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villain if the mere temporary defeat of his hopes of preferment were the sole incentive to his deadly scheme of revenge. But he knows that this shallow pretence will suffice for the 'poor trash of Venice,' with whom he has to deal; and in any circumstances he could not have brought himself to bare the secret source of torture, which really urged him into action. The pollution of his wife is the last thing a man will reveal to another man, especially such a one as Roderigo appears to Iago. Yet it is this injury, coupled with other slights and disparagements, that constitutes Iago's motive for what he projects; and, while acting under its impulse, he cannot regard the steps he takes as otherwise than justifiable. Shakespeare is not true to nature, therefore, in making Iago condemn his own conduct, while still persisting in it, and exclaim:

Knavery's plain face is never seen till used.

There is nothing unreasonable in assuming that Iago loved Emilia when he chose her to be his wife, and, if so, he could have suffered no greater injury from Othello than his seduction of the woman he loved. If we treat the incidents of the play as facts, it signifies nothing whether Othello had been guilty of Emilia's debasement or not. If circumstances on which his acute mind could rely justified Iago in his conclusions,

Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmation strong
As proofs from holy writ.

Iago, with some reservation perhaps, believes the damning fact, and resolves to risk his all in taking revenge for it. While he is pondering on the position in which he stands-on his degradation, real or

imaginary, on the means at his command of inflicting punishment on his foes-the thought strikes him that he may best effect his purpose through Desdemona; and his mind, reasoning with itself, proceeds thus. Having come to the conclusion that Cassio loves Desdemona, he says:

I do love her too,

Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure
I stand accountant for as great a sin,
But partly led to diet my revenge,

For that I do suspect the lusty Moor

Hath leaped into my seat: the thought whereof

Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards;
And nothing can or shall content my soul

Till I am even with him, wife for wife.

To a mind brought by circumstances into this state everything which promises to further its designs must appear justifiable. Others may condemn him, but in the court of his own conscience he stands absolved, since, writhing under a wrong the greatest that a man can suffer, he necessarily looks upon his wronger as a detestable object of vengeance. It is not natural, therefore, to make Iago speak of the Moor as of a free and open nature, which if he stooped to stain the bed of his dependant he could not be. But the hearer or reader, it may be said, does not believe in Othello's transgression, and looks upon Iago as a remorseless miscreant. Be it so. Neither the reader nor the hearer is Iago, who, in his turn, cannot be expected to judge of his own actions and intentions as others do. He does and must think himself right for the reasons already stated, and therefore the following language in his mouth is unnatural:

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 th' nose,

As asses are.

I have 't—it is engendered: Hell and night

Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light.

In drawing another of his villains Shakespeare oversteps the modesty of nature, and produces a monster, which, unless among lunatics, knows no parallel in nature-I mean Richard III. The play opens with a very striking speech, in which Richard dissects himself internally and externally, in a style of fiendish humour, which, though out of keeping with nature, tells upon the stage. Compared with Iago, Richard appears somewhat of a clumsy villain, partly perhaps because he wields greater social power, and is therefore more reckless in the exercise of his malignity, but chiefly because, instead of devising one subtle scheme of atrocity and developing it completely, he surrounds himself like a human spider with a widespreading web of destructiveness, in which he skilfully entangles one victim after another. But his contrivances smell too much of the playhouse. He breaks upon us at first as one who is meant to fret and strut his hour upon the stage, not as a prince with statesmanlike views overthrowing those who stand in his way, because they do so stand, but for the mere caitiff pleasure of killing. The scene with Lady Anne, suggested by the story of the Ephesian Matron, is a mere stage exhibition, tragicomic in its conception, and calculated to suggest a hateful opinion of women, but so overdrawn as to be counteracted by its own extravagance. The men whom Richard cuts off fall into his nets with provoking facility, while the women, both old and young, assail each other with a coarse bitterness which borders on the ludicrous. So much space, however, is wasted by

these uncongenial displays that the catastrophe, with its immediate preliminaries, is almost necessarily hurried, and therefore less effective than it might otherwise have been. The play exhibits no characters of any mark except Richard himself, who removes every obstacle in his way so easily that we are never led to admire either his policy or his power. Some romance is sought to be thrown about Richmond, and there is excitement and poetry in the night scenes on Bosworth field; but the play, upon the whole, is a tedious catalogue of painful incidents, not in many cases necessary for the success of the arch-villain, and only introduced for the purpose of heightening the tragic effect, which they on the contrary diminish. One calamitous story invented with judgment, skilfully protracted, and terminating in a striking manner, as in Romeo and Juliet' and Othello,' fulfils the design of tragedy; but when we are marched through a whole gallery of horrors, we become gradually accustomed to the scenes, our feelings are paralysed, and we witness the termination with apathy-it is the difference between a terrible murder and a battle.

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ESSAY IV

TRAGEDY

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SOME writers are of opinion that Shakespeare's genius culminated in the tragedy of Lear,' the foundation of which, as I have already remarked, he borrowed from antiquity. The play certainly abounds with passages of surpassing beauty, while some of the characters are drawn with a masterly hand, and finely discriminated; but, upon the whole, probability is lost sight of so entirely, and the manners are so little in harmony with nature, that we appear almost throughout to be transported into a world wholly different from our own— a sort of Utopia of horror, where it would be vain to look for anything co-ordinated according to the nature with which we are acquainted. Prospero, and the son of Sycorax, and the three bearded old ladies who meet us on the Scottish heath, are scarcely more out of harmony with the existing system of things. Lear, whom we soon learn to encircle with our compassion, traverses, from the outset, the region of madness, though he becomes more and more engulfed as he proceeds, till his understanding suffers a complete collapse, and he is left helpless and desolate, like a helmless bark upon the ocean.

While this process is accomplishing, his resemblance to Edipus becomes at every advance more obvious. The Theban king has been expelled from his dominions

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