The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 30

"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. Ca.s.sio 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, Ca.s.sio's first exclamation is sufficient to establish the fact that he is merely the poet's mask:

"O, behold, The riches of the s.h.i.+p is come on sh.o.r.e!"

And just as clearly as Ca.s.sio 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 Ca.s.sio's admiration of Desdemona Iago does not imagine that Ca.s.sio 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 Ca.s.sio 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 Ca.s.sio as a mere book soldier, at another equals him with Caesar. 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 att.i.tude 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 Oth.e.l.lo because Oth.e.l.lo has pa.s.sed him over and preferred Ca.s.sio; because he thinks he has had reason to be jealous of Oth.e.l.lo, 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 Oth.e.l.lo hold the stage for nine-tenths of the play Shakespeare does not realize them so completely as he realizes Ca.s.sio, an altogether subordinate character. The drinking episode of Ca.s.sio was not found by Shakespeare in Cinthio, and is, I think, clearly the confession of Shakespeare himself, for though aptly invented to explain Ca.s.sio's dismissal it is unduly prolonged, and thus const.i.tutes 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.

Oth.e.l.lo's appearance stilling the riot, his words to Iago and his dismissal of Ca.s.sio are alike honest work. The subsequent talk between Ca.s.sio and Iago about "reputation" is scarcely more than a repet.i.tion of what Falstaff said of "honour."

Coleridge has made a great deal of the notion that Oth.e.l.lo 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; Oth.e.l.lo 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 p.r.o.neness to suspicion is the soul of jealousy. And Oth.e.l.lo 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 l.u.s.t which has led Desdemona astray:

"O curse of marriage!

That we can call these delicate creatures ours, And not their appet.i.tes."

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 Oth.e.l.lo is already racked with doubt, distraught with jealousy, maddened with pa.s.sion; "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.

Oth.e.l.lo 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 Oth.e.l.lo'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 Ca.s.sio and Desdemona to death. If this Oth.e.l.lo is not easily jealous then no man is p.r.o.ne to doubt and quick to turn from love to loathing.

The truth of the matter is that in the beginning of the play Oth.e.l.lo is a marionette fairly well shaped and exceedingly picturesque; but as soon as jealousy is touched upon, the mask is thrown aside; Oth.e.l.lo, 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 Oth.e.l.lo'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 pa.s.sion 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.

- - - - - - - - - - d.a.m.n her, lewd minx! O, d.a.m.n her!"

We have here the proof that the jealousy of Oth.e.l.lo was Shakespeare's jealousy; it is all compounded of sensuality. But, and this is the immediate point of my argument, the captain, Oth.e.l.lo, is not presented to us as a sensualist to whom such a suspicion would be, of course, the nearest thought. On the contrary, Oth.e.l.lo is depicted as sober [Footnote: Shakespeare makes Lodovico speak of Oth.e.l.lo's "solid virtue"--"the nature whom pa.s.sion could not shake." Even Iago finds Oth.e.l.lo'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 appet.i.te 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 Oth.e.l.lo's mouth; he will not have us think of him as pa.s.sion's fool, but as pa.s.sion's master; Oth.e.l.lo 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 Oth.e.l.lo 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 appet.i.te; 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 Oth.e.l.lo becomes jealous he is transformed by Shakespeare's own pa.s.sion. 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. "Oth.e.l.lo," 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 Oth.e.l.lo. In all these characters Shakespeare is only recalling the stages of the pa.s.sion 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 Oth.e.l.lo's pa.s.sion rises to madness, as the self-a.n.a.lysis 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 Ca.s.sio's conceit and laughter to exasperate further the already mad Oth.e.l.lo 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 Oth.e.l.lo is not the self-contained master of his pa.s.sions that he pretends to be and that Shakespeare wishes us to believe, so this scene, in which the listening Oth.e.l.lo 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 Oth.e.l.lo--or shall we not say Shakespeare?--discovers in the sincerest ecstasy of this pa.s.sion 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.

Oth.e.l.lo would have Ca.s.sio thrown to the dogs, would have him "nine years a-killing"; and though he adds that Desdemona shall "rot and perish and be d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sage. 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."