ess of a
brand-new lie. Have not certain wise men of the east of
England--Cantabrigian Magi, led by the star of their goddess Mathesis
("mad Mathesis," as a daring poet was once ill-advised enough to dub her
doubtful deity in defiance of scansion rather than of truth)--have they
not detected in the very heart of this tragedy the "paddling palms and
pinching fingers" of Thomas Middleton?

To the simpler eyes of less learned Thebans than these--Thebes, by the
way, was Dryden's irreverent name for Cambridge, the nursing mother of
"his green unknowing youth," when that "renegade" was recreant enough to
compliment Oxford at her expense as the chosen Athens of "his riper
age"--the likelihood is only too evident that the sole text we possess of
_Macbeth_ has not been interpolated but mutilated. In their version of
_Othello_, remarkably enough, the "player-editors," contrary to their
wont, have added to the treasure-house of their text one of the most
precious jewels that ever the prodigal afterthought of a great poet
bestowed upon the rapture of his readers. Some of these, by way of
thanksgiving, have complained with a touch of petulance that it was out
of place and superfluous in the setting: nay, that it was incongruous
with all the circumstances--out of tone and out of harmony and out of
keeping with character and tune and time. In other lips indeed than
Othello's, at the crowning minute of culminant agony, the rush of
imaginative reminiscence which brings back upon his eyes and ears the
lightning foam and tideless thunder of the Pontic sea might seem a thing
less natural than sublime. But Othello has the passion of a poet closed
in as it were and shut up behind the passion of a hero. For all his
practical readiness of martial eye and ruling hand in action, he is also
in his season "of imagination all compact." Therefore it is that in the
face and teeth of all devils akin to Iago that hell could send forth to
hiss at her election, we feel and recognise the spotless exaltation, the
sublime and sun-bright purity, of Desdemona's inevitable and invulnerable
love. When once we likewise have seen Othello's visage in his mind, we
see too how much more of greatness is in this mind than in another
hero's. For such an one, even a boy may well think how thankfully and
joyfully he would lay down his life. Other friends we have of
Shakespeare's giving whom we love deeply and well, if hardly with such
love as could weep for him