Description - Shakespeare and Chaucer Examinations by William Taylor Thom
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ...in Othello's character. 37. In III. iii. we see cold, evil intellect brought in contact with innocence and simplicity. The subtlety and cunning, the insight into Othello's mind here seem almost supernatural. Iago urges Othello on by suggesting to his mind what he wishes him to believe. Here, too, we see Iago's power of making the good seem evil. We must remember that were we in Othello's place we would probably feel and act as he does. He has never had any reason to suspect the honesty and faithfulness of Iago; he is too innocent to suspect guile; the proofs all seem indisputable. Iago, by his subtle power of intellect, forces Othello's mind to move in the channel which he has prepared. He attacks and destroys him through his virtues, which tends to enhance his villainy; he destroys Othello's happiness, and finally his life, by turning his grandest virtues, his love for Desdemona, his heroism, his grand innocence and simplicity, into instruments of torture: so he proceeds in the case of Desdemona. Elsewhere he works upon the faults and weaknesses of his victims. 38. No; I think not. It seems perfectly natural that a woman like Desdemona, gentle, pliant, loving, susceptible to impressions from without, feeling almost unconsciously that the wealth of sterner qualities in Othello were entirely wanting in her own composition, should revere these qualities in a man like Othello. This union seems to be a verification of the old proverb, "extremes meet"; yet there is between the two one thing in common, a gentle, loving heart, in the one case concealed beneath a beautiful and winning exterior, in the other, beneath the rough, unprepossessing exterior of the hardened warrior. It is, as it were, "deep calling unto deep." 39. The predominant feature of...
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