self; for the singular reason that here, wherever you look, are old Dumas' "two actors and a passion," and that what Jenkin called "emotion" is never absent. The actors change: are now Othello and Iago, now Desdemona and Emilia, now Othello and Desdemona, now Emilia and Othello, now Othello and Fate, the tremendous, the inevitable: even Death. But the passion persists: it shifts its quality as the Master wills, takes on the hues, speaks with the voice, dares with the furiousness of love, and hate, and jealousy, and misery and murder and despair. But, once evoked, it never lets go of your throat; and this is what makes "Othello" the play of plays it is. I think that "Lear" is bigger, as being more elemental (let us say); I think that "Hamlet" is certainly more subtle, more engaging, more romantic; I think that in "Measure for Measure" and "Macbeth": perhaps, too, in "Troilus," and in "Antony and Cleopatra," with its elderly lovers kissing and dying against a background of ruining Empire and a changing world: we get more of such vital and undisguisable essentials as went to the making of our Prospero-Proteus, our Man of Men, our Chief of Poets. But nowhere in his achievement has he discovered a greater capacity, a clearer insight, a more assured and royal method, than here. Of course, he plundered Cinthio; but who was Cinthio that he should not be plundered? And of what effect were Cinthio now-he, and his Antient, and his Lieutenant, his "Moore," and his Desdemona - had he not been translated, and glorified, and eternised in terms of very Shakespeare?

VI

Tragedy is an abstraction of life at its quintessential points its passages of high-climbing, inoubliable, annihilating rapture; its supreme moments of envy, hate, wrath, misery, suspicion, lust, despair. And Shakespeare, the great the great "Abstractor of Quintessences," accomplished no more splendidly difficult task in all the years of his tremendous and triumphing achievement than when he made his Moor, not merely plausible, but entirely human and credible. It has been, and perhaps still is, objected to this august and immortal thing, that Othello is too "easily moved": that his ear is too wide, that is, his mind too prompt, his heart too eager to entertain suspicion; and that he is so readily satisfied in the matter of proof that he might give points to such typical exemplars of horndom as Arnolphe in "l'École des femmes" and the Sganarelle of "le Cocu imaginaire." These objections have, of course, been traversed, and traversed to so complete a purpose that I note them only for the form's sake, and with never a thought of going back on them. 'Tis enough to note that Tragedy, being a quintessentialised abstraction of life in its most desperate potentialities, has its own convention, and is governed by none but its own rules, and that to begin upon the examination of an exemplary piece of tragedy by questioning the propriety of that convention were to make Criticism impossible. To accept the Tragic Convention is to find the character of Othello an

"entire and perfect chrysolite" among creations: an achievement in presentation which Shakespeare himself has not surpassed; a study in passion-wrought character in which the last is said. "Tis as it were a soul in earthquake and eclipse; and there is never a detail, never a touch of the cataclysm, however variable and minute, but is realised and recorded with so consummate an artistry, an intelligence so abounding, so complete, and so assured, that the issue savours of inspiration.

VII

It is history that J.-B. Poquelin, called Molière, wrote for his company, and that, cutting his parts to his actors and actresses much as a modern snip cuts you his "tailor-mades" and his "suits" to the physical idiosyncrasies of his customers, female and male, succeeded, being an accomplished and very admirable master in this sort of sartorials, not only in fitting his customers but, also, in founding and establishing a tradition: a tradition, too, of such comprehensive and enduring potency that, in its shadow, Coquelin aîné plays Scapin much as Molière played Scapin, while Agnès (say) and Horace are to this day presented in the same terms, on the same level, so far as is possible in the same spirit, as were imposed by J.-B. Poquelin on le Sieur Lagrange and on that brilliant and beautiful Mlle. de Brie, of whom 't is told that, at sixty, she was still the best Agnès of them

all. Now, Molière was the greatest Actor-Manager1 that ever lived; but it is obvious that Shakespeare, being a person of (shall I say?) considerable intelligence, anticipated him in this matter, and, having a great actor, Burbage to wit, in his company, wrote as carefully and as joyously for him as, long years after, le Sieur Poquelin wrote for Molière and Lagrange and de Brie. I would go so far as to say that had Dick Burbage — a Stratford man, too!-been of another temperament than he was, and lacked the strange, romantic, passionate face he had, there had been differences in Richard, Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, as we have them, and that they who would fain present the dramatist from his plays would do well to look carefully and keenly into the intellectual and emotional quality of his chief of actors. But such argument is not for here nor now; and I end with this reflection: "This afternoon, at the Globe Theatre, First Performance of Othello, the Moore of Venice'; Othello, Master Richard Burbadge." Othello? with Burbage "up," and Shakespeare prompting him from the wings? What a première !

W. E. HENLEY.

1 That he wrote his best for himself and his temporary woman, or "leading lady," is but to say that he was a Manager-Actor in the fullest sense of the term.