his exist- 
 ence. Coleridge says that Roderigo 
 was perfectly fitted for the purposes of 
 lago, as want of character and strength 
 of purpose constituted his character. 
 Roderigo had no anchor anywhere; and, 
 if he had, there was nothing to anchor. 
 "I 'm changed," he says; "I '11 go sell all 
 my land." lago's dealings with him were 
 full of humor. He opened quite a rich 
 mine, wherein he digged as occasion 
 called. While spending, and therefore 
 making safe his interest in the rich 
 finds, he received by turns the praise and 
 reproof of his dupe. No doubt he felt 
 
#t!)dlo: an ^nmpttmion 55 
 
 that as the most irksome business when 
 it came time to receive the applause of 
 a fool. Nevertheless, he went on and 
 perfected himself in this branch of art, 
 for like Fortunatus' purse, which is al- 
 ways to furnish him without ever put- 
 ting anything in it, evermore must Rod- 
 erigo's purse open for the thousand-fold 
 necessities of his ambition; means must 
 still meet ends. Ever the voracious de- 
 mand, "Put money in thy purse," that, 
 like a horn of plenty, it may pour. Dry- 
 den declares, "Roderigo is — " but it 
 may be sin to even repeat what he says. 
 Lamb once remarked that he would give 
 a trifle to know, historically and authen- 
 tically, who was the greatest fool that 
 ever lived. No man ever excelled all 
 the world, it is said, in more than one 
 faculty. In written lives Roderigo de- 
 serves to hold the proud distinction of 
 greatest fool. 
 
 Those inhabiting the coast-land of 
 
56 (Bt\)dlox Sin interpretation 
 
 Africa are known as Moors and Arabs. 
 The Moors attained a higher degree of 
 civilization than their brethren. They 
 are finely molded, athletic, and lithe. 
 The name means dark, and they are 
 swarthy complexioned, but not negroes 
 by any means. Even the Nubians, south 
 of the Moors, are not negroes, but are 
 supposed to be the descendants of the 
 ancient Egyptians; south of them the 
 true negro zone appears. The result to 
 the play from the conception of a 
 black Othello is that of disenchant- 
 ment. Shakespeare would scarcely have 
 offended in this way. Besides, art deals 
 with the rational. Had Othello been 
 black, it would have denoted something 
 wanting in Desdemona to have so 
 chosen. 
 
 Coleridge says of Roderigo's term 
 thick-lips, "Here comes one, if not the 
 only, seeming justification of our black- 
 amoor or negro Othello. . . . Can we 
 
****' 
 
 #tl)ello: Sin glnterpretatton 57 
 
 imagine Shakespeare so uttely ignorant 
 as to make a barbarous negro plead 
 royal birth, at a time, too, when they 
 were not known except as slaves? . . . 
 It is a common error to mistake the 
 epithets applied by dramatis persona to 
 each other as truly descriptive ; it would 
 be something monstrous to conceive this 
 beautiful Venetian falling in love with a 
 veritable negro. It would argue a want 
 of balance in Desdemona which Shake- 
 speare does not appear to have in the 
 least contemplated." 
 Othello says: 
 
 " I fetch my life and being 
 From men of royal siege." 
 
 From this we believe the dramatist in- 
 tended us to understand that he was a 
 Moor of kingly birth, a descendant of 
 the Spanish Moors. Perhaps, as a 
 nudge to our comprehension, he puts in 
 his possession a sword of Spain of the 
 
58 (j^tlirilo: Sin glnterprrtatton 
 
 ice-brook's temper. Shakespeare learned 
 the spirit of the character from the 
 Spanish poetry which was prevalent in 
 England in his time. He chose the 
 Moor, in all probability, because ro- 
 mance hovered over them, making them 
 fit subject for dramatic material. 
 
