But the part in which, according to our conception, Mr. Kean failed most, was in the third act with Othello, where ‘comes the tug of war.’ The following passage is, we think, decisive to our purpose:— ‘_Iago._ My noble lord. _Othello._ What dost thou say, Iago? _Iago._ Did Michael Cassio, When you woo’d my lady, know of your love? _Othello._ He did from first to last. Why dost thou ask? _Iago._ But for a satisfaction of my thought, No further harm. _Othello._ Why of thy thought, Iago? _Iago._ I did not think he had been acquainted with it. _Othello._ O yes, and went between us very oft— _Iago._ Indeed! _Othello._ Indeed! Ay, indeed. Discern’st thou aught of that? Is he not honest? _Iago._ Honest, my Lord? _Othello._ Honest? Ay, honest. _Iago._ My Lord, for aught I know. _Othello._ What dost thou think? _Iago._ Think, my Lord! Othello. Think, my Lord! Alas, thou echo’st me, As if there were some monster in thy thought Too hideous to be shewn. Thou dost mean something: I heard thee say even now, thou lik’dst not that— When Cassio left my wife. What did’st not like? And when I told thee, he was of my counsel, Of my whole course of wooing; thou criedst, indeed! And didst contract and purse thy brow together, As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain Some horrible conceit: If thou dost love me, Shew me thy thought. _Iago._ My Lord, you know I love you. _Othello._ I think thou dost: And for I know thou ‘rt full of love and honesty, And weigh’st thy words before thou giv’st them breath, Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more: For such things in a false disloyal knave Are tricks of custom: but in a man that’s just, They’re cold dilations working from the heart, Which passion cannot rule.’ Now, if there is any thing of superficial gaiety or heedlessness in this, ‘it is not written in the bond:’—the breaks and stops, the pursing and knitting of the brow together, the deep internal working of hypocrisy under the mask of love and honesty, escaped us on the stage.—The same observation applies to what he says afterwards of himself:— ‘Though I perchance am vicious in my guess, As I confess it is my nature’s plague To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy Shapes faults that are not.’ The candour of this confession would hardly be extorted from him, if it did not correspond with the moody dissatisfaction, and suspicious, creeping, cat-like watchfulness of his general appearance. The anxious suspense, the deep artifice, the collected earnestness, and, if we may so say, the _passion_ of hypocrisy, are decidedly marked in every line of the whole scene, and are worked up to a sort of paroxysm afterwards, in that inimitably characteristic apostrophe:—