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the awful character of Othello; for such he seems to us to be designed to be. He appears never as a lover, but at once as a husband and the relation of his love made dignified, as it is a husband's justification of his marriage, is also dignified, as it is a soldier's relation of his stern and perilous life. His love itself, as long as it is happy, is perfectly calm and serene—the protecting tenderness of a husband. It is not till it is disordered, that it appears as a passion then is shown a power in contention with itself-a mighty being struck with death, and bringing up from all the depths of life convulsions and agonies. It is no exhibition of the power of the passion of love, but of the passion of life, vitally wounded, and self over-mastering. If Desdemona

But she is

That a man

had been really guilty, the greatness would have been destroyed, because his love would have been unworthy, false. good, and his love is most perfect, just, and good. should place his perfect love on a wretched thing, is miserably debasing, and shocking to thought; but that loving perfectly and well, he should by hellish human circumvention be brought to distrust and dread, and abjure his own perfect love, is most mournful indeed-it is the infirmity of our good nature wrestling in vain with the strong powers of evil. Moreover, he would, had Desdemona been false, have been the mere victim of fate; whereas he is now in a manner his own victim. His happy love was heroic tenderness; his injured love is terrible passion; and disordered power, engen lered within itself to its own destruction, is the height of all tragedy.

"The character of Othello is perhaps the most greatly drawn, the most heroic of any of Shakspeare's actors; but it is, perhaps, that one also of which his reader last acquires the intelligence. The intellectual and warlike energy of his mind-his tenderness of affection-his loftiness of spirit-his frank, generous magnanimity— impetuosity like a thunderbolt—and that dark, fierce flood of boiling passion, polluting even his imagination,-compose a character entirely original, most difficult to delineate, but perfectly delineated.”

Emilia in this play is a perfect portrait from common life, a masterpiece in the Flemish style: and though not necessary as a contrast, it cannot be but that the thorough vulgarity, the loose

principles of this plebeian woman, united to a high degree of spirit energetic feeling, strong sense and low cunning, serve to place in brighter relief the exquisite refinement, the moral grace, the unblemished truth, and the soft submission of Desdemona.

On the other perfections of this tragedy, considered as a production of genius-on the wonderful characters of Othello and Iago on the skill with which the plot is conducted, and its simplicity which a word unravels,* and on the overpowering horror of the catastropheeloquence and analytical criticism have been exhausted; I will only add, that the source of the pathos throughout-of that pathos which at once softens and deepens the tragic effect-lies in the character of Desdemona. No woman differently constituted could have excited the same intense and painful compassion, without losing something of that exalted charm, which invests her from beginning to end, which we are apt to impute to the interest of the situation, and to the poetical coloring, but which lies, in fact, in the very essence of the character. Desdemona, with all her timid flexibility and soft acquiescence, is not weak; for the negative alone is weak; and the mere presence of goodness and affection implies in itself a species of power; power without consciousness, power without effort, power with repose that soul of grace!

I knew a Desdemona in real life, one in whom the absence of intellectual power is never felt as a deficiency, nor the absence of energy of will as impairing the dignity, nor the most imperturbable serenity, as a want of feeling: one in whom thoughts appear mere instincts, the sentiment of rectitude supplies the principle, and virtue itself seems rather a necessary state of being, than an imposed law. No shade of sin or vanity has yet stolen over that bright innocence. No discord within has marred the loveliness without-no strife of the factitious world without has disturbed the harmony within. The comprehension of evil appears for ever shut out, as if goodness had

Consequences are so linked together, that the exclamation of Emilia,

O thou dull Moor!-That handkerchief thou speakest of
I found by fortune, and did give my husband!

is sufficient to reveal to Othello the whole history of his ruin.

converted all things to itself; and all to the pure in heart must necessarily be pure. The impression produced is exactly that of the character of Desdemona; genius is a rare thing, but abstract goodness is rarer. In Desdemona we cannot but feel that the slightest manifestation of intellectual power or active will would have injured the dramatic effect. She is a victim consecrated from the first,

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an offering without blemish," alone worthy of the grand final sacrifice; all harmony, all grace, all purity, all tenderness, all truth! But, alas! to see her fluttering like a cherub, in the talons of a fiend to see her- poor Desdemona !

IMOGEN.

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We now come to Imogen.

Others of Shakspeare's characters are, as dramatic and poetical conceptions, more striking, more brilliant, more powerful; but of all his women, considered as individuals rather than as heroines, Imogen is the most perfect. Portia and Juliet are pictured to the fancy with more force of contrast, more depth of light and shade; Viola and Miranda, with more aërial delicacy of outline; but there is no female portrait that can be compared to Imogen as a woman-none in which so great a variety of tints are mingled together into such a perfect harmony. In her we have all the fervor of youthful tenderness, all the romance of youthful fancy, all the enchantment of ideal grace,-the bloom of beauty, the brightness of intellect, and the dignity of rank, taking a peculiar hue from the conjugal character which is shed over all, like a consecration and a holy charm. In Othello and the Winter's Tale, the interest excited for Desdemona and Hermione is divided with others: but in Cymbeline, Imogen is the angel of light, whose lovely presence pervades and animates the whole piece. The character altogether may be pronounced finer, more complex in its elements, and more fully developed in all its parts, than those of Hermione and Desdemona; but the position in which she is placed is not, I think, so fine at least, not so effective, as a tragic situation.

Shakspeare has borrowed the chief circumstances of Imogen's story from one of Boccaccio's tales.*

A company of Italian merchants who are assembled in a tavern at Paris, are represented as conversing on the subject of their wives

• Decamerone. Novella, 9mo. Giornata, 2de

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