Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/80

50 ; but afterwards his remorse is as dreadful as his revenge has been, and yields only to fixed and death-like despair. His farevvel speech, before he kills himself, in which he conveys his reasons to the senate for the murder of his wife, is equal to the first speech in which he gave them an account of his courtship of her, and "his whole course of love." Such an ending was alone worthy of such a commencement.

If any thing could add to the force of our sympathy with Othello, or compassion for his fate, it would be the frankness and generosity of his nature, which so little deserve it. When Iago first begins to practise upon his unsuspecting friendship, he answers—

This character is beautifully (and with affecting simplicity) confirmed by what Desdemona herself says of him to Æmilia after she has lost the handkerchief, the first pledge of his love to her.

"Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse Full of cruzadoes. And but my noble Moor