Of Irving’s Iago it would be difficult to say too much. There have been always the two extremes: one portraying the Ancient as a malignant, scowling, crafty villain, doing much work with his eyes; the other as a kind of dapper, sarcastic, sneering personage, much after the model of Mephistopheles, this tone being emphasized by an airy, fashionable dress, as though he were some cynical Venetian “about town.” In Irving was seen the man of power and capability. There was breadth of treatment—the character was coherent throughout. The keynote to the perplexing character was found in his _humour_. In “I hate the Moor!”—one of those secret, jealous, morbid broodings which belong to human nature—an admirably delivered soliloquy, he strives to find some reasonable excuse for this suggestion; ‘He has done my office’ is merely accepted as a suitable pretext. The mode in which this was, as it were, chased through the turnings of his soul; the anxious tone of search, “I know not if ’t be true”; the covering up his face, and the motion by which he let his hands glide, revealing an elated expression at having found what would “serve,” was a perfect exhibition of the processes of thought. All this was set off by a dress of singular appropriateness and richness: a crimson and gold jerkin, with a mantle of dull or faded green, sometimes alternated with a short cloak and a red mantle worn on one arm. In Booth’s Othello there appeared to be a lack of vigour, and the elocutionist was too present. There was a system of “points.” Some critics were rude enough to say that “his make-up suggested at times an Indian juggler, while about the head he seemed a low-cast Bengali.” He was never the “noble Moor.” “He had a tendency at times to gobble like a turkey.” This was rather hard measure. But in the scene with Iago, and, above all, in the scenes with Desdemona, the frantic bursts of jealousy, the command of varied tones, the by-play, the fierce ordering of Emilia and his wife—all this was of a high class, and stirred us. Miss Terry’s Desdemona was pathetic, and her piteous pleadings and remonstrances went straight to the heart.