Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
standing. See the words 'of late' in I. iii. 91, 99.]
[Footnote 76: This, I think, may be said on almost any sane view of
Hamlet's love.]
[Footnote 77: Polonius says so, and it _may_ be true.]
[Footnote 78: I have heard an actress in this part utter such a cry as
is described above, but there is absolutely nothing in the text to
justify her rendering. Even the exclamation 'O, ho!' found in the
Quartos at IV. v. 33, but omitted in the Folios and by almost all modern
editors, coming as it does after the stanza, 'He is dead and gone,
lady,' evidently expresses grief, not terror.]
[Footnote 79: In the remarks above I have not attempted, of course, a
complete view of the character, which has often been well described; but
I cannot forbear a reference to one point which I do not remember to
have seen noticed. In the Nunnery-scene Ophelia's first words
pathetically betray her own feeling:
Good my lord,
How does your honour _for this many a day_?
She then offers to return Hamlet's presents. This has not been suggested
to her by her father: it is her own thought. And the next lines, in
which she refers to the sweet words which accompanied those gifts, and
to the unkindness which has succeeded that kindness, imply a reproach.
So again do those most touching little speeches:
_Hamlet._ ... I did love you once.
_Ophelia._ Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
_Hamlet._ You should not have believed me ... I loved you not.
_Ophelia._ I was the more deceived.
Now the obvious surface fact was not that Hamlet had forsaken her, but
that _she_ had repulsed _him_; and here, with his usual unobtrusive
subtlety, Shakespeare shows how Ophelia, even though she may have
accepted from her elders the theory that her unkindness has driven
Hamlet mad, knows within herself that she is forsaken, and cannot
repress the timid attempt to win her lover back by showing that her own
heart is unchanged.
I will add one note. There are critics who, after all the help given
them in different ways by Goethe and Coleridge and Mrs. Jameson, still
shake their heads over Ophelia's song, 'To-morrow is Saint Valentine's
day.' Probably they are incurable, but they may be asked to consider
that Shakespeare makes Desdemona, 'as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,'
sing an old song containing the line,
If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men.]
[Footnote 80: _I.e._ the King will kill _her_ to make all sure.]
[Footnote 81: I do not rely so much on his own statement to Laertes (IV.
vii. 12 f.) as on the absence of contrary indications, on his tone in
speaking to her, and on such signs as his mention of her in soliloquy
(III. iii. 55).]
[Footnote 82: This also is quietly indicated. Hamlet spares the King, he
says, because if the King is killed praying he will _go to heaven_. On
Hamlet's departure, the King rises from his knees, and mutters:
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts _never to heaven go_.]
[Footnote 83: I am indebted to Werder in this paragraph.]
[Footnote 84: The attempt to explain this meeting as pre-arranged by
Hamlet is scarcely worth mention.]
LECTURE V
OTHELLO
There is practically no doubt that _Othello_ was the tragedy written
next after _Hamlet_. Such external evidence as we possess points to this
conclusion, and it is confirmed by similarities of style, diction and
versification, and also by the fact that ideas and phrases of the
earlier play are echoed in the later.[85] There is, further (not to
speak of one curious point, to be considered when we come to Iago), a
certain resemblance in the subjects. The heroes of the two plays are
doubtless extremely unlike, so unlike that each could have dealt without
much difficulty with the situation which proved fatal to the other; but
still each is a man exceptionally noble and trustful, and each endures
the shock of a terrible disillusionment. This theme is treated by
Shakespeare for the first time in _Hamlet_, for the second in _Othello_.
It recurs with modifications in _King Lear_, and it probably formed the
attraction which drew Shakespeare to refashion in part another writer's
tragedy of _Timon_. These four dramas may so far be grouped together in
distinction from the remaining tragedies.
But in point of substance, and, in certain respects, in point of style,
the unlikeness of _Othello_ to _Hamlet_ is much greater than the
likeness, and the later play belongs decidedly to one group with its
successors. We have seen that, like them, it is a tragedy of passion, a
description inapplicable to _Julius Caesar_ or _Hamlet_. And with this
change goes another, an enlargement in the stature of the hero. There is
in most of the later heroes something colossal, something which reminds
us of Michael Angelo's figures. They are not merely exceptional men,
they are huge men; as it were, survivors of the heroic age living in a
later and smaller world. We do not receive this impression from Romeo or
Brutus or Hamlet, nor did it lie in Shakespeare's design to allow more
than touches of this trait to Julius Caesar himself; but it is strongly
marked in Lear and Coriolanus, and quite distinct in Macbeth and even in
Antony. Othello is the first of these men, a being essentially large and
grand, towering above his fellows, holding a volume of force which in
repose ensures preeminence without an effort, and in commotion reminds
us rather of the fury of the elements than of the tumult of common human
passion.
