‘O Grace! O Heaven forgive me! Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? God be wi’ you: take mine office. O wretched fool That lov’st to make thine honesty a vice! Oh monstrous world! take note, take note, O world! To be direct and honest, is not safe. I thank you for this profit, and from hence I’ll love no friend, since love breeds such offence.’ This burst of hypocritical indignation might well have called forth all Mr. Kean’s powers, but it did not. We might multiply passages of the same kind, if we had time. The philosophy of the character is strikingly unfolded in the part where Iago gets the handkerchief:— ‘This may do something. The Moor already changes with my poisons, Which at the first are scarce found to distaste, But with a little act upon the blood, Burn like the mines of sulphur.’ We here find him watching the success of his experiment, with the sanguine anticipation of an alchemist at the moment of projection. ‘I did say so: Look where he comes’—[_Enter Othello_]—‘Not poppy nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow’dst yesterday.’ Again he says:— ‘Work on: My medicine works; thus credulous fools are caught, And many worthy and chaste dames even thus All guiltless meet reproach.’ So that after all, he would persuade us that his object is only to give an instructive example of the injustice that prevails in the world. If he is bad enough when he has business on his hands, he is still worse when his purposes are suspended, and he has only to reflect on the misery he has occasioned. His indifference when Othello falls in a trance, is perfectly diabolical, but perfectly in character:— ‘_Iago._ How is it, General? Have you not hurt your head? _Othello._ Dost thou mock me? _Iago._ I mock you not, by heaven,’ &c. The callous levity which Mr. Kean seems to consider as belonging to the character in general, is proper here, because Iago has no feelings connected with humanity; but he has other feelings and other passions of his own, which are not to be trifled with. We do not, however, approve of Mr. Kean’s pointing to the dead bodies after the catastrophe. It is not in the character of the part, which consists in the love of mischief, not as an end, but as a means, and when that end is attained, though he may feel no remorse, he would feel no triumph. Besides, it is not the text of Shakespear. Iago does not point to the bed, but Ludovico bids him look at it:—‘Look on the tragic loading of this bed,’ &c. We have already noticed that Edmund the Bastard is like an episode of the same character, placed in less difficult circumstances. Zanga is a vulgar caricature of it.