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The Man Shakespeare

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But pride and respect for others' greatness are not qualities peculiar
to the man of action; they belong to all men of ability. As soon as
Othello begins to tell how he won Desdemona, he falls out of his
character. Feeling certain that he has placed his hero before us in
strong outlines, Shakespeare lets himself go, and at once we catch him
speaking and not Othello. In "antres vast and deserts idle" I hear the
poet, and when the verse swings to--

".... men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders,"

it is plain that Othello, the lord and lover of realities, has deserted
the firm ground of fact. But Shakespeare pulls himself in almost before
he has yielded to the charm of his own words, and again Othello speaks:

"This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline,
But still the house-affairs would draw her thence,

and so forth.

The temptation, however, was overpowering, and again Shakespeare yields
to it:

"And often did beguile her of her tears
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffered."

It is a characteristic of the man of action that he thinks lightly of
reverses; he loves hard buffets as a swimmer high waves, and when he
tells his life-story he does not talk of his "distress." This
"distressful stroke that my youth suffered" is manifestly pure
Shakespeare--tender-hearted Shakespeare, who pitied himself and the
distressful strokes his youth suffered very profoundly. The
characterization of Othello in the rest of this scene is anything but
happy. He talks too much; I miss the short sharp words which would show
the man used to command, and not only does he talk too much, but he
talks in images like a poet, and exaggerates:

"The tyrant Custom, most grave senators,
Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down."

Even the matter here is insincere; this is the poet's explanation of the
Captain's preference for a hard bed and hard living: "has been
accustomed to it," says Shakespeare, not understanding that there are
born hunter and soldier natures who absolutely prefer hardships to
effeminate luxury. Othello's next speech is just as bad; he talks too
much of things particular and private, and the farther he goes, the
worse he gets, till we again hear the poet speaking, or rather mouthing:

"No, when light-winged toys
Of feathered Cupid seel with wanton dullness
My speculative and officed instruments,
That my disports corrupt and taint my business,
Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,
And all indign and base adversities
Make head against my estimation."

Again when he says--

"Come, Desdemona: I have but an hour
Of love, of worldly matters and direction
To spend with thee; we must obey the time,"

I find no sharp impatience to get to work such as Hotspur felt, but a
certain reluctance to leave his love--a natural touch which indicates
that the poet was thinking of himself and not of his puppet.

The first scene of the second act shows us how Shakespeare, the
dramatist, worked. Cassio is plainly Shakespeare the poet; any of his
speeches taken at haphazard proves it. When he hears that Iago has
arrived he breaks out:

"He has had most favourable and happy speed;
Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,
The guttered rocks and congregated sands--
Traitors ensteeped to clog the guiltless keel--
As having sense of beauty, do omit
Their mortal natures, letting go safely by
The divine Desdemona."

And when Desdemona lands, Cassio's first exclamation is sufficient to
establish the fact that he is merely the poet's mask:

"O, behold,
The riches of the ship is come on shore!"

And just as clearly as Cassio is Shakespeare, the lyric poet, so is
Iago, at first, the embodiment of Shakespeare's intelligence. Iago has
been described as immoral; he does not seem to me to be immoral, but
amoral, as the intellect always is. He says to the women:

"Come on, come on; you're pictures out of doors,
Bells in your parlours, wild cats in your kitchens,
Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,
Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your
beds."

Iago sees things as they are, fairly and not maliciously; he is "nothing
if not critical," but his criticism has a touch of Shakespeare's erotic
mania in it. Think of that "housewives in your beds"! He will not
deceive himself, however; in spite of Cassio's admiration of Desdemona
Iago does not imagine that Cassio is in love with her; "well kissed," he
says, "an excellent courtesy," finding at once the true explanation.
[Footnote: At the end of this scene Iago says:

"That Cassio loves her I do well believe it,"

but that is merely one of the many inconsistencies in Shakespeare's
drawing of Iago. There are others; at one time he talks of Cassio as a
mere book soldier, at another equals him with Cæsar. Had Coleridge noted
these contradictions he would have declared them to be a higher
perfection than logical unity, and there is something to be said for the
argument, though in these instances I think the contradictions are due
to Shakespeare's carelessness rather than to his deeper insight.]