1
What is the peculiarity of _Othello_? What is the distinctive impression
that it leaves? Of all Shakespeare's tragedies, I would answer, not even
excepting _King Lear_, _Othello_ is the most painfully exciting and the
most terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins,
the reader's heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the
extremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope and
dreadful expectation. Evil is displayed before him, not indeed with the
profusion found in _King Lear_, but forming, as it were, the soul of a
single character, and united with an intellectual superiority so great
that he watches its advance fascinated and appalled. He sees it, in
itself almost irresistible, aided at every step by fortunate accidents
and the innocent mistakes of its victims. He seems to breathe an
atmosphere as fateful as that of _King Lear_, but more confined and
oppressive, the darkness not of night but of a close-shut murderous
room. His imagination is excited to intense activity, but it is the
activity of concentration rather than dilation.
I will not dwell now on aspects of the play which modify this
impression, and I reserve for later discussion one of its principal
sources, the character of Iago. But if we glance at some of its other
sources, we shall find at the same time certain distinguishing
characteristics of _Othello_.
(1) One of these has been already mentioned in our discussion of
Shakespeare's technique. _Othello_ is not only the most masterly of the
tragedies in point of construction, but its method of construction is
unusual. And this method, by which the conflict begins late, and
advances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to the
catastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension just described. To
this may be added that, after the conflict has begun, there is very
little relief by way of the ridiculous. Henceforward at any rate Iago's
humour never raises a smile. The clown is a poor one; we hardly attend
to him and quickly forget him; I believe most readers of Shakespeare, if
asked whether there is a clown in _Othello_, would answer No.
(2) In the second place, there is no subject more exciting than sexual
jealousy rising to the pitch of passion; and there can hardly be any
spectacle at once so engrossing and so painful as that of a great nature
suffering the torment of this passion, and driven by it to a crime which
is also a hideous blunder. Such a passion as ambition, however terrible
its results, is not itself ignoble; if we separate it in thought from
the conditions which make it guilty, it does not appear despicable; it
is not a kind of suffering, its nature is active; and therefore we can
watch its course without shrinking. But jealousy, and especially sexual
jealousy, brings with it a sense of shame and humiliation. For this
reason it is generally hidden; if we perceive it we ourselves are
ashamed and turn our eyes away; and when it is not hidden it commonly
stirs contempt as well as pity. Nor is this all. Such jealousy as
Othello's converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in
man; and it does this in relation to one of the most intense and also
the most ideal of human feelings. What spectacle can be more painful
than that of this feeling turned into a tortured mixture of longing and
loathing, the 'golden purity' of passion split by poison into fragments,
the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in naked
grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance,
gasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in a
bestial thirst for blood? This is what we have to witness in one who was
indeed 'great of heart' and no less pure and tender than he was great.
And this, with what it leads to, the blow to Desdemona, and the scene
where she is treated as the inmate of a brothel, a scene far more
painful than the murder scene, is another cause of the special effect of
this tragedy.[86]
(3) The mere mention of these scenes will remind us painfully of a third
cause; and perhaps it is the most potent of all. I mean the suffering of
Desdemona. This is, unless I mistake, the most nearly intolerable
spectacle that Shakespeare offers us. For one thing, it is _mere_
suffering; and, _ceteris paribus_, that is much worse to witness than
suffering that issues in action. Desdemona is helplessly passive. She
can do nothing whatever. She cannot retaliate even in speech; no, not
even in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness only
makes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She is
helpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute. I
would not challenge Mr. Swinburne's statement that we _pity_ Othello
even more than Desdemona; but we watch Desdemona with more unmitigated
distress. We are never wholly uninfluenced by the feeling that Othello
is a man contending with another man; but Desdemona's suffering is like
that of the most loving of dumb creatures tortured without cause by the
being he adores.
(4) Turning from the hero and heroine to the third principal character,
we observe (what has often been pointed out) that the action and
catastrophe of _Othello_ depend largely on intrigue. We must not say
more than this. We must not call the play a tragedy of intrigue as
distinguished from a tragedy of character. Iago's plot is Iago's
character in action; and it is built on his knowledge of Othello's
character, and could not otherwise have succeeded. Still it remains true
that an elaborate plot was necessary to elicit the catastrophe; for
Othello was no Leontes, and his was the last nature to engender such
jealousy from itself. Accordingly Iago's intrigue occupies a position in
the drama for which no parallel can be found in the other tragedies; the
only approach, and that a distant one, being the intrigue of Edmund in
the secondary plot of _King Lear_. Now in any novel or play, even if the
persons rouse little interest and are never in serious danger, a
skilfully-worked intrigue will excite eager attention and suspense. And
where, as in _Othello_, the persons inspire the keenest sympathy and
antipathy, and life and death depend on the intrigue, it becomes the