And yet even here,
where he delights to soil his love, his tenderness reaches its most
passionate expression:
"O thou weed,
Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet,
That the sense aches at thee--would thou hadst ne'er
been born!"
As soon as jealousy reaches its end, and passes into revenge,
Shakespeare tries to get back into Othello the captain again. Othello's
first speech in the bedchamber is clear enough in all conscience, but it
has been so mangled by unintelligent actors such as Salvini that it
cries for explanation. Every one will remember how Salvini and others
playing this part stole into the room like murderers, and then bellowed
so that they would have waked the dead. And when the foolish mummers
were criticised for thus misreading the character, they answered boldly
that Othello was a Moor, that his passion was Southern, and I know not
what besides. It is clear that Shakespeare's Othello enters the room
quietly as a justicer with a duty to perform: he keeps his resolution to
the sticking-point by thinking of the offence; he says solemnly:
"It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul--"
and, Englishman-like, finds a moral reason for his intended action:
"Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
Pages:
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406