Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
Venice a week later than the others, but reaches Cyprus on the same day
with them:
Tempests themselves, high seas and howling winds,
The gutter'd rocks and congregated sands--
Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel--
As having sense of beauty, do omit
Their mortal natures, letting go safely by
The divine Desdemona.
So swiftly does Fate conduct her to her doom.]
[Footnote 92: The dead bodies are not carried out at the end, as they
must have been if the bed had been on the main stage (for this had no
front curtain). The curtains within which the bed stood were drawn
together at the words, 'Let it be hid' (V. ii. 365).]
[Footnote 93: Against which may be set the scene of the blinding of
Gloster in _King Lear_.]
[Footnote 94: The reader who is tempted by it should, however, first ask
himself whether Othello does act like a barbarian, or like a man who,
though wrought almost to madness, does 'all in honour.']
[Footnote 95: For the actor, then, to represent him as violently angry
when he cashiers Cassio is an utter mistake.]
[Footnote 96: I cannot deal fully with this point in the lecture. See
Note L.]
[Footnote 97: It is important to observe that, in his attempt to arrive
at the facts about Cassio's drunken misdemeanour, Othello had just had
an example of Iago's unwillingness to tell the whole truth where it must
injure a friend. No wonder he feels in the Temptation-scene that 'this
honest creature doubtless Sees and knows more, much more, than he
unfolds.']
[Footnote 98: To represent that Venetian women do not regard adultery so
seriously as Othello does, and again that Othello would be wise to
accept the situation like an Italian husband, is one of Iago's most
artful and most maddening devices.]
[Footnote 99: If the reader has ever chanced to see an African violently
excited, he may have been startled to observe how completely at a loss
he was to interpret those bodily expressions of passion which in a
fellow-countryman he understands at once, and in a European foreigner
with somewhat less certainty. The effect of difference in blood in
increasing Othello's bewilderment regarding his wife is not sufficiently
realised. The same effect has to be remembered in regard to Desdemona's
mistakes in dealing with Othello in his anger.]
[Footnote 100: See Note M.]
[Footnote 101: Cf. _Winter's Tale_, I. ii. 137 ff.:
Can thy dam?--may't be?--
Affection! thy intention stabs the centre:
Thou dost make possible things not so held,
Communicatest with dreams;--how can this be?
With what's unreal thou coactive art,
And fellow'st nothing: then 'tis very credent
Thou may'st cojoin with something; and thou dost,
And that beyond commission, and I find it,
And that to the infection of my brains
And hardening of my brows.]
[Footnote 102: See Note O.]
[Footnote 103: New Illustrations, ii. 281.]
[Footnote 104: _Lectures on Shakespeare_, ed. Ashe, p. 386.]
[Footnote 105: I will not discuss the further question whether, granted
that to Shakespeare Othello was a black, he should be represented as a
black in our theatres now. I dare say not. We do not like the real
Shakespeare. We like to have his language pruned and his conceptions
flattened into something that suits our mouths and minds. And even if we
were prepared to make an effort, still, as Lamb observes, to imagine is
one thing and to see is another. Perhaps if we saw Othello coal-black
with the bodily eye, the aversion of our blood, an aversion which comes
as near to being merely physical as anything human can, would overpower
our imagination and sink us below not Shakespeare only but the audiences
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
As I have mentioned Lamb, I may observe that he differed from Coleridge
as to Othello's colour, but, I am sorry to add, thought Desdemona to
stand in need of excuse. 'This noble lady, with a singularity rather to
be wondered at than imitated, had chosen for the object of her
affections a Moor, a black.... Neither is Desdemona to be altogether
condemned for the unsuitableness of the person whom she selected for her
lover' (_Tales from Shakespeare_). Others, of course, have gone much
further and have treated all the calamities of the tragedy as a sort of
judgment on Desdemona's rashness, wilfulness and undutifulness. There is
no arguing with opinions like this; but I cannot believe that even Lamb
is true to Shakespeare in implying that Desdemona is in some degree to
be condemned. What is there in the play to show that Shakespeare
regarded her marriage differently from Imogen's?]
[Footnote 106: When Desdemona spoke her last words, perhaps that line of
the ballad which she sang an hour before her death was still busy in her
brain,
Let nobody blame him: his scorn I approve.
Nature plays such strange tricks, and Shakespeare almost alone among
poets seems to create in somewhat the same manner as Nature. In the same
way, as Malone pointed out, Othello's exclamation, 'Goats and monkeys!'
(IV. i. 274) is an unconscious reminiscence of Iago's words at III. iii.
403.]
LECTURE VI
OTHELLO
1
Evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the
character of Iago. Richard III., for example, beside being less subtly
conceived, is a far greater figure and a less repellent. His physical
deformity, separating him from other men, seems to offer some excuse for
his egoism. In spite of his egoism, too, he appears to us more than a
mere individual: he is the representative of his family, the Fury of the
House of York. Nor is he so negative as Iago: he has strong passions, he
has admirations, and his conscience disturbs him. There is the glory of
power about him. Though an excellent actor, he prefers force to fraud,
and in his world there is no general illusion as to his true nature.
