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OTHELLO an essay by Hazlitt

An essay by William Hazlitt, on Shakespeare’s characters in

“Othello," From the book Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays By William Hazlitt,

London: Dent & Sons, 1906, 32-46.

It has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and

pity. That is, it substitutes imaginary sympathy for mere

selfishness. It gives us a high and permanent interest, beyond

ourselves, in humanity as such. It raises the great, the remote, and

the possible to an equality with the real, the little and the near.

It makes man a partaker with his kind. It subdues and softens the

stubbornness of his will. It teaches him that there are and have

been others like himself, by showing him as in a glass what they

have felt, thought, and done. It opens the chambers of the human

heart. It leaves nothing indifferent to us that can affect our

common nature. It excites our sensibility by exhibiting the passions

wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of imagination or the

temptation of circumstances; and corrects their fatal excesses in

ourselves by pointing to the greater extent of sufferings and of

crimes to which they have led others. Tragedy creates a balance of

the affections. It makes us thoughtful spectators in the lists of

life. It is the refiner of the species; a discipline of humanity.

The habitual study of poetry and works of imagination is one chief

part of a well-grounded education. A taste for liberal art is

necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is

hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out

of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or

engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.--OTHELLO

furnishes an illustration of these remarks. It excites our sympathy

in an extraordinary degree. The moral it conveys has a closer

application to the concerns of human life than that of any other of

Shakespeare's plays. 'It comes directly home to the bosoms and

business of men.' The pathos in LEAR is indeed more dreadful and

overpowering: but it is less natural, and less of every day's

occurrence. We have not the same degree of sympathy with the

passions described in MACBETH. The interest in HAMLET is more remote

and reflex. That of OTHELLO is at once equally profound and

affecting.

The picturesque contrasts of character in this play are almost as

remarkable as the depth of the passion. The Moor Othello, the gentle

Desdemona, the villain Iago, the good-natured Cassio, the fool

Roderigo, present a range and variety of character as striking and

palpable as that produced by the opposition of costume in a picture.

Their distinguishing qualities stand out to the mind's eye, so that

even when we are not thinking of their actions or sentiments, the

idea of their persons is still as present to us as ever. These

characters and the images they stamp upon the mind are the farthest

asunder possible, the distance between them is immense: yet the

compass of knowledge and invention which the poet has shown in

embodying these extreme creations of his genius is only greater than

the truth and felicity with which he has identified each character

with itself, or blended their different qualities together in the

same story. What a contrast the character of Othello forms to that

of Iago: at the same time, the force of conception with which these

two figures are opposed to each other is rendered still more intense

by the complete consistency with which the traits of each character

are brought out in a state of the highest finishing. The making one

black and the other white, the one unprincipled, the other

unfortunate in the extreme, would have answered the common purposes

of effect, and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter of

character. Shakespeare has laboured the finer shades of difference

in both with as much care and skill as if he had had to depend on

the execution alone for the success of his design. On the other

hand, Desdemona and Aemilia are not meant to be opposed with

anything like strong contrast to each other. Both are, to outward

appearance, characters of common life, not more distinguished than

women usually are, by difference of rank and situation. The

difference of their thoughts and sentiments is, however, laid as

open, their minds are separated from each other by signs as plain

and as little to be mistaken as the complexions of their husbands.

