Thus it is in the drama we are examining,
which Shakespeare has borrowed from the
drama "King Leir." So it is also with Othello,
taken from an Italian romance, the same also
with the famous Hamlet. The same with Antony, Brutus, Cleopatra, Shylock, Richard, and
all Shakespeare's characters, all taken from
some antecedent work. Shakespeare, while
profiting by characters already given in preceding dramas, or romances, chronicles, or,
Plutarch's "Lives," not only fails to render them
more truthful and vivid, as his eulogists affirm,
but, on the contrary, always weakens them and
often completely destroys them, as with Lear,
compelling his characters to commit actions
unnatural to them, and, above all, to utter
speeches natural neither to them nor to any one
whatever. Thus, in "Othello," altho that is,
perhaps, I will not say the best, but the least
bad and the least encumbered by pompous
volubility, the characters of Othello, Iago,
Cassio, Emilia, according to Shakespeare,
are much less natural and lifelike than in the
Italian romance. Shakespeare's Othello suffers from epilepsy, of which he has an attack on the stage; moreover, in Shakespeare's
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TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE