which we study indeed more closely than ever in the printed page, but of which we had ceased to ask for any adequate palpable embodiment.  Our impression, however, of a drama is and must be incomplete until we have seen it on the stage:  it must be put in action before our eyes ere we can hope fully to understand it.  The amount of thoughtful and learned criticism to which Shakespeare’s plays have been subjected makes us forget at times that the ultimate test of their excellence is to be found on the boards, and that they were meant, above all things, to be acted.

Taking Othello as Salvini presents him to us, and merely in the light of a dramatic performance, having cast from out our minds the recollection of all that we have ever heard, read or thought about the character—­more than this, forgetting our native English and knowing Shakespeare only through the libretto in our hands (of which, however, we must forbear to speak slightingly, for from it, we are told, Salvini himself has gained his knowledge of the part),—­putting ourselves in this mental attitude, the performance may safely be said to defy criticism, or rather to be above it, except such criticism as accords with enthusiastic admiration.  It is absolutely without a shortcoming, seen from this standpoint.  His majestic bearing, his beautiful elocution, his pure voice, his graceful, expressive gestures, and above all his perfect freedom from affectation or self-consciousness, delight us throughout; and when to these qualities are added the marvelous vigor of expression and force of passion with which he shakes his audience from the middle of the play on, one feels as if there were nothing more to ask of acting.  No description, in fact, can do justice to the perfect consistency and harmony of his conception, or to the marvelous delicacy of his points, which are yet as penetrating as they are subtle, and which never fail of their effect, whether rendered by a gesture whose power of expression seems to make words superfluous, as when in reply to Iago’s hypocritically sympathetic “I see this has a little dashed your spirits,” which is answered in the play by “Not a jot, not a jot,” Salvini tries to speak, but chokes with the words, and lifting his hand with a motion of denial and deprecation, tells us what he would fain say, but cannot; or by an intonation of voice, as when in answer to Iago’s “You would be satisfied?” he replies, marking the difference between conditional and imperative with a tone that would of itself betray him born to command—­

  Vorrei, che dico—­io voglio
  (Would?—­Nay, I will).

And when in his desperate pain and fury, maddened by the poison working within, he drags Iago to the front of the stage, and holding him by the throat speaks Shakespeare’s meaning, if not Shakespeare’s words, thick and fast, as if he were not an actor, but Othello himself, and while his audience listen with bated breath and quick-beating hearts, he hurls him to the ground, and in the uncurbed fury of his mood raises his foot to spurn him like a dog,—­then he rises far above ordinary dramatic effect:  his art does “hold the mirror up to Nature.”  We feel that we have seen Othello.