It is out of his character. He has the spirit of command, of lordship, of dominion--an _animus imperiosus_. This element must be granted to fit him for his place; and it is intimated, and is consistent with and essential to his whole fabric of mind. Then, he would not put that which belonged to him out of his power, in hostile keeping--his wife and not his wife. It is contrary to his great love, which desires and would feed upon her continual presence. And against his discretion, prudence, or common sense, to risk that Brabantio, discovering, might in fury take sudden violent measures--shut her up in a convent, or turn her into the streets, or who knows what--kill her. TALBOYS. Then the insupportable consideration and question, how do they come together as man and wife? Does she come to his bedroom at his private Lodgings, or his quarters at the Sagittary? Or does he go to hers at her father's, climbing a garden wall every night like Romeo, bribing the porter, or trusting Ancilla? You cannot figure it out any way without _degradation_, and something ludicrous; and a sense of being entangled in the impracticable. NORTH. The least that can be said is, that it invests the sanctimony of marriage with the air of an illicit amour. TALBOYS. Then the high-minded Othello running the perpetual and imminent risk of being caught thieving--slipping through loop-holes--mouse-holes--key-holes. What in Romeo and Juliet is romance, between Othello and Desdemona is almost pollution. NORTH. What a desolating of the MANNERS of the Play! Will you then, in order to evade a difficulty of the mechanical construction, clog and whelm the poetry, and moral greatness of the Play, with a preliminary debasement? Introduce your Hero and Heroine under a cloud? TALBOYS. And how can you show that Othello could not at any moment have taken her away, as at last you suppose him to do, having a motive? Mind--he knows that the wars are on--he does not know he shall be sent for that night. He does not know that he may not have to keep her a week at his quarters. NORTH. My dear Seward--pray, meditate but for a moment on these words of Desdemona in the Council Chamber-- "My noble Father, I do perceive here A DIVIDED DUTY: My life and education both do learn me How to respect you; you are the LORD OF DUTY, I am hitherto your Daughter: BUT HERE'S MY HUSBAND; And so _much duty as my mother showed To you_, preferring you before her Father, So much I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor, my Lord."