 Another difficult question in this play, 
 on which opinions differ as far as the 
 East from the West, is: Whether 
 Othello was jealous in the common un- 
 derstanding of that word, or whether 
 he was not. We quote from Barrett 
 Wendell: "Othello is the supreme trag- 
 edy of jealousy. Naturally, then, we 
 think of this broadly handled tragedy of 
 character, dealing so consummately with 
 an absorbing human passion, as a thing 
 apart in the work of Shakespeare. Mere 
 jealousy, however, without subtle analy- 
 sis, would have been enough finally to 
 remind us that the concentrated passion 
 and power of Othello only intensify the 
 
(^t\)tl\ot an 3flnterprgtatton 59 
 
 old motive of the mystery inherent in 
 the fact that men are men, and women 
 are women. Jealousy, after all, is but a 
 new phase of this, and a more absorb- 
 ing." _ 
 
 While we do not see in the foregoing 
 that the left hand of the premises has 
 much to do with the right hand of the 
 conclusion, yet, with the fundamental 
 fact as given by Black and Howells, in- 
 volved in it, we have no quarrel. Black 
 remarks that, disguise it as you will, the 
 underlying interest of every transcript 
 of human life is primarily the interest of 
 sex; and Howells says that the reason 
 Robinson Crusoe can not be read in ma- 
 turity, is that it has no heroine. 
 
 Coleridge, whose sympathetic under- 
 standing of the poet we know not where 
 to find equaled, holds a different opinion 
 from Barrett Wendell. Carlyle says that 
 it is admitted on all hands that Coleridge 
 is a man of genius; that is, a man hav- 
 
60 #t^ello: 0n ^ntttpttmion 
 
 ing more intellectual Insight than other 
 men. *' 'Winter's Tale,' " Coleridge 
 says, "Is a genuine jealousy of disposi- 
 tion, and It should be Immediately fol- 
 lowed by the perusal of 'Othello,' which 
 is a direct contrast to It In every particu- 
 lar. For jealousy is a vice of the mind, 
 a culpable tendency of temper, having 
 certain well-known and well-defined 
 effects and concomitants, all of which 
 are visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, 
 not one of which marks its presence in 
 Othello. . . . Shakespeare portrayed 
 Uthello the very opposite to a jealous 
 man: he was noble, generous, open- 
 hearted, unsuspicious, and unsuspecting. 
 . . . Jealousy does not strike me as the 
 point In his passion. ... tit was the 
 struggle not to love her. It was a moral 
 indignation and regret that virtue should 
 so fall. But yet 'the pity of it, lago ! — 
 O lago! the pity of it, lago!' " 
 
 Othello had no faculty for complica- 
 
g^ttiello: an Blnterpmatton 61 
 
 tlons; he lost himself; being wrought 
 on, he was perplexed In the extreme. So 
 the handkerchief, which was dear to 
 them both as the first token of their love, 
 becomes as soon as it reaches lago's 
 hands a powerful Instrument of passion 
 and of evil. The accident of the handker- 
 chief may be said to Introduce the catas- 
 trophe. Some paltry accidents show 
 mighty purport. Chance in this Instance 
 seems to have executed precisely and 
 accurately what Fate had determined. 
 Emilia's little lie about the handkerchief 
 prints on our brains our every-day little 
 motives and acts, and their sometime 
 terrible results. In lines of tell-tale fire. 
 So this little fault that it seemed could 
 have but slight Influence, and that im- 
 mediately, had long enough arms to 
 reach forward to the catastrophe of 
 many lives. Emilia's lie teaches, as life 
 itself, by indirection. 
 
