is a tragedy, and from this point we may abandon the ungrateful and undramatic task of awarding praise and blame. When Othello, after a brief interval, re-enters (III. iii. 330), we see at once that the poison has been at work and ‘burns like the mines of sulphur.’
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.
He is ‘on the rack,’ in an agony so unbearable that he cannot endure the sight of Iago. Anticipating the probability that Iago has spared him the whole truth, he feels that in that case his life is over and his ‘occupation gone’ with all its glories. But he has not abandoned hope. The bare possibility that his friend is deliberately deceiving him—though such a deception would be a thing so monstrously wicked that he can hardly conceive it credible—is a kind of hope. He furiously demands proof, ocular proof. And when he is compelled to see that he is demanding an impossibility he still demands evidence. He forces it from the unwilling witness, and hears the maddening tale of Cassio’s dream. It is enough. And if it were not enough, has he not sometimes seen a handkerchief spotted with strawberries in his wife’s hand? Yes, it was his first gift to her.
I am sure it was your wife’s—did I today
See Cassio wipe his beard with.
‘If it be that,’ he answers—but what need to test the fact? The ‘madness of revenge’ is in his blood, and hesitation is a thing he never knew. He passes judgment, and controls himself only to make his sentence a solemn vow.
The Othello of the Fourth Act is Othello in his fall. His fall is never complete, but he is much changed. Towards the close of the Tempta-
