+Othello+.--This play has often been called the tragedy of jealousy, but that is a misleading statement. Othello, as Coleridge pointed out, is not a constitutionally jealous man, such as Leontes in _The Winter's Tale_. His distrust of his wife is the natural suspicion of a man lost amid new and inexplicable surroundings. {183} Women are proverbially suspicious in business, not because nature made them so, but because, as they are in utter ignorance of standards by which to judge, they feel their helplessness in the face of deceit. Othello feels the same helplessness. Trained up in wars from his cradle, he could tell a true soldier from a traitor at a glance, with the calm confidence of a veteran; but women and their motives are to him an uncharted sea. Suddenly a beautiful young heiress falls in love with him, and leaves home and friends to marry him. He stands on the threshold of a new realm, happy but bewildered. Then comes Iago, his trusted subordinate, --who, as Othello knows, possesses that knowledge of women and of civilian life which he himself lacks,--and whispers in his ear that his bride is false to him; that under this fair veneer lurks the eternal feminine as they had seen it in the common creatures of the camp; that she has fooled her husband as these women have so often fooled his soldiers; and that the rough-and-ready justice of the camp should be her reward. Had Othello any knowledge or experience in such matters to fall back on, he might anchor to that, and become definitely either the trusting husband or the Spartan judge. But as it is, he is whirled back and forth in a maelstrom of agonized doubt, until compass, bearings, and wisdom lost, he ends all in universal shipwreck. The character of Iago is one of the subtlest studies of intelligent depravity ever created by man. Ostensibly his motive is revenge; but in reality his wickedness seems due rather to a perverted mental activity, unbalanced by heart or conscience. As Napoleon enjoyed manoeuvring armies or Lasker studying chess, so {184} Iago enjoys the sense of his own mental power in handling his human pawns, in feeling himself master of the situation. If he ever had natural affections, they have been atrophied in the pursuit of this devilish game. With Desdemona the feminine element, which had been negligible in _Julius Caesar_ and thrown into the background in _Hamlet_, becomes a prominent feature, and remains so through the later tragedies. There is a pathetic contrast between the beautiful character of Desdemona and her undeserved fate, just as there is between the real nobility of Othello and the mad act by which he ruins his own happiness. For that reason this is perhaps the most touching of all Shakespeare's tragedies.