 Clark remarks about Othello's differ- 
 
62 g^ttigllo: an ^i^tttpttmi on 
 
 ent stones to Desdemona about this 
 same little square: "Even this slight de- 
 viation from the truth on his part works 
 its own retribution. Had he not over- 
 excited the lady's fears by this descrip- 
 tion of the handkerchief and startled her 
 by his peremptoriness in demanding it, 
 she might not have been tempted to pre- 
 varicate and tell a falsehood in reply to 
 his divergence from absolute fact. Thus 
 subtly does the greatest of dramatic 
 moralists draw his ethical lessons." 
 Barrett Wendell says that, for all her 
 tenderness and purity, Desdemona's 
 word is not always to be trusted. And 
 this is the usual view which is taken of 
 this question of veracity in this play. 
 Desdemona indeed ! Who is it that does 
 not lie about this little handkerchief? 
 In the middle act, third scene, comes 
 the central turning point, where the 
 climax of this main action goes toward 
 a change. Othello, following the re- 
 
#t!)elio: Hn 31nterpretation 63 
 
 treating form of Desdemona with his 
 eyes, exclaims : 
 
 "Excellent wretch ! perdition catch my soul, 
 But I do love thee !" 
 
 Dr. Johnson says that "wretch" ex- 
 presses the utmost degree of amiable- 
 ness, joined with an idea which all ten- 
 derness includes of softness and want of 
 protection. We can neither say that 
 here Othello's love reaches its height, 
 nor that the ebb begins; but it is here 
 caught in a seething vortex and driven 
 hither and thither. 1 Immediately fol- 
 lowing this, lago distracts Othello's 
 mind with the thought, the fear of his 
 wife's infidelity, j And fear must have 
 its satisfaction as well as fancy. Genius 
 Is the highest form of sympathy. We 
 must try to place ourselves in Othello's 
 situation and under his circumstances. 
 Then we shall understand, then we shall 
 comprehend, that he could not have 
 
IX 
 
 64 g^t^ello: Hn glnterpretatton 
 
 acted otherwise with the light he had, — 
 a husband, he is stung to madness by a 
 wife's unfaithfulness. \ Confronted with 
 this sin, a background of wrath lies in 
 every man. | Therefore, his passion de- 
 veloped in a most serious and profound 
 cause, and, like the river hurrying to 
 the ocean, it flows with an ever-increas- 
 ing tide. We watch it from the very 
 slightest undulation of feeling, as seen 
 on the surface, as it rises from the 
 malicious suggestions of lago, which are 
 deliberate, guarded, insidious, dark, till 
 it becomes 
 
 "Like to the Pontic sea 
 Whose ic)'" current and compulsive course 
 Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
 To the Propontic and the Hellespont." 
 
 ! With belief in Desdemona's infidelity, 
 faith and love die out of his life, which 
 is the only absolute despair. All happi- 
 ness and unhappiness flow from these 
 two fundamental things — belief and 
 
0t\)tilox an 3f|ntgrprctatton _65 
 
 love. To these all knowledge Is but 
 tributary. To know is not life's con- 
 summation, but to believe in something, 
 to love some one. The despair of 
 shaken faith and love threatens to 
 drown his soul; he strives to put honor 
 in their place. Only those who have 
 tried, know how vain a thing it is to 
 strive to bridge this loveless, faithless 
 chasm. 
 
 A man who would not have had suf- 
 ficient proof of a wife's unfaithfulness 
 with what lago furnished Othello 
 withal, must have possessed Arcadian 
 simplicity. Yet to have reasons for be- 
 ing jealous is not to be jealous. For 
 instance, |lago is jealous. His suspicions 
 about Ot'Eello are purely imaginary; his 
 keen sense tells him that they are, yet 
 he clings to something, where nothing 
 is to be found, and finds It. This Is to 
 be jealous. The passion kindled by 
 actual infidelity Is as justifiable as that 
 5 
 
 »^«n' 
 
66 (i^t^ello? an ginterpmatton 
 
 excited by any other moral offense com- 
 mitted by the one you love. 
 
 Desdemona's belief in Othello never 
 wavered. For some reason she could 
 not understand he had become blinded 
 into suspecting and repudiating her; but 
 she still had faith in him — could love 
 him more than ever under the cloud that 
 had somehow fallen over his noble 
 spirit. Physical death is not tragedy; 
 but to lose faith and love out of the 
 soul, that is tragedy. Desdemona is 
 sharply contrasted with Emilia, who is 
 morally weak, and for that reason con- 
 siders all women so. There is such dif- 
 ference between their thoughts and senti- 
 ments as shows almost as great contrast 
 between them as between their husbands, 
 and by signs as plain and as little to be 
 mistaken. Nothing places Desdemona 
 in a more interesting light than the con- 
 versation between her and Emilia on the 
 conduct of women to their husbands. A 
 
(^tlb^Uo: ^n glnterpretatton 67 
 
 little later her reply to Emilia's excla- 
 mation that she wished she had never 
 seen Othello, wins our heart by the 
 charm of its humility: 
 
 " So would not I : my love doth so approve 
 him 
 That even his stubbornness, his checks, his 
 
 frowns, 
 Have grace and favor in them." 
 
 It seems destiny had marked him out 
 to injure what he loved beyond all else. 
 Under his terrible persecution she no 
 longer loves, she adores. Coleridge says 
 that Shakespeare has drawn the charac- 
 ter of Desdemona with those qualities 
 of which a man examining his own heart 
 might say : "Let that woman be my com- 
 panion through life; let her be the ob- 
 ject of my suit, and the reward of my 
 success." Whether or not we agree with 
 his conclusion, a study of Shakespeare's 
 women reveals the fact that he evidently 
 
x 
 
 68 <^t\^tl\o : an ^Interpretation 
 
 thought that woman is "strong to sanc- 
 tify even when she can not save," in a 
 way which is not possible to man. 
 
 Desdemona, however, is suspected; 
 FLove has broken its faith with her. J As 
 she prepares for bed on the last fatal 
 night, she confers with sorrow. And as 
 she confers with sorrow, Death haunts 
 her, and she sings the song of the wil- 
 low. It was her last lullaby ; she would 
 sleep no more. Before the night is far 
 spent, Othello enters. He stands silent 
 regarding the face of his unconscious 
 wife. Life is not divided for him; that 
 it has been a simple one reveals itself by 
 his grief. All the passion of his soul 
 sets like a mighty tide toward this 
 dreamer, the only love his life has 
 known. He hears no sound but the 
 throb of his own passion ; sees no image 
 save that one face. Two courses of ac- 
 tion struggle together in his nature for 
 mastery, — should he, or should he not, 
 let her live ? It was inevitable with the 
 
^t^ello: an ^Interpretation 69 
 
 most painful duty on the one hand, love 
 within grasp on the other, that any man 
 should rebel against a decree of renun- 
 ciation. While hesitating, he broods on 
 the mystery of life and death, and thinks 
 that if he lets her live it will only be 
 to betray more men; but then he asks, 
 what if he should repent him after put- 
 ting out the light of her life? And as 
 he broods, her face becomes his distrac- 
 tion ; her matchless loveliness appeals to 
 him with all the added power of its un- 
 protectedness ; and the protecting spirit 
 in man toward child and woman is that 
 which nears him most to his Maker. 
 Moving, indeed, is the scene which fol- 
 lows, where we witness him in almost 
 unimaginable passion of anguish. Al- 
 most unimaginable — altogether unimag- 
 inable — but to one who has suffered a 
 loss which exhausted life, which left 
 nothing but a sea of sorrow to break 
 along life's shore. 
 
