will be in the exact degree in which he is a keen and appreciative student.  The actor must not strive to suggest all possible solutions, but must hold firmly to one, and that the most dramatic; he must seize upon the salient points; his subtleties must not be too subtle for gesture, glance and tone to express; he must choose which meaning out of many meanings he shall enforce, which mood out of many moods he shall make predominate.

The exceptions which have been taken to Salvini’s performance all rest upon the notion that he has misconceived the character.  It is superb, we are told, but it is not Shakespeare.  It is a representation not of Othello the Moor, but of a Moor named Othello.  The idea that dominates throughout is that of race:  the character loses its individuality and becomes a mere type, an embodiment of the tropical nature, an illustration of Byron’s lines: 

  Africa is all the sun’s,
  And as her earth her human clay is kindled.

The unbridled passion, the revengeful fury, is that of a savage.  The anguish and indignation of a noble spirit believing itself outraged and wronged are transformed into the blind rage and capricious fury of a wild beast.

This objection seems to us to spring from the state of mind often induced by long familiarity with a subject, in which the gain of minute knowledge is accompanied by a loss of the force and vividness of the first impression.  People study Shakespeare as they study the Bible, softening whatever they find revolting until they have convinced themselves that it does not exist.  Actors in general share in this sentiment or strive to gratify it.  Othello’s complexion is forgotten in the reading, and becomes in the representation such that the spectator feels no repugnance to his marriage with the fair Desdemona.  Betrayed through the mere openness and generosity of his nature, he acts only as a sensitive and vehement nature would be compelled to act in so terrible a complication, and the emotions kindled by his demeanor and conduct are never those of horror and repulsion, but only of pity and admiration.

But, however noble and pathetic such a rendering may be, it consorts better with the ideas and demands of the present time than with those of the Elizabethan age.  The dramatist who began by writing Titus Andronicus had at least no instinctive distaste to repulsive subjects, no fear of shocking his audience by an exhibition of untamed barbarity.  Othello is “of a free and open nature,” he is “great of heart,” he is above doing wrong without provocation, real or supposed.  But his nature admits no possibility of self-control, of reason in the midst of doubts, of patience under injury.  His temperament betrays itself in physical exhibitions wild and portentous.  “You are fatal then when your eyes roll so,” is the suggestive cry of Desdemona.  In his perplexity and fury he swoons and foams.  He overhears an insult to Venice and slays the traducer.