Well—Lear let it be. NORTH. Mind what you are about, Talboys. There are limits to human forbearance. Swear that after this morning’s breakfast you will never again utter the words Othello—Iago—Cassio—Desdemona—— TALBOYS. I swear. Meanwhile, let us recur to the Question of Short and Long Time. NORTH. When Shakspeare was inditing the Scenes of the “Decline and Fall”—“The Temptation”—“The Seduction”—or whatsoever else you choose to call it—the Sequence of Cause and Effect—the bringing out into prominence and power the successive ESSENTIAL MOVEMENTS of the proceeding transformation were intents possessing his whole spirit. We can easily conceive that they might occupy it absolutely and exclusively—that is to say, excluding the computation and all consideration of actual time. If this be an excessive example, yet I believe that a huddling up of time is a part of the poetical state; that you must, and, what is more, may, crowd into a Theatrical or Epic Day, far more of transaction between parties, and of changes psychological, than a natural day will hold—ay, ten times over. The time on the Stage and in Verse is not literal time. Not it, indeed; and if it be thus with time, which is so palpable, so selfevidencing an entity, what must be the law, and how wide-ranging, for everything else, when we have once got fairly into the Region of Poetry? TALBOYS. The usefulness of the Two Times is palpable from first to last—of the Short Time for maintaining the tension of the passion—of the long for a thousand general needs. Thus Bianca must be used for convincing Othello very potently, positively, unanswerably. But she cannot be used without supposing a protracted intercourse between her and Cassio. Iago’s dialogue with him falls to the ground, if the acquaintance began yesterday. But superincumbent over all is the _necessity of our not knowing_ that Iago begins the Temptation, and that Othello extinguishes the Light of his Life all in one day. NORTH.