Oth Not now, sweet Desdemona; some her surprise Othello, who said he would other time. That came a-wooing with you," etc. When Othello sees that Desdemona is hurt at his silence, he breaks in with'Prithee, no more: let him come when he will: I will deny thee nothing." But she thinks this so small a favor to be granted to a friend who had done so much for them, that she will hardly accept it as such. The "great captain's captain" will not have it called a 'boon." 'Tis only so slight a service as she would "entreat him wear his gloves, or feed on nourishing dishes ;" "Nay, when I have a suit Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed, It shall be full of poise and difficulty, And fearful to be granted." He repeats his former words : "I will deny thee nothing; Whereon, I do beseech thee, grant me this, To leave me but a little to myself." How sweet is her rejoinder! 'Shall I deny you? no; farewell, my lord." He replies: Farewell, my Desdemona: I'll come to thee straight" which draws from her the winning assurance of her full faith in him : "Be as your fancies teach you; Whate'er you be, I am obedient." And at this point ends the happiness, which is as perfect now as it well could be. In the meantime, and while the adder's tongue is busy at its work, arrive the leading personages in Cyprus invited by Othello to a banquet. Desdemona receives them, and plays the part of gracious hostess, so natural to her. To come to her straight," does not appear. She fears his guests will think him discourteous in this prolonged absence, and hastens herself to remind him of their visitors. She enters gaily, ready with a pretty chiding: "How now, my dear Othello? Your dinner, and the generous islanders The coldness and reserve of his speech startle her. The anger and abruptness shown in this reply to her offer to relieve his pain must have come indeed' as a shock to Desdemona, contrasting strangely as it did with the tone of their last parting so short a time before Yet she sweetly adds, without noticing his rudeness, "I am very sorry that you are not well." 46 No wonder, finding things so changed, and with no apparent cause, that she forgets the handkerchief, dear as it was to her, with which she had offered to bind his forehead. She is a child to chiding," and no doubt feels these first harsh words very keenly. They go out together, and we may suppose that her frank innocent demeanor and fond words reassure him for the time. member so well Mr. Macready's manner as we left the scene. He took my face in both his hands, looked long into my eyes, and then the old look came into his, and it spoke as plainly as possible, 'My life upon her faith!" I re What happens at the banquet we cannot tell. It cannot be the presence of Cassio which inflames Othello, for being in disgrace he would hardly be there. It may be that the free loyal homage which he sees paid to his wife, not only because of her position as his wife, but still more on account of her beauty and sweet courtesy to his guests, makes her still more precious in his eyes, so that the bare thought of not standing alone 'Work on, My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught." Desdemona has made so sure of winning Othello's consent to receive Cassio into favor again, that she sends for him to tell him the good news-" Tell him I have moved my lord on his behalf, and hope all will be well." But before they meet occurs the scene with the handkerchief, and Othello's violence at the supposed loss of it. Still Desdemona, who knows nothing of its whereabouts, believing it to be only mislaid, and hoping to have it to show him when it has been properly searched for, thinks his vehemence on the subject a little overstrained-put upon her, indeed, as a trick to drive her from her suit.” Therefore she still repeats it, urging Cassio's claims upon him with the words 64 "You'll never meet a more sufficient man. A man that, all his time, "some wonder in this handkerchief; I am most unhappy in the loss of it." Emilia, instead of being, as her husband fancies, inclined favorably toward Othello, appears to me to have the dislike common to her class of anything unusual, and looks all along upon the Moor with unfriendly, suspicious eyes. "'Tis not a year or two shows us a man." She no doubt had found it to be so : even lago might have appeared to her in different colors when they were first wedded. Her pent-up dislike to the Moor adds fuel to her wrath, when she finds subsequently that he has been the easy dupe of her villanous husband. After the episode of the handkerchief, when Cassio who had been sent for by Desdemona to hear, as she hoped, good news, Desdemona, ever unselfish, is as sorry for him as for herself. " appears, Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio! him Were he in favor as in humor alter'd." She remembers that she has pledged "You must awhile be patient : The next time we see Desdemona, she comes with Lodovico, who has been sent to Cyprus from Venice, bearing to Othello the Duke's letters and commands. Desdemona