NOTE L.

OTHELLO IN THE TEMPTATION SCENE.

One reason why some readers think Othello ‘easily jealous’ is that they completely misinterpret him in the early part of this scene.  They fancy that he is alarmed and suspicious the moment he hears Iago mutter ’Ha!  I like not that,’ as he sees Cassio leaving Desdemona (III. iii. 35).  But, in fact, it takes a long time for Iago to excite surprise, curiosity, and then grave concern—­by no means yet jealousy—­even about Cassio; and it is still longer before Othello understands that Iago is suggesting doubts about Desdemona too. (’Wronged’ in 143 certainly does not refer to her, as 154 and 162 show.) Nor, even at 171, is the exclamation ’O misery’ meant for an expression of Othello’s own present feelings; as his next speech clearly shows, it expresses an imagined feeling, as also the speech which elicits it professes to do (for Iago would not have dared here to apply the term ‘cuckold’ to Othello).  In fact it is not until Iago hints that Othello, as a foreigner, might easily be deceived, that he is seriously disturbed about Desdemona.

Salvini played this passage, as might be expected, with entire understanding.  Nor have I ever seen it seriously misinterpreted on the stage.  I gather from the Furness Variorum that Fechter and Edwin Booth took the same view as Salvini.  Actors have to ask themselves what was the precise state of mind expressed by the words they have to repeat.  But many readers never think of asking such a question.

The lines which probably do most to lead hasty or unimaginative readers astray are those at 90, where, on Desdemona’s departure, Othello exclaims to himself: 

     Excellent wretch!  Perdition catch my soul
     But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,
     Chaos is come again.

He is supposed to mean by the last words that his love is now suspended by suspicion, whereas in fact, in his bliss, he has so totally forgotten Iago’s ‘Ha!  I like not that,’ that the tempter has to begin all over again.  The meaning is, ’If ever I love thee not, Chaos will have come again.’  The feeling of insecurity is due to the excess of joy, as in the wonderful words after he rejoins Desdemona at Cyprus (II. i. 191): 

                     If it were now to die,
     ’Twere now to be most happy:  for, I fear
     My soul hath her content so absolute
     That not another comfort like to this
     Succeeds in unknown fate.

If any reader boggles at the use of the present in ’Chaos is come again,’ let him observe ‘succeeds’ in the lines just quoted, or let him look at the parallel passage in Venus and Adonis, 1019: 

For, he being dead, with him is beauty slain;
And, beauty dead, black Chaos comes again.

Venus does not know that Adonis is dead when she speaks thus.