Florentine, to be his officer. Iago, no doubt, had been making inquiry respecting the character of the new lieutenant; and, as slander is ever open-mouthed, had learned, among other circumstances, that Cassio was on the eve of marriage with one who, in the language of Shakspeare, is styled a customer. Iago was too deeply skilled in the knowledge of human nature to omit this piece of intelligence. The more despicable he made Cassio appear, the more certain was he of gaining credit for his hatred of the Moor, which Roderigo had begun to suspect. It is quite clear that, at the time this dialogue took place, Roderigo knew nothing of Cassio, and that Iago knew him only by report, as an arithmetician and a Florentine—and nearly a cuckold. Your correspondent is therefore in a mistake, when he says that the "sole aim of Iago is to deprecate the character of Cassio." This is not the fact. His sole aim is to lull asleep the awakened suspicions of Roderigo, by shewing what an affront the Moor had put upon him by appointing such a fellow as Cassio to be his officer; and his motive for doing this is, to put money in his pocket. At an after-period he has other views:
"Cassio's a proper man: Let me see now;
To get his place, and to plume up my will;
A double knavery—How? how?—Let me see:—
I have't;—it is engender'd:—Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light."
Your correspondent forgets when he says, "His amour with Bianca was notorious not only to Roderigo, but to every body both in Venice and Cyprus." At this period of the drama, none of the parties had so much as dreamt of being in Cyprus.
I am therefore inclined to think, that P. C. K.'s emendation is far from preserving, as he supposes, either the spirit or consistency of the passage.
I at one time thought that we ought to read, "A fellow almost damn'd in a fair life," but not in the sense the ingenious Mr Tyrwhitt proposes, who imagines that Iago makes allusion to the judgment denounced in the gospel against those of whom all men spoke well. This allusion, had Iago been capable of making it, would not have answered his purpose. So far is he from wishing to represent Cassio as a person of whom all men spoke well, that he speaks of him as an obscure individual, "one Michael Cassio, a Florentine."
Allowing "fair life" to be the correct reading, I would regard it in this light: When a landsman goes on board a ship of war, he is regarded, in point of service, as a useless lubber; and among other contemptuous epithets, that of Fair-weather Jack is sometimes applied. Iago contrasts the stormy scenes of actual service—"hair-breadth escapes i' the deadly breach,"—with the calm peaceable, and noiseless tenor of Cassio's way of life, which he thinks sufficient to damn his pretensions.
After all, I believe the true reading to be, "A fellow almost damn'd in a frail wife." The word frail is used in nearly the same sense in Merry Wives of Windsor: "Page is a secure fool, and stands firmly on his wife's frailty." Again, in Othello:—
"Is't frailty that thus errs?
It is so too: And have not we affections?
Desires for sport? and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well; else, let them know
The ills we do, their ills instruct us too."
The damnation which Iago infers, is the derision and contempt which is attached to such a connexion:—"To be made a fixed figure for the aim of scorn to point his slow, unmoving finger at," the loss of reputation which a soldier seeks "even in the cannon's mouth."
Your correspondent's construction of the following passage is not original. Dr Johnson says, "What is the reason of this perturbation? Is it want of resolution to do justice? Is it the dread of shedding blood? No: it is not the action that shocks me, but it is the cause." Your correspondent says, "It is the cause of what I am about to do, not the deed itself, which creates this agony with which I go to do it." I think they are both wrong.
In this beautiful and broken soliloquy Othello declares, that Desdemona's infidelity is the cause of the action that shocks him. Let me not name it to you, ye chaste stars—it is the cause. The conviction of her infidelity awakens very different emotions.
Arise black vengeance from thy hollow cell!
Yield up, O love, thy crown, and hearted throne