The movement of the passion in OTHELLO is exceedingly different from

that of MACBETH. In MACBETH there is a violent struggle between

opposite feelings, between ambition and the stings of conscience,

almost from first to last: in Othello, the doubtful conflict between

contrary passions, though dreadful, continues only for a short time,

and the chief interest is excited by the alternate ascendancy of

different passions, the entire and unforeseen change from the

fondest love and most unbounded confidence to the tortures of

jealousy and the madness of hatred. The revenge of Othello, after it

has once taken thorough possession of his mind, never quits it, but

grows stronger and stronger at every moment of its delay. The nature

of the Moor is noble, confiding, tender, and generous; but his blood

is of the most inflammable kind; and being once roused by a sense of

his wrongs, he is stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity

till he has given a loose to all the dictates of his rage and his

despair. It is in working his noble nature up to this extremity

through rapid but gradual transitions, in raising passion to its

height from the smallest beginnings and in spite of all obstacles,

in painting the expiring conflict between love and hatred,

tenderness and resentment, jealousy and remorse, in unfolding the

strength and the weaknesses of our nature, in uniting sublimity of

thought with the anguish of the keenest woe, in putting in motion

the various impulses that agitate this our mortal being, and at last

blending them in that noble tide of deep and sustained passion,

impetuous but majestic, that 'flows on to the Propontic, and knows

no ebb', that Shakespeare has shown the mastery of his genius and of

his power over the human heart. The third act of Othello is his

masterpiece, not of knowledge or passion separately, but of the two

combined, of the knowledge of character with the expression of

passion, of consummate art in the keeping up of appearances with the

profound workings of nature, and the convulsive movements of

uncontrollable agony, of the power of inflicting torture and of

suffering it. Not only is the tumult of passion heaved up from the

very bottom of the soul, but every the slightest undulation of

feeling is seen on the surface, as it arises from the impulses of

imagination or the different probabilities maliciously suggested by

Iago. The progressive preparation for the catastrophe is wonderfully

managed from the Moor's first gallant recital of the story of his

love, of 'the spells and witchcraft he had used', from his unlooked-

for and romantic success, the fond satisfaction with which he dotes

on his own happiness, the unreserved tenderness of Desdemona and her

innocent importunities in favour of Cassio, irritating the

suspicions instilled into her husband's mind by the perfidy of lago,

and rankling there to poison, till he loses all command of himself,

and his rage can only be appeased by blood. She is introduced, just

before lago begins to put his scheme in practice, pleading for

Cassio with all the thoughtless gaiety of friendship and winning

confidence in the love of Othello.

What! Michael Cassio?

That came a wooing with you, and so many a time,

When I have spoke of you dispraisingly,

Hath ta'en your part, to have so much to do

To bring him in?--Why this is not a boon:

'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,

Or feed on nourishing meats, or keep you warm;

Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit

To your person. Nay, when I have a suit,

Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed,

It shall be full of poise, and fearful to be granted.

Othello's confidence, at first only staggered by broken hints and

insinuations, recovers itself at sight of Desdemona; and he exclaims

If she be false, O then Heav'n mocks itself:

I'll not believe it.

But presently after, on brooding over his suspicions by himself, and

yielding to his apprehensions of the worst, his smothered jealousy

breaks out into open fury, and he returns to demand satisfaction of

Iago like a wild beast stung with the envenomed shaft of the

hunters. 'Look where he comes', &c. In this state of exasperation

and violence, after the first paroxysms of his grief and tenderness

have had their vent in that passionate apostrophe, 'I felt not

Cassio's kisses on her lips,' Iago by false aspersions, and by

presenting the most revolting images to his mind, [Footnote: See the

passage beginning, 'It is impossible you should see this, Were they

as prime as goats,' &c.] easily turns the storm of Passion from

himself against Desdemona, and works him up into a trembling agony

of doubt and fear, in which he abandons all his love and hopes in a

breath.

Now do I see'tis true. Look here, Iago,

All my fond love thus do I blow to Heav'n. Tis gone.

Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell;

Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne

To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught;

For'tis of aspicks' tongues.

From this time, his raging thoughts 'never look back, ne'er ebb to

humble love' till his revenge is sure of its object, the painful

regrets and involuntary recollections of past circumstances which

cross his mind amidst the dim trances of passion, aggravating the

sense of his wrongs, but not shaking his purpose. Once indeed, where

Iago shows him Cassio with the handkerchief in his hand, and making

sport (as he thinks) of his misfortunes, the intolerable bitterness

of his feelings, the extreme sense of shame, makes him fall to

praising her accomplishments and relapse into a momentary fit of

weakness, 'Yet, oh, the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!' This

returning fondness, however, only serves, as it is managed by Iago,

to whet his revenge, and set his heart more against her. In his

conversations with Desdemona, the persuasion of her guilt and the

immediate proofs of her duplicity seem to irritate his resentment

and aversion to her; but in the scene immediately preceding her

death, the recollection of his love returns upon him in all its

tenderness and force; and after her death, he all at once forgets

his wrongs in the sudden and irreparable sense of his loss:

My wife! My wife! What wife? I have no wife.

Oh insupportable! Oh heavy hour!

This happens before he is assured of her innocence; but afterwards

his remorse is as dreadful as his revenge has been, and yields only

to fixed and death like despair. His farewell speech, before he

kills himself, in which he conveys his reasons to the senate for the

murder of his wife, is equal to the first speech in which he gave

them an account of his courtship of her, and 'his whole course of

love'. Such an ending was alone worthy of such a commencement.

If anything could add to the force of our sympathy with Othello, or

compassion for his fate, it would be the frankness and generosity of

his nature, which so little deserve it. When Iago first begins to

practise upon his unsuspecting friendship, he answers:

--Tis not to make me jealous,

To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,

Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;

Where virtue is, these are most virtuous.

Nor from my own weak merits will I draw

The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt,

For she had eyes and chose me.

This character is beautifully (and with affecting simplicity)

confirmed by what Desdemona herself says of him to Aemilia after she

has lost the handkerchief, the first pledge of his love to her:

Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse

Full of cruzadoes. And but my noble Moor

Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness,

As jealous creatures are, it were enough

To put him to ill thinking.

Aemilia. Is he not jealous?