salutes Lodovico as cousin." He may be so, or this may be only a phrase of courtesy in the way that royalty uses it. When speaking of him afterward to Emilia, she says, This Lodovico is a proper man. "A very handsome man," says Emilia. Desdemona replies: Desdemona replies: "He speaks well." See the difference in the women, how finely marked in these comments! While Othello reads his papers, Lodovico inquires after his friend, Lieutenant Cassio. Upon this Desdemona, who never loses sight of her promise, says, "Cousin, there's fallen between him Hath founded his good fortunes on your and my lord an unkind breach;" and love ; Shared dangers with you-" It is only when Othello breaks angrily from her that she realizes there may be beginning to fear that her own influence will not be sufficient, she adds, "But you shall make all well."' 'Is there division," Lodovico says, with evident "My lord, this would not be believed in Venice, Though I should swear I saw't; 'tis very much : Make her amends; she weeps." Her tears, Othello says, are but those of a crocodile. To his fiercer injunction, "Out of my sight!" her only answer is, “I will not stay to offend you." Then she is called back, and comes upon the instant, true to her former words "Whate'er you be, I am obedient. Untouched by her gentleness, Othello continues : "Proceed you in your tears: Concerning this, sir,—O well-painted passion! Get you away; I'll send for you anon. avaunt !" Hence No wonder that Lodovico, when Othello quits the scene, exclaims in amazement "Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate Call all-in-all sufficient? This the nature Whom passion could not shake? Are his wits safe? Is he not light of brain? What! strike his wife !"" Iago prepares Lodovico for what he knows is to follow by replying, Would I knew that stroke would prove the worst!" "I am sorry that I have been deceived in him," is Lodovico's answer. He will remember afterward that he has been deceived in more than in Othello. Next come the Moor's interrogations of Emilia, and her replies: I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest, For if she be not honest, chaste, and true, But she may as well speak to the winds. If Othello had spoken here of having seen the handkerchief in Cassio's hand, I believe, despite the terror of her husband, Emilia would have explained how she had herself found and given it to Iago; but he does not. He sends her to fetch Desdemona, and then rudely dismisses her. The poor dove is now in the falcon's grasp, but not quite yet to be torn to pieces. One wonders why Othello sends for her, for he will believe nothing she says or swears. "Oth. Swear thou art honest. Des. Heaven doth truly know it. Oth. Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell! Des. To whom, my lord? With whom? How am I false? Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed? Des. By heaven, you do me wrong.' When in the coarsest terms he asks her if she is not unfaithful, she exclaims, 'No, as I am a Christian: no, as I shall be saved!" Emilia finds her on the floor, to which she has sunk, after making oath on her knees, of her being to Othello “a true and loyal wife." Think how stunned and bewildered she must be ! She is accused of a crime beyond all others most foreign to her nature. She can imagine no motive for the accusation, has no clue to the "With whom? How am I false ?" It is like a hideous dream; and; with a pathos unsurpassed to my thinking in poetry, she answers Emilia's "How do you, my good lady?" with help to her destroyer, and asks, "Am I that name, Iago?" "What name, fair lady?" Not being able to utter the foul word herself, she answers"Such as, she says, my lord did say I was. O good Iago, What shall I do to win my lord again? Good friend, go to him; for, by this light of heaven, I know not how I lost him." : She fears that in his anger he may shake her off to beggarly divorcement." Yet as she ever did, so she ever will "love him dearly." "Unkindness may do much ;' And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love." She has to put up with the cold comfort which Iago gives-pretending to know nothing. "I pray you, be content; 'tis but his humor : The business of the State does him offence, And he does chide with you." minds ! If I do die before thee, prithee shroud me little thinking how soon that shroud At this she catches with trembling eager test of the actor's powers! ness, How sad it is that the exigencies of our stage require the omission of the exquisite scene which follows (Act iv. sc. 3) in the anteroom to Desdemona's chamber, a scene so important for the development of her character, and affording such fine opportunity for the highest powers of pathos in the actress.