"The gentle Lady married to the Moor," expresses explicitly the feeling of the general English heart--pity for the contrast, and a thought of the immense love which has overcome it. NORTH. White and Black is the utter antithesis--as, at intensity, Night and Day. Yes--Talboys--Every jot of soot you take from his complexion, you take an iota from the signified power of love. TALBOYS. As you say, sir, the gap which is between the Stage and Reality must prevent, in our hearts, anything like loathing of the conjunction. NORTH. The touch of such an emotion would annul the whole Tragedy. A disparity, or a discrepancy, vast as mysterious--but which love, at the full, is entitled to overlook--overstep! Whether Fate dare allow prosperity to a union containing so mighty an element of disruption, is another question. It seems like an attempt at overruling the "Æterna fœdera rerum." TALBOYS. For half an hour after her death, Othello believes her guilty. You must take it for a representation of what his feelings would have been, if she had really been guilty. NORTH. Unless the fact of her innocence have a secret potency that reaches, through all appearance and evidence of her guilt, into his innermost soul. Be that as it may, he is, after the deed, perplexed and unmanned, totally unlike a man who has performed a great sacrifice to the offended gods. You may say that the convulsion of uptorn love is too fresh, and that he would in time have regained his strength--that had she been guilty, the first half-hour must have been just what it was. All I know is, that his mind first becomes clear, when he knows her innocent. Then he is, in a measure, himself, and sees his way. Had she been guilty, he would have lived two years with a stern, desolate soul--not harsh, perhaps, to honest folks, though--and have then fallen in battle. TALBOYS. But how is Iago affected by the blackness? No doubt, with more hate and aversion at being commanded by and outshone by him. High military rank and command--high favour by the Senate--high power and esteem in the world--high royalty of spirit--happiness in marriage--all these in Othello are proper subjects of envy, and motives of hate in Iago. The Nigger! NORTH. Antipathy of bad to good--of base to noble--exacerbated by physical antipathy of colour! But I never could fathom the hate and malice and revenge of Iago. TALBOYS. It is unfathomable--and therefore fit agent in Tragedy. NORTH. Even so. I don't believe that Shakspeare always means you to be able to lay motives in the balance and weigh them. Far otherwise. TALBOYS. Ay--Think how the Murder of Duncan leaps up, Hell-born, into the heart of Macbeth--at the breath of the Weird Sisters! NORTH.