THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

THE

AMERICAN MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

MARCH, 1836.

THE CHARACTER OF DESDEMONA.

THERE are critics who cannot bear to see the virtue and delicacy of Shakspeare's Desdemona called in question; who defend her on the ground that Othello is not an Ethiopian, but a Moor; that he is not black, but only tawny; and they protest against the sable mask of Othello upon the stage, and against the pictures of him in which he is always painted black. They say that prejudices have been taken against Desdemona from the slanders of Iago, from the railings of Roderigo, from the disappointed paternal rancour of Brabantio, and from the desponding concessions of Othello himself."

I have said, that since I entered upon the third of Shakspeare's seven ages, the first and chief capacity in which I have read and studied him is as a teacher of morals; and that I had scarcely ever seen a player of his parts who regarded him as a moralist at all. I further said, that in my judgment no man could understand him who did study him preeminently as a teacher of morals. These critics say they do not incline to put Shakspeare on a level with Esop! Sure enough they do not study Shakspeare as a teacher of morals. To them, therefore, Desdemona is a perfect character; and her love for Othello is not unnatural, because he is not a Congo negro but only a sooty Moor, and has royal blood in his veins.

My objections to the character of Desdemona arise not from what Iago, or Roderigo, or Brabantio, or Othello says of her; but from what she herself does. She absconds from her father's house, in the dead of night, to marry a blackamoor. She breaks a father's heart, and covers his noble house with shame, to gratify-what? Pure love, like that of Juliet or Miranda? No! unnatural passion; it cannot be named with delicacy. Her admirers now say this is criticism of 1835; that the color of Othello has nothing to do with the passion of Desdemona. No? Why, if Othello had been white, what need would there

have been for her running away with him? She could have made no better match. Her father could have made no reasonable objection to it; and there could have been no tragedy. If the color of Othello is not as vital to the whole tragedy as the age of Juliet is to her character and destiny, then have I read Shakspeare in vain. The father of Desdemona charges Othello with magic arts in obtaining the affections of his daughter. Why, but because her passion for him is unnatural; and why is it unnatural, but because of his color? In the very first scene, in the dialogue between Roderigo and Iago, before they rouse Brabantio to inform him of his daughter's elopement, Roderigo contemptuously calls Othello "the thick lips." I cannot in decency quote here-but turn to the book, and see in what language Iago announces to her father his daughter's shameful misconduct. The language of Roderigo is more supportable. He is a Venitian gentleman, himself a rejected suitor of Desdemona; and who has been forbidden by her father access to his house. Roused from his repose at the dead of night by the loud cries of these two men, Brabantio spurns, with indignation and scorn, the insulting and beastly language of Iago; and sharply chides Roderigo, whom he supposes to be hovering about his house in defiance of his prohibitions and in a state of intoxication. He threatens him with punishment. Roderigo replies

"Rod. Sir, I will answer any thing. But I beseech you,
If't be your pleasure, and most wise consent,
(As partly, I find, it is,) that your fair daughter
At this odd-even and dull watch o' the night,
Transported-with no worse nor better guard,
But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier, -
To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor,-
If this be known to you, and your allowance,
We then have done you bold and saucy wrongs;
But if you know not this, my manners tell me,
We have your wrong rebuke. Do not believe,
That, from the sense of all civility,

I thus would play and trifle with your reverence:
Your daughter-if you have not given her leave,—
I say again, hath made a gross revolt;

Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes,

In an extravagant and wheeling stranger,

Of here and every where: Straight satisfy yourself:

If she be in her chamber, or your house,

Let loose on me the justice of the state
For thus deluding you."

Struck by this speech as by a clap of thunder, Brabantio calls up his people, remembers a portentous dream, calls for light, goes and searches with his servants, and comes back saying

"It is too true an evil: gone she is:

And what's to come of my despised time,

Is nought but bitterness."

The father's heart is broken; life is no longer of any value to him; he repeats this sentiment time after time whenever he appears in the scene; and in the last scene of the play, where Desdemona lies dead, her uncle Gratiano says—

"Poor Desdemona! I am glad thy father's dead,

Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief
Shore his old thread in twain."

Indeed! indeed! I must look at Shakspeare in this as in all his pictures of human life, in the capacity of a teacher of morals. I must believe that, in exhibiting a daughter of a Venitian nobleman of the highest rank eloping in the dead of the night to marry a thick-lipped woolheaded Moor, opening a train of consequences which lead to her own destruction by her husband's hands, and to that of her father by a broken heart, he did not intend to present her as an example of the perfection of female virtue. I must look first at the action, then at the motive, then at the consequences, before I inquire in what light it is received and represented by the other persons of the drama. The first action of Desdemona discards all female delicacy, all filial duty, all sense of ingenuous shame. So I consider it and so, it is considered, by her own father. Her offence is not a mere elopement from her father's house for a clandestine marriage. I hope it requires no unreasonable rigour of morality to consider even that as suited to raise a prepossession rather unfavorable to the character of a young woman of refined sensibility and elevated education. But an elopement for a clandestine marriage with a blackamoor! - That is the measure of my estimation of the character of Desdemona from the beginning; and when I have passed my judgment upon it, and find in the play that from the first moment of her father's knowledge of the act it made him loathe his life, and that it finally broke his heart, I am then in time to inquire, what was the deadly venom which inflicted the immedicable wound: - and what is it, but the color of Othello?

"Now, Roderigo,

Where did'st thou see her? - Oh, unhappy girl!·

With the Moor, say'st thou ?-Who would be a father?"

These are the disjointed lamentations of the wretched parent when the first disclosure of his daughter's shame is made known to him. This scene is one of the inimitable pictures of human passion in the hands of Shakspeare, and that half line,

"With the Moor say'st thou ?"

comes from the deepest recesses of the soul.

Again, when Brabantio first meets Othello, he breaks out :