"
It was all this, no doubt, that misled Coleridge. He did not realize
that this Othello suddenly changes his nature; the sober lord of himself
becomes in an instant very quick to suspect, and being jealous, is
nothing if not sensual; he can think of no reason for Desdemona's fall
but her appetite; the imagination of the sensual act throws him into a
fit; it is this picture which gives life to his hate. The conclusion is
not to be avoided; as soon as Othello becomes jealous he is transformed
by Shakespeare's own passion. For this is the way Shakespeare conceived
jealousy and the only way. The jealousy of Leontes in "The Winter's
Tale" is precisely the same; Hermione gives her hand to Polixenes, and
at once Leontes suspects and hates, and his rage is all of "paddling
palms [1] and pinching fingers." The jealousy of Posthumus, too, is of
the same kind:
"Never talk on 't;
She hath been colted by him."
[Footnote 1: Iago's expression, too; cf. "Othello," II. 1, and "Hamlet,"
III.
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