But having taken up this intellectual attitude in order to create Iago,
Shakespeare tries next to make his puppet concrete and individual by
giving him revenge for a soul, but in this he does not succeed, for
intellect is not maleficent. At moments Iago lives for us; "drown cats
and blind puppies ... put money in your purse"--his brains delight us;
but when he pursues Desdemona to her end, we revolt; such malignity is
inhuman. Shakespeare was so little inclined to evil, knew so little of
hate and revenge that his villain is unreal in his cruelty. Again and
again the reader asks himself why Iago is so venomous. He hates Othello
because Othello has passed him over and preferred Cassio; because he
thinks he has had reason to be jealous of Othello, because-----but every
one feels that these are reasons supplied by Shakespeare to explain the
inexplicable; taken all together they are inadequate, and we are apt to
throw them aside with Coleridge as the "motive hunting of motiveless
malignity." But such a thing as "motiveless malignity" is not in nature,
Iago's villainy is too cruel, too steadfast to be human; perfect
pitiless malignity is as impossible to man as perfect innate goodness.

Though Iago and Othello hold the stage for nine-tenths of the play
Shakespeare does not realize them so completely as he realizes Cassio,
an altogether subordinate character. The drinking episode of Cassio was
not found by Shakespeare in Cinthio, and is, I think, clearly the
confession of Shakespeare himself, for though aptly invented to explain
Cassio's dismissal it is unduly prolonged, and thus constitutes perhaps
the most important fault in the construction of the play. Consider, too,
how the moral is applied by Iago to England in especial, with which
country neither Iago nor the story has anything whatever to do.

Othello's appearance stilling the riot, his words to Iago and his
dismissal of Cassio are alike honest work. The subsequent talk between
Cassio and Iago about "reputation" is scarcely more than a repetition of
what Falstaff said of "honour."

Coleridge has made a great deal of the notion that Othello was justified
in describing himself as "not easily jealous"; but poor Coleridge's
perverse ingenuity never led him further astray. The exact contrary
must, I think, be admitted; Othello was surely very quick to suspect
Desdemona; he remembers Iago's first suspicious phrase, ponders it and
asks its meaning; he is as quick as Posthumus was to believe the worst
of Imogen, as quick as Richard II. to suspect his friends Bagot and
Green of traitorism, and this proneness to suspicion is the soul of
jealousy. And Othello is not only quick to suspect but easy to
convince--impulsive at once and credulous. His quick wits jump to the
conclusion that Iago, "this honest creature!" doubtless

"Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds."

On hinted imputation he is already half persuaded, and persuaded as only
a sensualist would be that it is lust which has led Desdemona astray:

"O curse of marriage!
That we can call these delicate creatures ours,
And not their appetites."

He is, indeed, so disposed to catch the foul infection that Iago cries:

"Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ."

And well he may, for before he uses the handkerchief or any evidence, on
mere suspicion Othello is already racked with doubt, distraught with
jealousy, maddened with passion; "his occupation's gone"; he rages
against Iago and demands proof, Iago answers:

"I do not like the office;
But, sith I am entered in this cause so far
* * * * * *
I will go on."

This is the same paltry reason Richard III. and Macbeth adduced for
adding to the number of their crimes, the truth being that Shakespeare
could find no reason in his own nature for effective hatred.

Othello gives immediate credence to Iago's dream, thinks it "a shrewd
doubt"; he is a "credulous fool," as Iago calls him, and it is only our
sense of Iago's devilish cleverness that allows us to excuse Othello's
folly. The strawberry-spotted handkerchief is not needed: the magic in
its web is so strong that the mere mention of it blows his love away and
condemns both Cassio and Desdemona to death. If this Othello is not
easily jealous then no man is prone to doubt and quick to turn from love
to loathing.

The truth of the matter is that in the beginning of the play Othello is
a marionette fairly well shaped and exceedingly picturesque; but as soon
as jealousy is touched upon, the mask is thrown aside; Othello, the
self-contained captain, disappears, the poet takes his place and at once
shows himself to be the aptest subject for the green fever. The emotions
then put into Othello's mouth are intensely realized; his jealousy is
indeed Shakespeare's own confession, and it would be impossible to find
in all literature pages of more sincere and terrible self-revealing.
Shakespeare is not more at home in showing us the passion of Romeo and
Juliet or the irresolution of Richard II. or the scepticism of Hamlet
than in depicting the growth and paroxysms of jealousy; his overpowering
sensuality, the sensuality of Romeo and of Orsino, has sounded every
note of love's mortal sickness:

"Oth. I had been happy if the general camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known.
* * * * *
Damn her, lewd minx! O, damn her!"

We have here the proof that the jealousy of Othello was Shakespeare's
jealousy; it is all compounded of sensuality. But, and this is the
immediate point of my argument, the captain, Othello, is not presented
to us as a sensualist to whom such a suspicion would be, of course, the
nearest thought. On the contrary, Othello is depicted as sober
[Footnote: Shakespeare makes Lodovico speak of Othello's "solid
virtue"--"the nature whom passion could not shake." Even Iago finds
Othello's anger ominous because of its rarity:

"There's matter in't, indeed, if he be angry."]
and solid, slow to anger, and master of himself and his desires; he
expressly tells the lords of Venice that he does not wish Desdemona to
accompany him:

"To please the palate of my appetite
Nor to comply with heat--the young affects,
In me defunct--and proper satisfaction."