70 (Dtliello: 2in glnterpretatton 
 
 If every closed-door conversation has 
 an interest for us, as has been said, then 
 this of Othello's, based on the utmost 
 passion of which the human heart Is 
 capable, in its efforts to resign love, 
 might tempt honesty itself to eavesdrop- 
 ping If Shakespeare would not let us 
 hear. And this is that passion of love 
 which Is mimicked when one knows not 
 what It means. In the full consciousness 
 of his coming loss, it seems as If 
 Othello's high sense of justice must melt 
 like virtue before a hot temptation; but 
 no — he must kill her first, then he shall 
 be freed from duty, and may love her 
 afterwards. We can not but believe 
 Shakespeare's hot tears fell with 
 Othello's as he stood over the sleeping 
 Desdemona. He had to struggle 
 against her helplessness, because it was 
 a helplessness that he, of all the world, 
 should protect, and that was In Els na- 
 ture; he had to struggle against her 
 
(Bt^tllox an 3f|ntgt:pretatton 71 
 
 helplessness because a sterner duty de- 
 manded her death at his hand, and that 
 was not in his nature. No such passion 
 as this of Othello's was ever self-created 
 or self-sustained, but must depend upon 
 the actual force of its external cause. 
 HamJet's love for Ophelia represents 
 man's dream of love ;| Othello's love for 
 Desdemona is the deliverance o'f man 
 from the dream to the reality. | 
 
 Life and death, rapture and anguish, 
 mingle together in his disjointed solilo- 
 quy in a way that enhances all former 
 impressions of her sweetness a hundred- 
 fold. Here only does he unpack his 
 heart of words, portraying uncon- 
 sciously the mortal grace that dwells in 
 flesh. He quaffs again and again Love's 
 rapturous draught, but dissolves not the 
 pearl of his virtue in the cup. For in 
 the face of the soul-crushing belief in 
 her infidelity, and the duty which de- 
 volved in such instances upon husbands 
 
72 0t\)t\lox an ilntgrpmation 
 
 in that day, he puts it from him, and 
 hurries him to the sacrifice. 
 
 In doing so, Othello resisted the 
 sorest temptations from within and 
 without wherewithal a man could be 
 tempted. Though his spirit broke in 
 the conflict, he was conqueror of him- 
 self. As seen by the eye of the morally 
 judging man, the kingliest of his kind is 
 he, — a man of incorruptible virtue, that 
 highest of human endowments. How 
 infinitely far removed from Othello is 
 that sometime acceptation of a virtuous 
 man as one who simply puts a high price 
 upon himself ! Virtue was the secret of 
 Socrates, that which has endeared him 
 to mankind. Othello's shines as if clad 
 with sunbeams. 
 
 Desdemona wakes, looks up con- 
 fusedly, beseechingly, into Othello's 
 dark, tear-stained, hopeless face. She is 
 overcome with fear when he bids her 
 pray, saying he would not kill her un- 
 
(Dtl)ello: an 3f|nterpmation 73 
 
 prepared spirit. Her protestations of 
 innocence are interrupted: 
 
 " Sweet soul, take heed, 
 Take heed of perjury ; thou art on thy death- 
 bed." 
 
 From the very first scene a shadow of 
 coming 111, a low voice of doom, falls. 
 It is now plain that the catastrophe 
 prophesied from the beginning draws 
 nigh. Fronting the extremity that 
 Othello's fatal deception made him be- 
 lieve faced him, we can not but notice 
 he is merciful as may be to Desdemona, 
 nor thinks of himself, — a tortured man 
 with a broken heart. His mercifulness 
 Is like a ray of light falling athwart this 
 dark picture. Desdemona pleads for 
 respite; death Is terrible to her, — "Kill 
 me to-morrow; let me live to-night." 
 He will not add to the punishment jus- 
 tice compels him to inflict; mercy de- 
 mands no more delay. Othello knew 
 
74 (Dtbello: Sin glnterpretatton 
 
 he had reached his limitation, that a man 
 can not forever stand resolute and face 
 such pleading. There is no common 
 thirst for revenge in the external manner 
 in which he executes the murder, — how 
 could such a deed be done in a more 
 touching way? It is when we are brought 
 to such a point of tenderness that all 
 her love does but add another pang to 
 her death, that we must witness the ex- 
 piring conflict between Othello's love 
 and his false idea of duty. Steeling his 
 mind against sensibility, raising his will 
 to such power as to drive back the pangs 
 of life itself, he then and there became 
 the executioner of his own mistaken 
 sense of justice. 
 
