(6) The peculiarities so far considered combine with others to produce those feelings of oppression, of confinement to a comparatively narrow world, and of dark fatality, which haunt us in reading _Othello_. In _Macbeth_ the fate which works itself out alike in the external conflict and in the hero's soul, is obviously hostile to evil; and the imagination is dilated both by the consciousness of its presence and by the appearance of supernatural agencies. These, as we have seen, produce in _Hamlet_ a somewhat similar effect, which is increased by the hero's acceptance of the accidents as a providential shaping of his end. _King Lear_ is undoubtedly the tragedy which comes nearest to _Othello_ in the impression of darkness and fatefulness, and in the absence of direct indications of any guiding power.[88] But in _King Lear_, apart from other differences to be considered later, the conflict assumes proportions so vast that the imagination seems, as in _Paradise Lost_, to traverse spaces wider than the earth. In reading _Othello_ the mind is not thus distended. It is more bound down to the spectacle of noble beings caught in toils from which there is no escape; while the prominence of the intrigue diminishes the sense of the dependence of the catastrophe on character, and the part played by accident[89] in this catastrophe accentuates the feeling of fate. This influence of accident is keenly felt in _King Lear_ only once, and at the very end of the play. In _Othello_, after the temptation has begun, it is incessant and terrible. The skill of Iago was extraordinary, but so was his good fortune. Again and again a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meeting of Othello and Cassio, a question which starts to our lips and which anyone but Othello would have asked, would have destroyed Iago's plot and ended his life. In their stead, Desdemona drops her handkerchief at the moment most favourable to him,[90] Cassio blunders into the presence of Othello only to find him in a swoon, Bianca arrives precisely when she is wanted to complete Othello's deception and incense his anger into fury. All this and much more seems to us quite natural, so potent is the art of the dramatist; but it confounds us with a feeling, such as we experience in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, that for these star-crossed mortals--both [Greek: dysdaimones]--there is no escape from fate, and even with a feeling, absent from that play, that fate has taken sides with villainy.[91] It is not surprising, therefore, that _Othello_ should affect us as _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ never do, and as _King Lear_ does only in slighter measure. On the contrary, it is marvellous that, before the tragedy is over, Shakespeare should have succeeded in toning down this impression into harmony with others more solemn and serene.