and the deaths of Edmund and the two sisters have almost made us forget the design on the lives of Lear and Cordelia.  Even when we are reminded of it there is still room for hope that Edgar, who rushes away to the prison, will be in time to save them; and, however familiar we are with the play, the sudden entrance of Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms, comes on us with a shock.  Much slighter, but quite perceptible, is the effect of Antony’s victory on land, and of the last outburst of pride and joy as he and Cleopatra meet (IV. viii.).  The frank apology of Hamlet to Laertes, their reconciliation, and a delusive appearance of quiet and even confident firmness in the tone of the hero’s conversation with Horatio, almost blind us to our better knowledge, and give to the catastrophe an added pain.  Those in the audience who are ignorant of Macbeth, and who take more simply than most readers now can do the mysterious prophecies concerning Birnam Wood and the man not born of woman, feel, I imagine, just before the catastrophe, a false fear that the hero may yet escape.

(h) I will mention only one point more.  In some cases Shakespeare spreads the catastrophe out, so to speak, over a considerable space, and thus shortens that difficult section which has to show the development of the counter-action.  This is possible only where there is, besides the hero, some character who engages our interest in the highest degree, and with whose fate his own is bound up.  Thus the murder of Desdemona is separated by some distance from the death of Othello.  The most impressive scene in Macbeth, after that of Duncan’s murder, is the sleep-walking scene; and it may truly, if not literally, be said to show the catastrophe of Lady Macbeth.  Yet it is the opening scene of the Fifth Act, and a number of scenes in which Macbeth’s fate is still approaching intervene before the close.  Finally, in Antony and Cleopatra the heroine equals the hero in importance, and here the death of Antony actually occurs in the Fourth Act, and the whole of the Fifth is devoted to Cleopatra.

* * * * *

Let us now turn to Othello and consider briefly its exceptional scheme of construction.  The advantage of this scheme is obvious.  In the second half of the tragedy there is no danger of ‘dragging,’ of any awkward pause, any undue lowering of pitch, any need of scenes which, however fine, are more or less episodic.  The tension is extreme, and it is relaxed only for brief intervals to permit of some slight relief.  From the moment when Iago begins to poison Othello’s mind we hold our breath. Othello from this point onwards is certainly the most exciting of Shakespeare’s plays, unless possibly Macbeth in its first part may be held to rival it.  And Othello is such a masterpiece that we are scarcely conscious of any disadvantage attending its method of construction, and may even wonder why Shakespeare employed this method—­at any rate in its purity—­in this tragedy alone.  Nor is it any answer to say that it would not elsewhere have suited his material.  Even if this be granted, how was it that he only once chose a story to which this method was appropriate?  To his eyes, or for his instinct, there must have been some disadvantage in it.  And dangers in it are in fact not hard to see.