 This murder stands in no mortal key 
 in its power of inflicting torture, and of 
 suffering it. Dr. Johnson exclaims: *T 
 am glad I have ended my revisal of this 
 dreadful scene; it is not to be endured!" 
 Whoever studies long this tragedy is in 
 
g^thello: 2in ginterpmatton 75 
 
 danger of being followed by it through 
 ^... time as by "Lear's fury, Hamlet's mel- 
 ^ ancholy, and Macbeth's remorse." 
 Othello may be blameworthy; but only 
 he can tell us how blameworthy; who 
 can tell us who would have been safe 
 from lago? 
 
 This story has run on with an ever- 
 widening sweep until, slowly, out of 
 what was individual and personal, a 
 vaster drama has unfolded itself. For 
 the story of the love of Othello and 
 Desdemona is prophetic, and finds its 
 fulfillment not in their lives. There is 
 in everything which approaches great- 
 ness an exhilaration for the human 
 spirit. All life bears witness to the 
 search for such love and faith as is here 
 prophesied. It is pathetically universal, 
 and its fulfillment to its promise pathet- 
 ically inadequate. For this reason fiction 
 has become the avenue of escape from 
 personal experience, from realities which 
 
76 ^tiiello : an glnterprttation 
 
 do not correspond with man's high con- 
 ceptions. In this fact lies its wonderful 
 power ; man looks for the appearance of 
 a great love, a great faith in the world 
 of thought and imagination, before its 
 embodiment in life. This it is for which 
 men and women search believingly 
 throughout the realm of fiction. Each, 
 believing there is the promise in every 
 broken, mutilated love, in faith that is 
 not perfect, would be the first to make 
 the discovery. They feel that the talis- 
 man, the example of a great love stands 
 in intimate, vital relation to the highest 
 life. But is there hope in such a quest 
 for the terrible soul? There can be no 
 doubt of the truth of the conclusion that 
 there is power in human love to work 
 as inspiration and as greatness, but it is 
 ministrant to a higher still; it has this 
 end to serve, love is the interpreter of 
 God to man. To know Him is the 
 soul's summum bonum; to be like Him 
 life's ultimate end. 
 
(g^ttiello: an glnterpretatton 77 
 
 Emilia arrives after the murder just 
 in time to be not in time. While she did 
 not hesitate to tell a falsehood about 
 the handkerchief as the easiest way out 
 of the difficulty; she is roused by 
 Othello's blindness and lago's atrocious 
 villainy to risk and lose life itself in 
 defending the innocence of Desdemona. 
 
 " O thou dull Moor ! That handkerchief 
 thou speakest of, 
 I found by fortune, and did give my husband ; 
 For often with a solemn earnestness 
 He begg'd of me to steal it — 
 
 qj^ %l^ ^ %lf tA^ %1^ %if 
 
 #js ^» *J^ *^ *y* ^J* *J* 
 
 She gave it Gassio ! no, alas, I found it,"— 
 
 she exclaims bitterly; at the same time 
 revealing the whole history of Othello's 
 ruin. If he never suffered before, he 
 suffered in the hour of resolution. 
 "Why does he know of her fidelity only 
 when she is lost to him forever?" he 
 asks with that ache of the heart which 
 is worse than any physical pain. To 
 
78 (Ptl^gllo; gn glntgrpmatton 
 
 read this story is to look on at a duel 
 when you sympathize with both sides. 
 Coleridge asks: *'Which do we pity 
 most?" Othello calls for a thousand 
 pities; and Desdemona, tears. 
 