Desdemona. Who he? I think the sun where he was

born drew all such humours from him.

In a short speech of Aemilia's there occurs one of those side-

intimations of the fluctuations of passion which we seldom meet with

but in Shakespeare. After Othello has resolved upon the death of his

wife, and bids her dismiss her attendant for the night, she answers:

I will, my Lord.

Aemilia. How goes it now? HE LOOKS GENTLER THAN HE DID.

Shakespeare has here put into half a line what some authors would

have spun out into ten set speeches.

The character of Desdemona herself is inimitable both in itself, and

as it contrasts with Othello's groundless jealousy, and with the

foul conspiracy of which she is the innocent victim. Her beauty and

external graces are only indirectly glanced at; we see 'her visage

in her mind'; her character everywhere predominates over her person:

A maiden never bold:

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion

Blushed at itself.

There is one fine compliment paid to her by Cassio, who exclaims

triumphantly when she comes ashore at Cyprus after the storm:

Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,

As having sense of beauty, do omit

Their mortal natures, letting safe go by

The divine Desdemona.

In general, as is the case with most of Shakespeare's females, we

lose sight of her personal charms in her attachment and devotedness

to her husband. 'She is subdued even to the very quality of her

lord'; and to Othello's 'honours and his valiant parts her soul and

fortunes consecrates'. The lady protests so much herself, and she is

as good as her word. The truth of conception, with which timidity

and boldness are united in the same character, is marvellous. The

extravagance of her resolutions, the pertinacity of her affections,

may be said to arise out of the gentleness of her nature. They imply

an unreserved reliance on the purity of her own intentions, an

entire surrender of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself

(heart and soul) to the fate of another. Bating the commencement of

her passion, which is a little fantastical and headstrong (though

even that may perhaps be consistently accounted for from her

inability to resist a rising inclination [Footnote: Iago. Ay, too

gentle. Othello. Nay, that's certain.]) her whole character consists

in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her

romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical

part of her disposition; and instead of following Othello to the

wars, she would gladly have 'remained at home a moth of peace', if

her husband could have stayed with her. Her resignation and angelic

sweetness of temper do not desert her at the last. The scenes in

which she laments and tries to account for Othello's estrangement

from her are exquisitely beautiful. After he has struck her, and

called her names, she says:

--Alas, 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. Here I kneel;

If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love,

Either in discourse, or thought, or actual deed,

Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense

Delighted them on any other form-

Or that I do not, and ever did

And ever will, though he do shake me off

To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly,

Comfort forswear me. Unkindness may do much,

And his unkindness may defeat my life,

But never taint my love.

Iago. I pray you be content:'tis but his humour.

The business of the state does him offence.

Desdemona. If'twere no other!--

The scene which follows with Aemilia and the song of the Willow are

equally beautiful, and show the author's extreme power of varying

the expression of passion, in all its moods and in all

circumstances;

Aemilia. Would you had never seen him.

Desdemona. So would not I: my love doth so approve him,

That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns,

Have grace and favour in them, &c.

Not the unjust suspicions of Othello, not Iago's treachery, place

Desdemona in a more amiable or interesting light than the casual

conversation (half earnest, half jest) between her and Aemilia on

the common behaviour of women to their husbands. This dialogue takes

place just before the last fatal scene. If Othello had overheard it,

it would have prevented the whole catastrophe; but then it would

have spoiled the play.

The character of Iago is one of the supererogations of Shakespeare's

genius. Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought this whole

character unnatural, because his villainy is WITHOUT A SUFFICIENT

MOTIVE. Shakespeare, who was as good a philosopher as he was a poet,

thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which is another

name for the love of mischief, is natural to man. He would know this

as well or better than if it had been demonstrated to him by a

logical diagram, merely from seeing children paddle in the dirt or

kill flies for sport. Iago in fact belongs to a class of characters

common to Shakespeare and at the same time peculiar to him; whose

heads are as acute and active as their hearts are hard and callous.

Iago is, to be sure, an extreme instance of the kind; that is to

say, of diseased intellectual activity, with an almost perfect

indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with a decided

preference of the latter, because it falls more readily in with his

favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope

to his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate

as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful

advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion-

-an insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and

dangerous kind. 'Our ancient' is a philosopher, who fancies that a

lie that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an

antithesis; who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a

better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea

in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise

for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His

gaiety, such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery; his

ease from the torture he has inflicted on others. He is an amateur

of tragedy in real life; and instead of employing his invention on

imaginary characters, or long-forgotten incidents, he takes the

bolder and more desperate course of getting up his plot at home,

casts the principal parts among his nearest friends and connexions,

and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady nerves and

unabated resolution. We will just give an illustration or two.

One of his most characteristic speeches is that immediately after

the marriage of Othello.

