On this side he is the very opposite of Hamlet, with whom, however, he shares a great openness and trustfulness of nature. In addition, he has little experience of the corrupt products of civilised life, and is ignorant of European women.
In the second place, for all his dignity and massive calm (and he has greater dignity than any other of Shakespeare’s men), he is by nature full of the most vehement passion. Shakespeare emphasises his self-control, not only by the wonderful pictures of the First Act, but by references to the past. Lodovico, amazed at his violence, exclaims:
Call all in all sufficient? Is this the nature
Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue
The shot of accident nor dart of chance
Could neither graze nor pierce?
Iago, who has here no motive for lying, asks:
When it hath blown his ranks into the air,
And, like the devil, from his very arm
Puffed his own brother—and can he be angry?[1]
This, and other aspects of his character, are best exhibited by a single line—one of Shakespeare’s miracles—the words by which Othello silences in a moment the night-brawl between his attendants and those of Brabantio:
And the same self-control is strikingly shown where Othello endeavours to elicit some explanation of the fight between Cassio and Montano. Here, however, there occur ominous words, which make us feel how necessary was this self-control, and make us admire it the more:
My blood begins my safer guides to rule,
And passion, having my best judgment collied,
Assays to lead the way.
- ↑ For the actor, then, to represent him as violently angry when he cashiers Cassio is an utter mistake.