Again, to compare Iago with the Satan of _Paradise Lost_ seems almost
absurd, so immensely does Shakespeare's man exceed Milton's Fiend in
evil. That mighty Spirit, whose
form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined and the excess
Of glory obscured;
who knew loyalty to comrades and pity for victims; who
felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw, and pined
His loss;
who could still weep--how much further distant is he than Iago from
spiritual death, even when, in procuring the fall of Man, he completes
his own fall! It is only in Goethe's Mephistopheles that a fit companion
for Iago can be found. Here there is something of the same deadly
coldness, the same gaiety in destruction. But then Mephistopheles, like
so many scores of literary villains, has Iago for his father. And
Mephistopheles, besides, is not, in the strict sense, a character. He is
half person, half symbol. A metaphysical idea speaks through him. He is
earthy, but could never live upon the earth.
Of Shakespeare's characters Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago, and Cleopatra (I
name them in the order of their births) are probably the most wonderful.
Of these, again, Hamlet and Iago, whose births come nearest together,
are perhaps the most subtle. And if Iago had been a person as attractive
as Hamlet, as many thousands of pages might have been written about him,
containing as much criticism good and bad. As it is, the majority of
interpretations of his character are inadequate not only to
Shakespeare's conception, but, I believe, to the impressions of most
readers of taste who are unbewildered by analysis. These false
interpretations, if we set aside the usual lunacies,[107] fall into two
groups. The first contains views which reduce Shakespeare to
commonplace. In different ways and degrees they convert his Iago into
an ordinary villain. Their Iago is simply a man who has been slighted
and revenges himself; or a husband who believes he has been wronged, and
will make his enemy suffer a jealousy worse than his own; or an
ambitious man determined to ruin his successful rival--one of these, or
a combination of these, endowed with unusual ability and cruelty. These
are the more popular views. The second group of false interpretations is
much smaller, but it contains much weightier matter than the first. Here
Iago is a being who hates good simply because it is good, and loves evil
purely for itself. His action is not prompted by any plain motive like
revenge, jealousy or ambition. It springs from a 'motiveless malignity,'
or a disinterested delight in the pain of others; and Othello, Cassio
and Desdemona are scarcely more than the material requisite for the full
attainment of this delight. This second Iago, evidently, is no
conventional villain, and he is much nearer to Shakespeare's Iago than
the first. Only he is, if not a psychological impossibility, at any rate
not a _human_ being. He might be in place, therefore, in a symbolical
poem like _Faust_, but in a purely human drama like _Othello_ he would
be a ruinous blunder. Moreover, he is not in _Othello_: he is a product
of imperfect observation and analysis.
Coleridge, the author of that misleading phrase 'motiveless malignity,'
has some fine remarks on Iago; and the essence of the character has been
described, first in some of the best lines Hazlitt ever wrote, and then
rather more fully by Mr. Swinburne,--so admirably described that I am
tempted merely to read and illustrate these two criticisms. This plan,
however, would make it difficult to introduce all that I wish to say. I
propose, therefore, to approach the subject directly, and, first, to
consider how Iago appeared to those who knew him, and what inferences
may be drawn from their illusions; and then to ask what, if we judge
from the play, his character really was. And I will indicate the points
where I am directly indebted to the criticisms just mentioned.
But two warnings are first required. One of these concerns Iago's
nationality. It has been held that he is a study of that peculiarly
Italian form of villainy which is considered both too clever and too
diabolical for an Englishman. I doubt if there is much more to be said
for this idea than for the notion that Othello is a study of Moorish
character. No doubt the belief in that Italian villainy was prevalent in
Shakespeare's time, and it may perhaps have influenced him in some
slight degree both here and in drawing the character of Iachimo in
_Cymbeline_. But even this slight influence seems to me doubtful. If Don
John in _Much Ado_ had been an Englishman, critics would have admired
Shakespeare's discernment in making his English villain sulky and
stupid. If Edmund's father had been Duke of Ferrara instead of Earl of
Gloster, they would have said that Edmund could have been nothing but an
Italian. Change the name and country of Richard III., and he would be
called a typical despot of the Italian Renaissance. Change those of
Juliet, and we should find her wholesome English nature contrasted with
the southern dreaminess of Romeo. But this way of interpreting
Shakespeare is not Shakespearean. With him the differences of period,
race, nationality and locality have little bearing on the inward
character, though they sometimes have a good deal on the total
imaginative effect, of his figures. When he does lay stress on such
differences his intention is at once obvious, as in characters like
Fluellen or Sir Hugh Evans, or in the talk of the French princes before
the battle of Agincourt. I may add that Iago certainly cannot be taken
to exemplify the popular Elizabethan idea of a disciple of Macchiavelli.
There is no sign that he is in theory an atheist or even an unbeliever
in the received religion. On the contrary, he uses its language, and