. What he is in himself is as mysterious as life. Life is
clear, up to a point, but beyond that point it is always baffling.
Shakespeare's task was to look at life clearly. Looking at it clearly he
was as baffled by what he saw, as we, who only see by his aid. He found
in Iago an image like life itself, a power and an activity, prompted by
something secret and silent.

Much ink has been wasted about the "duration of time" in this play. The
action of the play is one. It matters not if the time be divided into
ten or fifty. In London and the University towns where writing is mostly
practised, the play is seldom played. It is almost never played as
Shakespeare meant it to be played. Those who write about it write after
reading it. This is a reading age. Shakespeare's was an active age. That
those who care most for his tragedies should be ignorant of the laws
under which he worked is our misfortune and our fault and our disgrace.

The point is not insisted on; but some passages in the play suggest that
when Shakespeare began to write it he was minded to make the action the
falling of a judgment upon Desdemona for her treachery to her father.
The treachery caused the old man's death. The too passionate and hasty
things always bring death in these plays. Violent delights have violent
ends and bring violent ends to others.

The poetry of _Othello_ is nearly as well known as that of _Hamlet_.
Many quotations from the play have passed into the speech of the people.
A play of intrigue does not give the fullest opportunity for great
poetry; but supreme things are spoken throughout the action. Othello's
cry--

"It is the very error of the moon.
She comes more near the earth than she was wont
And drives men mad,"

is one of the most perfect of all the perfect things in the tragedies.

_King Lear._

_Written._ 1605-6.

_Published._ 1608.

_Source of the Plot._ The story of Lear is told in Holinshed's
_Chronicles_, in a play by an unknown hand, _The True Chronicle
History of King Leir_, and in a few stanzas of the tenth canto of
the second Book of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_.

The character of Gloucester seems to have been suggested by the
character of a blind king in Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_.

_The Fable._ King Lear, in his old age, determines to give up his
kingdom to his three daughters. Before he does so, he tries to
assure himself of their lov