Shakespeare goes out of his way to put this unnecessary explanation in
Othello's mouth; he will not have us think of him as passion's fool, but
as passion's master; Othello is not to be even suspicious; he tells
Iago:

"'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 more virtuous:
Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt;
For she had eyes and chose me."

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. 4.]

It is the imagining of the sensual act that drives him to incoherence
and the verge of madness, as it drove Othello. In all these characters
Shakespeare is only recalling the stages of the passion that desolated
his life.

The part that imagination usually plays in tormenting the jealous man
with obscene pictures is now played by Iago; the first scene of the
fourth act is this erotic self-torture put in Iago's mouth. As Othello's
passion rises to madness, as the self-analysis becomes more and more
intimate and personal, we have Shakespeare's re-lived agony clothing
itself in his favourite terms of expression:

"O! it comes o'er my memory,
As doth the raven o'er the infected house,
Boding to all,--he had my handkerchief."

The interest swings still higher; the scene in which Iago uses Cassio's
conceit and laughter to exasperate further the already mad Othello is
one of the notable triumphs of dramatic art. But just as the quick
growth of his jealousy, and its terrible sensuality, have shown us that
Othello is not the self-contained master of his passions that he
pretends to be and that Shakespeare wishes us to believe, so this scene,
in which the listening Othello rages in savagery, reveals to us an
intense femininity of nature. For generally the man concentrates his
hatred upon the woman who deceives him, and is only disdainful of his
rival, whereas the woman for various reasons gives herself to hatred of
her rival, and feels only angry contempt for her lover's traitorism. But
Othello--or shall we not say Shakespeare?--discovers in the sincerest
ecstasy of this passion as much of the woman's nature as of the man's.
After seeing his handkerchief in Bianca's hands he asks:

"How shall I murder him, Iago?"

Manifestly, Shakespeare is thinking of Herbert and his base betrayal.
Othello would have Cassio thrown to the dogs, would have him "nine years
a-killing"; and though he adds that Desdemona shall "rot and perish and
be damned to-night," immediately afterwards we see what an infinite
affection for her underlies his anger:

"O, the world hath not a sweeter creature: she might
lie by an emperor's side and command him tasks."

And then Shakespeare uses his brains objectively, so to speak, to excuse
his persistent tenderness, and at once he reveals himself and proves to
us that he is thinking of Mary Fitton, and not of poor Desdemona:

"Hang her! I do but say what she is.--So delicate with her needle!--An
admirable musician! O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear.--Of
so high and plenteous wit and invention."

Shakespeare himself speaks in this passage. For when has Desdemona shown
high and plenteous wit or invention? She is hardly more than a symbol of
constancy. It is Mary Fitton who has "wit and invention," and is "an
admirable musician."

The feminine tenderness in Shakespeare comes to perfect expression in
the next lines; no woman has a more enduring affection:

"Iago. She's the worse for all this.

Oth. O! a thousand, a thousand times. And, then of so gentle a
condition!

Iago. Ay, too gentle.

Oth. Nay, that's certain:--but yet the pity of it, Iago!--O,
Iago, the pity of it, Iago!"

The tenderness shrills to such exquisite poignancy that it becomes a
universal cry, the soul's lament for traitorism: "The pity of it, Iago!
O, Iago, the pity of it!" Othello's jealous passion is at its height in
the scene with Desdemona when he gives his accusations precise words,
and flings money to Emilia as the guilty confidante. 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."

But the reason fades and the resolution wavers in the passion for her
"body and beauty," and the tenderness of the lover comes to hearing
again:

"[Kissing her."] O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword!--one more, one more.--
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after.--One more, and this the last.
So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep,
But they are cruel tears; this sorrow's heavenly;
It strikes where it doth love.--She wakes."

So gentle a murderer was never seen save Macbeth, and the "heavenly
sorrow" that strikes where it doth love is one of the best examples in
literature of the Englishman's capacity for hypocritical self-deception.
The subsequent dialogue shows us in Othello the short, plain phrases of
immitigable resolution; in this scene Shakespeare comes nearer to
realizing strength than anywhere else in all his work. But even here his
nature shows itself; Othello has to be misled by Desdemona's weeping,
which he takes to be sorrow for Cassio's death, before he can pass to
action, and as soon as the murder is accomplished, he regrets:

"O, insupportable! O heavy hour!"