* * I never saw this scene acted but once, and that was in Dresden. Certainly the Germans prove their high admiration and respect for our great poet. They give his plays in their integrity, never dreaming of cutting out the very scenes that are most necessary for the development of plot and character. Their scenery is good, appropriate, harmonious-and stands, as it always should, in subservience to the plot and human interest in the play: it is so good that you never think of it. So of the costumes you think you see the person represented. As all is in keeping, so you never criticise what the characters wear. You feel at once, they looked or did not look as they should, and give this subject no further heed. All these matters are deeply studied, but not so deeply talked about as they are here. They are but accessories, and only considered as such. I feel very grateful for the draped curtain which drops down from the sides after a scene. While Emilia is unpinning" her mistress, I picture to myself Desdemona seated, her sad thoughts wandering far away, gently taking the jewels from her throat, her ears, her fingers; while Emilia uncoils the pearls from her hair, untwists its long plaits, and gathers them for the night in a loose coil at the back of her head. Then as Emilia kneels at her feet to unfasten the embroidered shoes, Desdemona may put her hand admiringly on Emilia's head and smooth her fine hair. Meanwhile her thoughts are travelling back to her childhood-perhaps to that mother whose caresses she so early lost and missed, for she had known but few from her cold father; in imagination she may again feel them. Then she remembers Barbara, her mother's maid, who loved and was forsaken, and who died singing the sad While it is closed, such furniture as has been necessary for the scene is quietly withdrawn (no sofas pushed on and pulled off by very visible ropes), -and the next scene appears in a few minutes, on the withdrawal of the curtain, quite complete. In this way one of the great difficulties in presenting Shakespeare's plays, arising from the frequent changes of the scene, is got over. In Germany, a play of Shakespeare takes a whole evening; and the Germans will sit four or five hours listening patiently and delightedly to all he has to teach them. Des. Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong For the whole world. I do not think there is any such woman." After listening to some of Emilia's worldly maxims, she breaks away from the subject by saying "Good-night, good-night: Heaven me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend !'' Although such heavy clouds had passed over her happiness, yet Desdemona still loved and trusted, and was not, therefore, altogether sad. To the last she shows herself to be of a hopeful, generous disposition. She knows how to forgive hopes that what has been the mystery of Othello's unkindness is perhaps to be explained in the privacy of their chamber, when a word of regret, of remorse from him, will win her fullest pardon. There is something almost sublime in this unshaken love and trust. She falls asleep in it, for oh, such a rude awakening! The swan had sung NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIII. No. 5 her song, and so sinks into her deathbed, although she knew it not. She It is, as we have seen, with some presentiment of sorrow before her that Desdemona goes to bed. The shock of Othello's accusation has struck to her soul, and shaken her whole being. will not accuse, or hear him accused of injustice by Emilia, but her idol cannot stand in her imagination where he did. He has human infirmities, and these far greater than she could have looked for. She can think of no indiscretion of her own, except perhaps suing for their old friend Cassio, at a time when Othello was not in the mood to listen-when state affairs disturbed him. Yet how could he, for so slight a cause, strike her, disgrace himself and her before the gentlemen who came with dispatches from Venice, and afterward shock her ears with names not to be uttered! and 'Throw such despite and heavy terms upon her, As true hearts cannot bear !" Is this her noble Moor, "so true of mind, and made of no such baseness as jealous creatures are"? unkindness, yet her conscience is at Sad, disappointed as she is at his rest. Besides, the fit seemed past; he had "looked gentler;" so, trying for more hopeful thoughts, and praying for the help she needed-worn out, too, as she was by unusual and unexpected trouble-she falls asleep. It is strange it never occurs to Othello that if Desdemona had really been the "cunning" Venetian he thought her, knowing her vileness discovered, she might have found means easily to bribe those who would have hidden her from his just wrath. Emilia was not so scrupulous a woman as to have refused her assistance. Besides, had not the Moor insulted her also, in language the most gross? And would she not have been, at a word from her mistress, glad enough to thwart him, and help her? But he sees this cunning, past all expressing "vile one" obey his will without a murmur, go quietly to bed, and finds her, with this load of guilt, as he believes, upon her heart, sleeping the sweet sleep of a child. Well may Emilia exclaim of him, "O gull! O dolt!" He sees nothing but what he is primed to see; in all things else" as ignorant 42 |