Page:The Moor of Venice.djvu/20

9 can hold this hand from plucking out that tongue of thine, which dares to speak such slander of my wife!" And again,—"Make thou these eyes self-witnesses of what thou tell'st; or, on thy life, I'll make thee wish thou hadst been born without a tongue!" which suggests the exclamation Shakspere has put into the mouth of Othello, in the torture of his bewilderment and doubt,—

But the refined gentleness, the true nobility of soul, the unsuspecting trustfulness, and all the higher qualities which make up the character of Othello, are wanting in the Story: his revenge is of an ordinary stamp, and satisfied with planned barbarity of execution; whereas, in the Tragedy, the punishment of his wife's supposed guilt is not revenge;

"For nought I did in hate, but all in honour."

It is not a selfish prompting, but a feeling of necessity, which his stern sense of justice lays on him, and against which his natural tenderness and love vainly wrestle:

"Yet she must die, or she'll betray more men."

He is driven by the demon of fate to the verge of the precipice, too hurriedly to look back or to resist; bewilderment deprives him of the power of