Again, in the fourth act, when Iago brings home to him the realization of his wife’s infidelity, what can be finer than the sharpening of his voice from stress of pain, changing from the full roundness of its usual masculine robustness to a high womanish key, as he asks the fatal questions, “Che disse?  Che?  Che fece?” What words could have said so much as the dumb show with which he signifies that terrible fact of which he can neither ask nor hear in words?  And who can doubt when he hears that cry of agony that bursts from his lips at Iago’s gross confirmation of his suggestion that it is the cry of a man stabbed to the heart?  His suffering is as real to us as the agony of a lion would be if we stood by and saw some one drive a knife into the beast up to the hilt.  It equals in reality any exhibition of simple unfeigned bodily pain, with all its intensity of violence.  The word “rant” never once comes into our minds.

Salvini expresses everything.  He demands nothing from his audience but eyes and ears; he acts the part in every detail; he does just what he aims to do.  His motion is as unconscious and unfettered as that of a deer or a tiger:  whether he paces with a stealthy, restless tread up and down the back of the stage, reminding us irresistibly of a caged wild beast, or whether he half crouches, then drags himself along, and then darts upon Iago in the last scene, it is always plain that his body is the servant of his mind:  he moves in harmony with his mood.

Despite, therefore, the natural tendency to scrutinize closely the claims of a foreigner seeking to rule over our hearts as the vicegerent of Shakespeare’s sovreignty, there has been, and happily can be, no question in regard to one essential point.  That Salvini is a born actor, a great tragedian, none will be bold enough to dispute.  In that rare combination of intellectual and physical qualities without which no particular gift would justify his pretensions—­intensity of emotion, subtlety of perception, a power of impersonation implying of itself the union of all the natural requirements with a mastery in their display attainable only by consummate art—­it is hard to believe that he can ever have been excelled; though doubtless the mingled fire and pathos of Kean transcended in their effect any like exhibition ever witnessed on the stage.  Except for the few—­if any still survive—­who can remember the Othello of Kean, living recollection affords no opportunity for a judgment founded on comparison.

The only question therefore which it is possible to raise relates to Salvini’s conception of the character—­a question such as must always exist in the case of any representation of Shakespeare, with whose creations no actor can ever hope to identify himself, however he may modify our former impressions.  Let it be remembered, too, that an actor’s conception of a character must never be vague, undefined or shadowy, as that of a mere reader may well be, and probably