Roderigo. What a full fortune does the thick lips owe,

If he can carry her thus!

Iago. Call up her father:

Rouse him [Othello], make after him, poison his delight,

Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen,

And tho' he in a fertile climate dwell,

Plague him with flies: Tho' that his joy be joy,

Yet throw such changes of vexation on it,

As it may lose some colour.

In the next passage, his imagination runs riot in the mischief he is

plotting, and breaks out into the wildness and impetuosity of real

enthusiasm.

Roderigo. Here is her father's house: I'll call aloud.

Iago. Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell,

As when, by night and negligence, the fire

Is spied in populous cities.

One of his most favourite topics, on which he is rich indeed, and in

descanting on which his spleen serves him for a Muse, is the

disproportionate match between Desdemona and the Moor. This is a

clue to the character of the lady which he is by no means ready to

part with. It is brought forward in the first scene, and he recurs

to it, when in answer to his insinuations against Desdemona,

Roderigo says:

I cannot believe that in her--she's full of most blest

conditions.

Iago. Bless'd fig's end. The wine she drinks is made of

grapes. If she had been blest, she would never have married

the Moor.

And again with still more spirit and fatal effect afterwards, when

he turns this very suggestion arising in Othello's own breast to her

prejudice.

Othello. And yet how nature erring from itself--

Iago. Aye, there's the point;--as to be bold with you,

Not to affect many proposed matches

Of her own clime, complexion, and degree, &c.

This is probing to the quick. Iago here turns the character of poor

Desdemona, as it were, inside out. It is certain that nothing but

the genius of Shakespeare could have preserved the entire interest

and delicacy of the part, and have even drawn an additional elegance

and dignity from the peculiar circumstances in which she is placed.

The habitual licentiousness of Iago's conversation is not to be

traced to the pleasure he takes in gross or lascivious images, but

to his desire of finding out the worst side of everything, and of

proving himself an over-match for appearances. He has none of 'the

milk of human kindness' in his composition. His imagination rejects

everything that has not a strong infusion of the most unpalatable

ingredients; his mind digests only poisons. Virtue or goodness or

whatever has the least 'relish of salvation in it' is, to his

depraved appetite, sickly and insipid: and he even resents the good

opinion entertained of his own integrity, as if it were an affront

cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his character. Thus at the

meeting between Othello and Desdemona, he exclaims, 'Oh, you are

well tuned now: but I'll set down the pegs that make this music, AS

HONEST AS I AM--his character of bonhommie not sitting at all easily

upon him. In the scenes where he tries to work Othello to his

purpose, he is proportionably guarded, insidious, dark, and

deliberate. We believe nothing ever came up to the profound

dissimulation and dexterous artifice of the well-known dialogue in

the third act, where he first enters upon the execution of his

design.

Iago. My noble lord.

Othello. What dost thou say, Iago?

Iago. Did Michael Cassio,

When you woo'd my lady, know of your love?

Othello. He did from first to last.

Why dost thou ask?

Iago. But for a satisfaction of my thought,

No further harm.

Othello. Why of thy thought, Iago?

Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with it.

Othello. O yes, and went between us very oft--

Iago. Indeed!

Othello. Indeed? Ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught of

that?

Is he not honest?

Iago. Honest, my lord?

Othello. Honest? Ay, honest.

Iago. My lord, for aught I know.

Othello. What do'st thou think?

Iago. Think, my lord!

Othello. Think, my lord! Alas, thou echo'st me,

As if there was some monster in thy thought

Too hideous to be shown.

The stops and breaks, the deep workings of treachery under the mask

of love and honesty, the anxious watchfulness, the cool earnestness,

and if we may so say, the PASSION of hypocrisy marked in every line,

receive their last finishing in that inconceivable burst of

pretended indignation at Othello's doubts of his sincerity.

O grace! O Heaven forgive me!

Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense?

God be wi' you; take mine office. O wretched fool,

That lov'st to make thine honesty a vice!

Oh monstrous world! take note, take note, O world!

To be direct and honest, is not safe.

I thank you for this profit, and from hence

I'll love no friend, since love breeds such offence.

If Iago is detestable enough when he has business on his hands and

all his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to

do, and we only see into the hollowness of his heart. His

indifference when Othello falls into a swoon, is perfectly

diabolical.

Iago. How is it. General? Have you not hurt your head?

Othello. Dost thou mock me?

Iago. I mock you not, by Heaven, &c.

The part indeed would hardly be tolerated, even as a foil to The

virtue and generosity of the other characters in the play, But for

its indefatigable industry and inexhaustible resources, Which divert

the attention of the spectator (as well as his own) from the end he

has in view to the means by which it must be accomplished.--Edmund

the Bastard in Lear is something of the same character, placed in

less prominent circumstances. Zanga is a vulgar caricature of it.