Honesty and love! Ay, and who but the reader of the play could think otherwise? 'Ib.' Iago's soliloquy: And what's he then that says--I play the villain? When this advice is free I give, and honest, Probable to thinking, and, indeed, the course To win the Moor again. He is not, you see, an absolute fiend; or, at least, he wishes to think himself not so. Act iii. sc. 3. 'Des.' Before Æmilia here, I give thee warrant of this place. The over-zeal of innocence in Desdemona. Ib. 'Enter Desdemona and Æmilia.' 'Oth.' If she be false, O, then, heaven mocks itself! I'll not believe it. Divine! The effect of innocence and the better genius! Act iv. sc. 3. 'Æmil.' Why, the wrong is but a wrong i' the world; and having the world for your labour,'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right. Warburton's note. What any other man, who had learning enough, might have quoted as a playful and witty illustration of his remarks against the Calvinistic 'thesis', Warburton gravely attributes to Shakspeare as intentional; and this, too, in the mouth of a lady's woman! Act v. last scene. Othello's speech:-- --Of one, whose hand, Like the base _Indian_, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe, &c. Theobald's note from Warburton. Thus it is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make Othello say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed Mariamne!--O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to the ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Othello wishes to excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse himself,--to excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is finely conveyed in the word 'base,' which is applied to the rude Indian, not in his own character, but as the momentary representative of Othello's. 'Indian'--for I retain the old reading--means American, a savage 'in genere'. Finally, let me repeat that Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago, such a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who had believed Iago's honesty as Othello did. We, the audience, know that Iago is a villain from the beginning; but in considering the essence of the Shakspearian Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his situation, and under his circumstances. Then we shall immediately feel the fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the noble Moor, and the wretched fishing jealousies of Leontes, and the morbid suspiciousness of Leonatus, who is, in other respects, a fine character.