I verily believe that if you or I had shown him the Time, tied up as it is, he would have said, “Let it go hang. They won’t find it out; and, if they do, let them make the best, the worst, and the most of it. The Play is a good Play, and I shall spoil it with mending it.” Why, Talboys, if Queen Elizabeth had required that the Time should be set straight, it could not have been done. One—two—six changes would not have done it. The Time is an entangled skein that can only be disentangled by breaking it. For the fervour of action on the Stage, Iago could not have delayed the beginning beyond the next day. And yet think of the Moral Absurdity—to begin—really as if the day after Marriage, to sow Jealousy! The thing is out of nature the whole diameter of the globe. His project was “after a time t’ abuse Othello’s ear,” which is according to nature, and is _de facto_ the impression made—strange to say—from beginning to end. But the truth is, that the Stage three hours are so soon gone, that you submit yourself to everything to come within compass. Your Imagination is bound to the wheels of the Theatre Clock. TALBOYS. Yet, in our conversation on Macbeth, you called your discovery an “astounding discovery”—and it is so. The Duplicity of Time in Othello is a hundred times more astounding— NORTH. And the discovery of it will immortalise my name. I grieve to think that the Pensive Public is sadly deficient in Imagination. I remember or invent that she once resisted me, when I said that “Illusion” is one constituent of Poetry. Illusion, the Pensive Public must be made to know, is WHEN THE SAME THING IS, AND IS NOT. Pa—God bless him!—makes believe to be a Lion. He roars, and springs upon his prey. He at once believes himself to be a Lion, and knows himself to be Pa. Just so with the Shakspeare Club—many millions strong. The two times at Cyprus _are there_; the reason for the two times—to wit, probability of the Action, storm of the Passion—_is there_; and if any wiseacre should ask, “How do we manage to stand the _known_ together-proceeding of two times?” The wiseacre is answered—“We don’t stand it—for we know nothing about it. We are held in a confusion and a delusion about the time.” We have effect of both—distinct knowledge of neither. We have suggestions to our Understanding of extended time—we have movements of our Will by precipitated time. TALBOYS. We have—we have—we have. Oh! sir! sir! sir! NORTH.