His frank avowal, however, is excellently characteristic of the soldier
Othello:

"'Twas I that killed her."

A moment later there is a perfect poetic expression of his love:

"Nay, had she been true
If Heaven would make me such another world
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,
I'd not have sold her for it."

Then comes a revelation of sensuality and physical fastidiousness so
peculiar that by itself it proves much of what I have said of
Shakespeare:

"Oth. ... Ay 'twas he that told me first;
An honest man he is, and hates the slime
That sticks on filthy deeds."

For a breathing-space now before he is convinced of his fatal error,
Othello speaks as the soldier, but in spite of the fact that he has
fulfilled his revenge, and should be at his sincerest, we have no word
of profound self-revealing. But as soon as he realizes his mistake, his
regret becomes as passionate as a woman's and magical in expression:

"Cold, cold, my girl!
Even like thy chastity."

Another proof that Shakespeare discards the captain, Othello, in order
to give utterance to his own jealousy and love, is to be found in the
similarity between this speech of Othello and the corresponding speech
of Posthumus in "Cymbeline." As soon as Posthumus is convinced of his
mistake, he calls Iachimo "Italian fiend" and himself "most credulous
fool," "egregious murderer," and so forth. He asks for "some upright
justicer" to punish him as he deserves with "cord or knife or poison,"
nay, he will have "torturers ingenious." He then praises Imogen as "the
temple of virtue," and again shouts curses at himself and finally calls
upon his love:

"O Imogen!
My queen, my life, my wife! O Imogen,
Imogen, Imogen!"

Othello behaves in precisely the same manner; he calls Iago that
"demi-devil," and himself "an honourable murderer"; and Iago calls him a
"credulous fool." Othello, too, cries for punishment; instead of
"torturers ingenious," he will have "devils" to "whip" him, and "roast
him in sulphur." He praises Desdemona as chaste, "ill-starred wench,"
"my girl," and so forth; then curses himself lustily and ends his lament
with the words:

"O Desdemon! dead, Desdemon! dead! O!"

The same changes in mood, the same words even--the likeness is so close
that it can only be explained as I have explained it; from beginning to
end of "Cymbeline" Posthumus is Shakespeare, and as soon as jealousy,
pity, remorse, or any tender emotion seizes Othello he becomes
Shakespeare too, and speaks with Shakespeare's voice.

From here on, it is all good work if not great work to Othello's last
speech, which merits particular consideration. He begins as the captain,
but soon passes into the poet; and then towards the end talks again in
quick measure as the man of action. I quote the whole speech, [Footnote:
This speech is curiously like the long speech of Richard II. which I
have already noticed; at the beginning Shakespeare speaks as a king for
a few lines, then naturally as a poet, and at the end pulls himself up
and tries to resume the character.] putting into italics the phrases in
which the poet betrays himself:

"Oth. Soft you; a word or two, before you go.
I have done the State some service, and they know it;
No more of that.--I pray you in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice; then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unuséd to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;
And say, besides, that in Aleppo once,
When a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian, and traduced the State,
I took by the throat the circumcized dog
And smote him--thus."

All the memorable words here are the words of the gentle poet revealing
his own nature ingenuously. The relief given by tears is exquisitely
expressed, but the relief itself is a feminine experience; men usually
find that tears humiliate them, and take refuge from their scalding
shame in anger. The deathless phrases of the poet's grief must be
contrasted with the braggart mouthings of the captain at the end in
order to realize how impossible it was for Shakespeare to depict a man
of deeds.

In the first two acts Shakespeare has tried to present Othello with some
sincerity and truth to the dramatic fiction. But as soon as jealousy
touches Othello, he becomes the transparent vessel of Shakespeare's own
emotion, and is filled with it as with his heart's blood. All the
magical phrases in the play are phrases of jealousy, passion, and pity.
The character of the captain in Othello is never deeply realized. It is
a brave sketch, but, after all, only the merest sketch when compared
with Hamlet or Macbeth. We know what they thought of life and death, and
of all things in the world and over it; but what do we know of Othello's
thoughts upon the deepest matters that concern man? Did he believe even
in his stories to Desdemona?--in the men whose heads do grow beneath
their shoulders? in his magic handkerchief? in what Iago calls his
"fantastical lies"? This, I submit, is another important indication that
Shakespeare drew Othello, the captain, from the outside; the jealous,
tender heart of him is Shakespeare's, but take that away and we scarcely
know more of him than the colour of his skin. What interests us in
Othello is not his strength, but his weakness, Shakespeare's
weakness--his passion and pity, his torture, rage, jealousy and remorse,
the successive stages of his soul's Calvary!




CHAPTER IX

DRAMAS OF LUST: PART I


Troilus and Cressida

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