Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/81

Rh Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness, As jealous creatures are, it were enough To put him to ill thinking. Emilia. Is he not jealous? Desdemona. Who he? I think the sun where he was born Drew all such humours from him."

In a short speech of Æmilia's, there occurs one of those side-intimations of the fluctuations of passion which we seldom meet with but in Shakespear. After Othello has resolved upon the death of his wife, and bids her dismiss her attendant for the night, she answers,

Shakespear has here put into half a line what some authors would have spun out into ten set speeches.

The character of Desdemona herself is inimitable both in itself, and as it contrasts with Othello's groundless jealousy, and with the foul conspiracy of which she is the innocent victim. Her beauty and external graces are only indirectly glanced at; we see "her visage in her mind;" her character every where predominates over her person.