 In momentary peril of life Othello re- 
 counts incidents from his past; for like 
 to a drowning man the panorama of his 
 life flashed before him. Human an- 
 guish at the lowest deep of desolation is 
 wont, like the heart of a whirlpool, to 
 be strangely calm. He compares him- 
 self to a base Indian who in ignorance 
 threw a pearl away. Too late he sees 
 his calamitous mistake. His heart has 
 no place of strength or refuge left, — 
 one thought, and that of misery. He 
 goes as it were to meet Death, offers it 
 a welcome. There is in Othello all the 
 majesty of the humble, the pitiful, the 
 mournful. Wordsworth compares the 
 pathos in "Othello" to the last scene in 
 the life of Socrates. The faculty of 
 
^ 
 
 <Dtl)gUo: ati 3f|nterpmatton 79 
 
 love and suffering Is the measure of high 
 souls, as an incapacity to love and suffer 
 means an undeveloped being. The 
 greatness of these faculties In Othello 
 marks his rank in nature. There was a 
 chalice of sorrow pressed to his lips 
 which selfishness can never drink, i His 
 motive in slaying Desdemona was purely 
 that he thought her death was demanded 
 at his hand, which made her murder a 
 very sacrament. This note he gives back 
 In the hour of reaction: 
 
 " O, I were damned beneath all depth of hell, 
 But that I did proceed upon just grounds 
 To this extremity." | 
 
 As the end approaches, Othello rises 
 in tragic greatness. Every man is en- 
 titled, to a considerable extent, to be 
 measured and judged by his motives. 
 We judge our friends so. If anything 
 could add to our compassion for 
 Othello's fate It would be that he so 
 
80 (Dtl)ello: an ginterprmtiou 
 
 little deserved it. This we shall the 
 more readily concede, if we will but read 
 over again all whereby he made himself 
 known unto us. He dies — clinging to 
 that transient, extinguished life, — and 
 his death is hallowed by the sublimity of 
 pity. His way was under the tutelage 
 of sorrow ; the wine of his life was had 
 by the crushing of life's grapes. His 
 last words commingle the mother's hush 
 with the expiring sob of the storm, 
 and somehow imply the thought of one 
 who believes that death is an end to the 
 bewilderments of life. 
 
 Swinburne says: ''The sacrificial death 
 of Desdemona is terrible as tragedy may 
 ever be, but beautiful, — from the first 
 kiss to the last stab — 'so, so' — ^when the 
 sacrificing man of retribution immolates 
 the victim whose blood he had forborne 
 to shed for pity of her beauty, till im- 
 pelled to forget his first impulse, and 
 shed it for pity of her suffering. His 
 
(Dt^ello: an ginterprgtatton 81 
 
 words can bear no other meaning. 
 Otherwise how explain Desdemona re- 
 gaining her breath, after being stifled to 
 death, and uttering the most heavenly 
 falsehood that ever put truth to shame? 
 To recover breath enough to speak, to 
 think of the danger to Othello, and at- 
 tempt his defense, she must have recov- 
 ered breath enough to live if undis- 
 patched by some sharper instrument/' 
 
 Shakespeare, it is said, swings no cen- 
 ser, and he may never have dreamed of 
 the lesson of pardon conveyed in Desde- 
 mona*s last words; but the ethical beauty 
 and redeeming power of the spirit of 
 forgiveness Is the excuse, the apology 
 for, the explanation, the golden light, 
 which is here flung over her character. 
 
 Desdemona lost in that moment of 
 unconsciousness all personal terror; the 
 chord of self died; and she wakes, it 
 seems, to prove that love alone survives 
 the ultimate trial — death. "Would I 
 6 
 
82 (!^t\)tllox an glnterpmatton 
 
 suffer for him that I love?" asks Brown- 
 ing. She answers with the wondrous 
 strength of a woman's affection: Yes, 
 suffer, and die, and come to life again to 
 be Love's solicitor. And, yielding for 
 the last time to that greatest temptation 
 of the timid, loving nature, "she covered 
 up the grave of her life with the leaves 
 of true love, saying, 'I did it myself.' '* 
 
dlQ 18 ISO^ 
 
 :2. 
 
V -1 I'M