The poet is accused of having shewn little regard to poetical justice, and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical probability.  The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose; the revenge which he demands is not obtained but by the death of him that was required to take it; and the gratification which would arise from the destruction of an usurper and a murderer, is abated by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious.

OTHELLO

Act V. Scene vi. (v. ii. 63-5.)

     Oh perjur’d woman!  Thou dost stone my heart,
     And mak’st me call, what I intent to do,
     A murder, which I thought a sacrifice.

This line is difficult.  Thou hast harden’d my heart, and makest me kill thee with the rage of a murderer, when I thought to have sacraficed thee to justice with the calmness of a priest striking a victim.

It must not be omitted, that one of the elder quarto’s reads, “Thou dost stone thy heart:”  which I suspect to be genuine.  The meaning then will be, thou forcest me to dismiss thee from the world in the state of the murdered without preparation for death, when I intended that thy punishment should have been “a sacrifice” atoning for thy crime.

I am glad that I have ended my revisal of this dreadful scene.  It is not to be endured.

The beauties of this play impress themselves so strongly upon the attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical illustration.  The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless, and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge; the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his interest and his vengeance; the soft simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious of innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakespeare’s skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any modern writer.  The gradual progress which Iago makes in the Moor’s conviction, and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him, are so artfully natural, that, though it will perhaps not be said of him as he says of himself, that he is “a man not esily jealous,” yet we cannot but pity him when at last we find him “perplexed in the extreme.”

There is always danger lest wickedness conjoined with abilities should steal upon esteem, though it misses of approbation but the character if Iago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised.