"Othello" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bemoaning to a dark-eyed, handsome girl,—(a dangerous experiment, by the way,)—who assured him that she pitied him from her heart. "Do you pity me?" he eagerly asked. "Yes, I do, most sincerely." "Then I love you for that," replied the new Othello to his Desdemona; and so well did the wooing go that the dark-eyed Catharine presently became his wife, the Kate of a forty-five years' marriage. Loving, devoted, docile, she learned to be helpmeet and companion. Never, on the one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... of this play impress themselves so strongly upon the attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical illustration. The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless, and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge; the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his interest and ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... for the manager being out of town, those deputed to act as deputies did not care to undertake the responsibility of engaging the new star. In this dilemma, overtures were made to him by the rival house, which he accepted, and made his appearance as "Iago" to Kean's "Othello" to a densely-packed audience at Drury Lane. So great was the likeness between the two actors, that strangers were puzzled to know which was Kean and which was Booth, until the tragedy reached the third act, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... art biography demands from the artist not only the greatest courage, but also the happiest combination of the highest gifts. To succeed in painting the portrait of Achilles or of Priam, of Hamlet or of Othello, may be difficult, but is it as difficult as to succeed in painting the portrait of Browning or Rossetti? Surely not. In the one case an intense dramatic imagination is needed, and nothing more. If Homer’s ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the dispute as to whether Shakspeare intended Othello for a jealous character, to consider how differently we are affected towards him, and for Leontes in the 'Winter's Tale.' Leontes is that character. Othello's fault was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... him for my place again; he shall tell me I am a drunkard. Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by-and-bye a fool, and presently a beast" —Othello, Act II. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... no one ever knew; but certainly the pundit caste did well out of the sale. Within the week the shop below was denuded, and there were nothing but bare shelves, much to the disgust of Bart, who, like Othello, found his occupation gone. The next day the furniture was to be sold, and when Deborah was comforting Sylvia at the week's end the fiat had already gone forth. Whither he intended to transfer his household the old man did not say, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... of tragedy, and an unparalleled intensity and energy, which bore few traces of the trammels of a Court, thenceforth illumined every scene that he contrived. To 1604 the composition of two plays can be confidently assigned, one of which—'Othello'—ranks with Shakespeare's greatest achievements; while the other—'Measure for Measure'—although as a whole far inferior to 'Othello,' contains one of the finest scenes (between Angelo and Isabella, II. ii. 43 sq.) ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... as if he had been a rat,—then flung him from him headlong on to the floor. It reminded me of nothing so much as Othello's treatment of Iago. Never had I seen a man so transformed by rage. Lessingham seemed to have positively increased in stature. As he stood glowering down at the prostrate Sydney, he might have stood for a materialistic conception ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Marquis, not without design probably, did his best to place in the most favorable light those attributes of mind and of heart that made Philip the most attractive of men. Like another Desdemona charmed by the eloquence of Othello, it was while listening to Philip that Antoinette first ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... beholds, as he imagines, the statue of his lost wife, it descends from the niche: it is she herself, the still living Hermione, who has kept herself so long concealed; and the piece ends with universal rejoicing. The jealousy of Leontes is not, like that of Othello, developed through all its causes, symptoms and variations; it is brought forward at once full grown and mature, and is portrayed as a distempered frenzy. It is a passion whose effects the spectator is more concerned with than with its origin, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... winter dressed in her summer coat, with a little woollen under-jacket to protect her from the cold, and a plain cheap felt hat, much mocked at by the American girls. Sarina scorned the mental scope of these girls; scorned to spend for dress, money with which she could learn to read "Othello" and "King Lear" in the original; and scorned to spend in giggling the lunch hour, in which she might read in Yiddish newspapers the latest tidings of the ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... that maman's doing it on purpose," Liza thought necessary to explain to Shatov. "She's really heard of Shakespeare. I read her the first act of Othello myself. But she's in great pain now. Maman, listen, it's striking twelve, it's ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... is beyond the Pantheon, out of the foreign quarter of Rome, and you will find in it a Roman audience—to a limited extent. Salvini acted there in Othello, and filled the character admirably; it is needless to say that Iago received even more applause than Othello; Italians know such men profoundly—they are Figaros turned undertakers. Opera was given at the Capranica when ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Andronicus. Romeo and Juliet. Timon of Athens. The Life and death of Julius Caesar. The Tragedy of Macbeth. The Tragedy of Hamlet. King Lear. Othello, the Moore of Venice. Anthony and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... these Sioux Fallians have already complained because I bathe my dear, shaggy Othello in the bath tub. And there isn't a human being here with a pedigree as ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... begins from foundations the Bible is built on— "Of man's first disobedience"—I've heard it attributed, dammy, to Milton. Well, it's lucky for them that it's not worth my while, as I may say, to break spears With the hirelings, forsooth, of the press who assert that Othello was Shakespeare's. When he that can run, sir, may read—if he borrows the book, or goes on tick— In my poems the bit that describes how the Hellespont joins the Propontic. There are men, I believe, who will tell ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... news?" she said. "There is a rumour that my Puggy leaves me at the end of the term. How to exist, I ask you, without her? Othello's occupation ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... than the rest," he continued with indifference to her anger at his bluntness. "You all think that there can be no picture of Venice without a gondola or a Bridge of Sighs in it. Have you ever read the Merchant of Venice, or Othello? There isn't a boat nor a bridge nor a canal mentioned in either of them; and yet they breathe and pulsate with the very life of Venice. I'm going to try to paint a Venetian priest so that you'll know him without a bit of ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... expression of it. Religion, in especial, has little to do with the natural world as such. It is that other and inner one, which can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell, with which it is chiefly concerned. Who can forget Othello's soliloquy as he prepares to darken his marriage chamber before the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... among our elder poets, as they would assuredly have been, had they not been conscious that the male actor could not have sufficiently affected the audience? A poet who lived in Charles the Second's day, and who has written a prologue to Othello, to introduce the first actress on our stage, has humorously touched ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... as Othello. It is funny to see how attentive all the once cool gentlemen are to Miss Alcott now she has a pass to the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... life, to the pictures that I drew of Paris, the Luxembourg, the Louvre, the Palais Cardinal, and the courtiers that thronged those historic palaces, she listened avidly and enthralled; and much as Othello won the heart of Desdemona by a recital of the perils he had endured, so it seemed to me was I winning the heart of Roxalanne by telling her of the things that I ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... "Othello" was the first play written by Shakespeare in the reign of King James, but he seems to have had "Measure for Measure" on the stocks at the same time, for each was produced at Whitehall towards the close of 1604. "Macbeth," written in 1605 and 1606, was clearly ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... this change Robert S. Kelley found "Othello's occupation gone," and the control of the Squatter Sovereign passed into the hands of John A. Martin, now Governor of Kansas, and "Bob Kelley" shook off the dust of his feet and walked away, respected for his bravery and for ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... said under my breath. But if Biddy's plot were to succeed, it was my business to play the part of Petruchio to this Katherine. Let the masquerading prince find a Desdemona who would suit his Othello! ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... that, while smiling and happy, she overheard between two Viennese, strangers to her, this short dialogue, every word of which was like a knife in her heart: "What a charming fellow that Menko is!" "Yes; is his wife ugly or a humpback? or is he jealous as Othello? She is never seen." "His wife! Is he married?" "Yes: he married a Blavka, the daughter of Angel Blavka, of Prague. Didn't ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... you, madam, for a moment here," said I, with something of Othello, in the last act, in my voice ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Which troubles me mightily, for he is a very good, harmless, honest gentleman, though not fit for the business. But I much fear a worse may come, that may be more uneasy to me. Up, and to Deptford by water, reading "Othello, Moore of Venice," which I ever heretofore esteemed a mighty good play, but having so lately read "The Adventures of Five Houres," it seems a mean thing. Walked back, and so home, and then down to the Old Swan and drank at Betty ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... replied Mr Crummles; 'it comes off easily enough, and there's only the face and neck. We had a first-tragedy man in our company once, who, when he played Othello, used to black himself all over. But that's feeling a part and going into it as if you meant it; it isn't usual; more's ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... however, a sight somewhat strange to him, who was just come from Italy; the Italians not being addicted to the cuffardo but bastonza, says he. He then went up to Adams, and telling him he looked like the ghost of Othello, bid him not shake his gory locks at him, for he could not say he did it. Adams very innocently answered, "Sir, I am far from accusing you." He then returned to the lady, and cried, "I find the bloody gentleman is uno insipido del nullo senso. Dammato di me, if I have seen such a spectaculo ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... expatiated upon this great source of worry—jealousy. Shakspere refers to it again and again. The whole play of Othello rests upon the Moor's jealousy of his fair, sweet, and loyally faithful Desdemona. How the fiendish Iago plays upon Othello's jealous heart ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... Venice. Othello was one of the first plays to be revived at the Restoration, and was, perhaps, the most frequently seen of all Shakespeare. On 11 October, 1660, Burt acted Othello at the Cockpit. Downes gives Mohun as Iago; Hart, Cassio; Cartwright, Brabantio; Beeston, Roderigo; Mrs. Hughes, Desdemona; Mrs. Rutter, Emilia. But it is certain Clun had also acted Iago—(Pepys, 6 February, 1668). Hart soon gave ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... referred to at the close of the last chapter is the same as that which those who rarely go to a theatre have to get over before they can appreciate an actor. They go to "Macbeth" or "Othello," expecting to find players speaking and acting on the stage much as they would in actual life; and not finding this, are apt to think the acting coarse and unnatural. They forget that the physical conditions of the stage involve compliance with conventions from which there is ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... when Smolenskin was publishing his weekly paper Ha-Mabbit ("The Observer"), Freiman founded the first Socialistic journal in Hebrew, Ha-Emet ("The Truth"). It also appeared in Vienna. And, again, S. A. Salkindson, a convert from Judaism, the author of admirable translations of "Othello" (1874) and "Romeo and Juliet" (1878), both published through the endeavors of Smolenskin, brought out the Hebrew translation of an epic wholly Christian in character, Milton's "Paradise Lost". It was a sign of the times that this work of art was enjoyed and appreciated by the educated Hebrew ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war! And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, Farewell! Othello's ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... The MS. has "The lively lark my matins rung," and "sung" in the rhyme. The omission of to with ring and sing is here a poetic license; but in Elizabethan English it is common in many cases where it would not now be admissible. Cf. Othello, ii. 3. 190: "you were wont be civil;" F. Q. i. 1. 50: "He thought have ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... especially felicitous in this way; while a different but not less familiar trait is exhibited in some carefully-drawn "Initial Letters," embodying charming bits of child-life and quaint allusions to well-known scenes in history and romance. "Othello" in the form of "Dandy Jim of Souf Caroline," and "The Little Assessor of Tuebingen"—a mysterious personage of whom the author refused to reveal the secret—are equally amusing and suggestive. There are some half hundred subjects of the same or other kinds in the volume, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... in the compliance of his disposition (though not in his prudence) a little resembled his lovely Sophia, was easily prevailed on to satisfy Mr Dowling's curiosity, by relating the history of his birth and education, which he did, like Othello. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... weak. Terrible then were the mutinies. Fearful was the position of the commander. We cannot altogether resist the romance which attaches to the life of these men, many a one among whom could have told a tale as wild as that with which Othello, the hero of their tribe, won his Desdemona, in whose love he finds the countercharm of his wandering life. But what sort of war such a soldiery made, may be easily imagined. Its treatment of the people and the country wherever it marched, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... enough that the author has literary power and skill. Else why do the failures of every great novelist and playwright almost always outnumber the successes? Even Shakspeare offers no exception to the fact. What a descent from "Hamlet" to "Titus Andronicus," from "Othello" to "Cymbeline"! Miss Bronte writes "Jane Eyre," and fails ever afterwards to come up to her own standard. Bulwer delights us with "The Caxtons," and then sinks to the dulness of "The Strange Story." Dickens gives us "Oliver Twist," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... play in the light of Mr. O'Connor's suggestion, I defy any one to escape such new and deep utterance- meanings, like magic ink, warm' d by the fire, and previously invisible. Will it not indeed be strange if the author of "Othello" and "Hamlet" is destin'd to live in America, in a generation or two, less as the cunning draughtsman of the passions, and more as putting on record the first full expose—and by far the most vivid one, immeasurably ahead of doctrinaires and economists—of the political theory and results, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... iron-clad steamers have been followed by the curious spectacle of a French actor teaching an English audience how Shakespeare should be acted. I would give a good deal to see M. Fechter in Hamlet, Othello, or Iago,—the only parts he has yet attempted; the rather, because the low condition of the stage in England, where Mr. Macready and Mr. Charles Kean are called great actors, makes the English newspaper-criticisms of little value. In default of this, I have been reading M. Fechter's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Not a vestige of us, not even a charred bone to tell the tale. Alumion—our friends at home—when they admired the sun would they ever fancy that it was our grave—ever dream that our ashes were whirling in its flames. The cry of Othello, in his despair, which I had learned at school, came back to my mind—"Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... very rouge to deadly pale; Will make they hair, tho' erst from gipsy polled, By barber woven, and by barber sold, Though twisted smooth with Harry's nicest care, Like hoary bristles to erect and stare. The hero of the mimic scene, no more I start in Hamlet, in Othello roar; Or haughty Chieftain, 'mid the din of arms, In Highland bonnet woo Malvina's charms; While sans culottes stoop up the mountain high, And steal from me Maria's prying eye. Blest Highland bonnet! Once my proudest dress, Now ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... servants of some other gentlemen on the Hills. At last they contrived to excite against him (whether justly or unjustly I am quite unable to say) the jealousy of one of Lord William's under-cooks. We had accordingly a most glorious tragi-comedy; the part of Othello by the cook aforesaid; Desdemona by an ugly, impudent Pariah girl, his wife; Iago by Colonel Casement's servant; and Michael Cassio by my rascal. The place of the handkerchief was supplied by a small piece of sugar-candy which Desdemona was detected in the act of ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Iago, ensign to Othello, the Moor of Venice, is jealous of Cassio, his lieutenant. He plots to oust Cassio ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... Pontifex is the exact likeness of Othello, but with a difference—he hates not wisely but too well. He would dislike the literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them and they him; there is no natural solidarity between him and them, and if he were brought into contact with them his last ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... replied Monsieur de Breuilly, with a laugh that was anything but joyful, and accentuating each word in his peculiar style, "why represent me to this gentleman as a Norman Othello? Monsieur may surely—monsieur is perfectly free to—besides, he knows and can observe the proper limits of things. At any rate, sir, here is Madame de Breuilly; suffer me to recommend her myself to ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... admirers of the English representations said to my father, "Ah! parlez moi d'Othello! voila, voila la passion, la tragedie. Dieu! que j'aime cette piece! il y a ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Hillard on the shoulder. "I am grateful to you, Jack. If you hadn't positively dragged me into it, I should have gone on grubbing, gone on thinking that I knew something about beauty. Venice!" He extended his arms as a Muezzin does when he calls to prayer. "Venice! The shade of Napoleon, of Othello, of ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... you jolly well can't, my dusky Othello. But aren't you two booked for the Houser's this afternoon? I thought you were the ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... brought forward—an account by Sir Arthur Mainwayring, auditor to Sir Thomas Egerton, in James I.'s reign, which is pronounced to be a forgery, and which probably is one—is an entry which mentions the performance of "Othello" in 1602. The second ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... his cane, when sallying from his own domicile towards the coffee-room, which he usually entered about two o'clock, to study the news of the day in the pages of the Courier. The gallant Captain frequently indulged, like Othello, in speaking— ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... been the history of the world that it brings trouble." And he says to look at Damon and Pythias, and Othello and the Merchant of Venus. And he named about a hundred prominent couples like ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... and its interest as a self-revelation made manifest to the reader. The future historian, who spared no pains to be accurate, falls into the most extraordinary anachronisms in almost every chapter. Brutus in a bob-wig, Othello in a swallow-tail coat, could hardly be more incongruously equipped than some of his characters in the manner of thought, the phrases, the way of bearing themselves which belong to them in the tale, but never could have belonged to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... our terms of endearment, nothing in which we are so like all the world; for, alas! there is no euphuism of affection which lovers have not prattled together in springtides long before the Christian era. If you call your wife 'a chuck,' so did Othello; and, whatever dainty diminutive you may hit on, Catullus, with his warbling Latin, 'makes mouths at ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... lo! 'tis to be a tragedy instead! Think you, dear Barbara, that death would come easier by means of yonder bed-cord, or of those great scissors dangling at thy waist? Or, perhaps, if thou couldst play Othello to my Desdemona, it might seem a gentler prelude to the grave. How heavy is a lie, good dame? Think you it would drag a soul to hell? If so, I need not to go alone; for if I lied to Melinza, he also lied to me—and Dona ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... out of the various traditions he confusedly adopted, and languages which he imperfectly knew. Three of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed. Desdemona, "[Greek: dysdaimonia]," "miserable fortune," is also plain enough. Othello is, I believe, "the careful;" all the calamity of the tragedy arising from the single flaw and error in his magnificently collected strength. Ophelia, "serviceableness," the true lost wife of Hamlet, is marked as having a Greek name by that of her brother, Laertes; and its signification is once ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... invites Elfonzo to a village show, where jealousy is the motive of the play, for she wants to teach him a wholesome lesson, if he is a jealous person. But this is a sham, and pretty shallow. McClintock merely wants a pretext to drag in a plagiarism of his upon a scene or two in "Othello." ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... of conversing with any of the Ewaipanoma, or men without heads, or of that other tribe, 'who have eminent heads like dogs, and live all the day-time in the sea, and speak the Carib language.' Of all these he speaks from modest hearsay, and less confidently than Othello did to Desdemona. It is true that he relates marvellous and fabulous things, but it is no less than just to distinguish very carefully between what he repeats and what he reports. For the former we have to take the evidence of his interpreters, who but dimly understood what the Indians told them, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... by analogy, with the interest excited in us by similar dramas in our own language. Few, I trust, would be rash or ignorant enough to compare Schiller with Shakspeare; yet, merely as illustration, I would say that we should proceed to the perusal of Wallenstein, not from Lear or Othello, but from Richard II., or the three parts of Henry VI. We scarcely expect rapidity in an historical drama; and many prolix speeches are pardoned from characters whose names and actions have formed the most amusing tales of our early life. On the other hand, there ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the summit of bliss, or rendered his night sleepless. The complacent husband of Madame G——regarded these men as his most beloved friends, because they enlarged the happiness of his wife; and, strange as it may appear, I believe that he had as little cause to complain as Othello, and therefore never permitted his repose to be disturbed by those suspicions which preyed upon the vitals of the hapless moor. The french Benedict ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... case; hear the witnesses depose! Oh, horrible wretch! a murderer! unmanly murderer!—a defenceless woman smothered by caitiff hands! Hang him up! hang him up! 'Softly,' whispers the POET, and lifts the veil from the assassin's heart. 'Lo! it is Othello the Moor!' What jury now dare find that criminal guilty? what judge now put on the black cap? who now says, 'Hang him up! hang ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Doggie, after reading it, thought the truest and most beautiful story in the world. Even in later years, when his intelligence had ripened and his sphere of reading expanded, he looked upon the passion of a Romeo or an Othello as a conventional peg on which the poet hung his imagery, but having no more relation to real life as it is lived by human beings than the blood-lust of the half-man, half-bull Minotaur, or the uncomfortable riding conversation ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... every play of Shakespeare," says Hallam, "that to name one as the most original seems a disparagement to others, we might say that this great prerogative of genius, was exercised above all in 'Lear.' It diverges more from the model of regular tragedy than 'Macbeth,' or 'Othello,' and even more than 'Hamlet,' but the fable is better constructed than in the last of these and it displays full as much of the almost superhuman inspiration of the poet as the ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... Shakespeare's Othello was a colored man, I guess," laughed Mr. Pertell, "and you told me you ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... Quixots to attack them. But if the age of aristocracy, like that of chivalry, should fall (and they had originally some connection) Mr. Burke, the trumpeter of the Order, may continue his parody to the end, and finish with exclaiming: "Othello's occupation's gone!" ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and it's a blessing to be grateful for, isn't it? We moody people know its worth. Glad you like my first tableau. Come and see number two. Hope it isn't spoilt; it was very pretty just now. This is "Othello telling his ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Harry Esmond or Maggie Tulliver?" The SERIOUS characters—they are seldom very familiar or definite to us in any kind of literature. One might say, to be sure, that he knows Hotspur a good deal more intimately than he knows Mr. Henry Esmond, and that he has a pretty definite idea of Iago, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, as definite as he has (to follow Mr. Austin) of Tito Melema. But we cannot reckon Othello, or Macbeth, or King Lear as FRIENDS; nay, we would rather drink with the honest ancient. All heroes and the heroines are usually too august, and also too young, to be friendly with us; ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... strong a sympathy as for the bold, downright, open bearing of the strong? . . . That there may be no mistake in the essayist's meaning, that he may drive the nail home into the English understanding, he takes an illustration which shall be familiar to all of us in the characters of Iago and Othello. To our northern thought, the free and noble nature of the Moor is wrecked through a single infirmity, by a fiend in the human form. To one of Machiavelli's Italians, Iago's keen-edged intellect would have appeared as admirable as Othello's daring appears ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the pen; but they would be fine sketches even for the pencil. King Lear, in the storm, is a landscape as well as a character study. There is something decorative even about the insistence on the swarthiness of Othello, or the deformity of Richard III. Shakespeare's work is much more than picturesque; but it is picturesque. And the same which is said here of him by way of example is largely true of the highest class of literature. Dante's Divine Comedy is supremely important ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... as a great artist, was playing in a theater in Florence that spring, and the Brownings saw with great enjoyment and admiration his impersonations of Hamlet and Othello. ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... on which I have already laid stress, is strikingly developed in his Iago, and yet it is so judiciously governed that his Iago is not in the least picturesque according to the conventional ways of frowning, sneering, diabolically grinning, and elaborately doing everything else that would induce Othello to run him through the body very early in the play. Mr. Fechter's is the Iago who could, and did, make friends, who could dissect his master's soul, without flourishing his scalpel as if it were a walking-stick, who could overpower Emilia by other arts than a sign-of-the-Saracen's-Head ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakespeare. There man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn. What is Hamlet's ruling passion? Or Othello's? Or Harry the Fifth's? Or Wolsey's? Or Lear's? Or Shylock's? Or Benedick's? Or Macbeth's? Or that of Cassius? Or that of Falconbridge? But we might go on for ever. Take a single example—Shylock. Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent to revenge? Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... genius of the actor to co-operate with that of the poet in producing an effect, for which neither was singly competent. Those who have witnessed the representation of the heart-rendings of jealousy in Kean's Othello, or of the agonies of "love and sorrow joined" in Miss O'Neil's Belvidera, will, we are persuaded, acknowledge the truth of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the failure of the golden harvest Othello's occupation was gone. The mass of the unfortunates laid down the shovel and the hoe, and left the river in crowds. It is said that there are not twenty men remaining on Indian Bar, although two months ago you could count them ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... to Emilia in "Othello." Jealousy in Shakespeare: Resemblances in Leontes to Posthumus ("Cymbeline") and to Othello. "The jealousy of Leontes," says Dowden, "is not a detailed dramatic study like the love and jealousy of Othello. It is a gross madness, which mounts to the brain and turns ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... in H.'s box at the Apollo to hear Ernesto Rossi in "Othello." He shares supremacy with Salvini in Italian tragedy. Beautiful great theatre with boxes you can walk about in; brilliant audience. The Princess Margaret was there—I have never been to the theatre ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Charlotte Corday, Florence Nightingale, Harriet Hosmer, Rosa Bonheur, Mrs. Siddons, represent as much love for the causes they lived or live for as did Vittoria Colonna for her husband, Hester and Vanessa for Swift, Heloise for Abelard, Marguerite for Faust, Ophelia for Hamlet, Desdemona for Othello, or Juliet for Romeo. These last, I repeat, were bound in the cause of love not less than the former; and they all owed their endeavors—their success, if they gained it—to the feelings and emotions ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... from our sight the distant fountain, and the last windings of the path that led to it, clasping the secret with great stone arms, like those of an Othello jealously guarding his young wife's beauty ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... in that town had known Chauncey since he wore short pants, and ought to have known that the nearest to a tragedy he had ever been was when he sat in the top gallery of a Chicago theatre and saw a lot of barnstormers play Othello. But some people, and especially very young people, don't think anything's worth believing unless it's ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... down their opponents. We, men of Athens, are not only in these respects behindhand; we can not even be awaked; like men that have drunk mandrake [Footnote: Used for a powerful opiate by the ancients. It is called Mandragora also in English. See Othello, ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... judgment, his impatient vanity, his misunderstanding of his children; the virtue of his one true daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the others, unless he had cast her away from him; as it is, she all but saves him. Of Othello, I need not trace the tale; nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony against ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Tragdie fast immer, so sonderbare und ihm eigne Wege er auch whlet, und der Franzose erreicht ihn fast niemals, ob er gleich die gebahnten Wege der Alten betritt. Nach dem 'Oedipus' des Sophokles muss in der Welt kein Stck mehr Gewalt ber unsere Leidenschaften haben als 'Othello,' als 'Knig Lear,' als 'Hamlet' u.s.w. Hat Corneille ein einziges Trauerspiel, das Sie nur halb so gerhret htte als die 'Zaire' des Voltaire? Und die 'Zaire' des Voltaire, wie weit ist sie unter dem 'Mohren von Venedig,' dessen schwache Copie sie ist, und von welchem der ganze ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... of Desdemona, did that pretty little lady. Three times that week she came to the toll-house and listened with lips apart and eyes shining. Cap'n Sproul had never heard of Othello and his wooing, but after a time his heart began to glow under the reverent regard she bent on him. Never did mutual selection more naturally come about. She loved him for the perils he had braved, and he—robbed of his mistress, the sea—yearned for just ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls" —Othello, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... isn't," I assured her. "Don't think I'm finding fault with you. On the contrary, you're really a marvelous being. But Othello's occupation's gone." ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... each other; a Swedish Othello and Desdemona, more useful and amiable than their prototypes. Bjornstam told his scapes: selling horses in a Montana mining-camp, breaking a log-jam, being impertinent to a "two-fisted" millionaire lumberman. Bea gurgled "Oh my!" and kept his ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... and opposing aims come nobly to the grapple in a struggle that vitally concerns them, the tensity of the situation will be augmented if the difference between the characters is marked. This expedient is therefore of especial importance in the drama. Othello seems more poignantly emotional in the presence of the coldly intellectual Iago. In "The School for Scandal," Charles and Joseph Surface are much more effective together than either of them would be alone. The wholehearted and happy-go-lucky ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... great sorrow, or moved by a great passion, he is endowed for a moment with the poet's speech. A poetic fact, one may almost say, is just any fact at its best. Art, it is true, looks at its object through a medium, but it always seems its inmost meaning. In Lear, Othello, Hamlet, in Falstaff and Touchstone, there is a revelation of the inner truth of human life beyond the power of moral science to bestow. We do well to seek philosophy in the poets, for though they teach only by hints and parables, they nevertheless reflect ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... cries; and all around "Restore the lock!" the vaulted roofs rebound. Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain Roared for the handkerchief that caused his pain. But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed, And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost! The lock, obtained with guilt, and kept with pain, In every place is sought, but sought in vain: With such a prize no ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... characteristic of poetic genius does the imagery become, when it moulds and colours itself to the circumstances, passion, or character, present and foremost in the mind. For unrivalled instances of this excellence the reader's own memory will refer him to the Lear, Othello, in short, to which not of the 'great, ever living, dead man's' dramatic works? Inopem me copia fecit. How true it is to nature, he has himself finely expressed in the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... blush, as some other innocent girls would have done. She had never talked an hour in her life to a young man, or heard from other girls their incessant chirping of "he—he," like that of birds in spring wooing their mates. Her nearest acquaintance with lovers was old Peter's rendering of Romeo or Othello. She remembered them well enough as her eye furtively ran over the jaunty little figure beside her. "Is his hose ungartered, his beard neglected, his shoe untied?" she thought. "Pshaw! he is not Orlando, any more than I am Rosalind." Her mother had been mistaken, that was all: she let the matter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... an Othello," Frona replied. "His tongue is a sluggard. He leaves one at the most interesting point with an enigmatical reference to a man of a bygone age. You take an unfair advantage of us, Mr. St. Vincent, and we shall be unhappy until you show ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the doors of the Western Trading Company, and over the Liebfrauenmilch and Tokayer he found a new eloquence. His Western stories, his European experiences vastly interested the dark-eyed enchantress, and, led on by the spell of those wistful eyes—Othello-like—he told her the whole story of his life. For he stood before her, all unarmed ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... to greatness Lemaitre reappeared on the classic stage of the Odeon, the scene of his earliest efforts. Here he played a number of parts, including Othello. But the actor had in his mind an idea which haunted him. It was that his favorite role of Robert Macaire had not had all the development of which it was capable. He associated with himself two authors, Antier and Saint-Amant, who accepted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... not have wished that "Romeo and Juliet" should have ended happily, or that Othello should have discovered the perfidy of his Ancient in time to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... most of his leisure in experiment. Mr. Adams remarks: "Edison and I were very fond of tragedy. Forrest and John McCullough were playing at the National Theatre, and when our capital was sufficient we would go to see those eminent tragedians alternate in Othello and Iago. Edison always enjoyed Othello greatly. Aside from an occasional visit to the Loewen Garden 'over the Rhine,' with a glass of beer and a few pretzels, consumed while listening to the excellent music of a German band, the theatre ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... paused for a moment, "I see that it would take too long. You must deal with so many prejudices—such, for example, as that which supposes 'King Lear' and 'Othello' ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... should the sceptre and the crown be given? Lord Bacon had a kingly soul, capacious great thoughts, and high designs, but no one who has read his metrical translation of the Psalms of David will be troubled again with doubts whether he was the writer also of "Macbeth," "Othello," and "Lear." Compared with these sterile, bald, and mechanical quatrains, the sacred hymns of Isaac Watts are howling and bacchanalian anacreontics, to be hiccoughed by drunkards in their most abandoned hours ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... cares so much for Tintoretto! And you've been with her to the Jewish burying-ground at the Lido, and the Spanish synagogue in the Ghetto, and the fish-market at the Rialto, and you've shown her the house of Othello and the house of Desdemona, and the prisons in the ducal palace; and three nights you've taken us to the Piazza as soon as the Austrian band stopped playing, and all the interesting promenading was over, and those stuffy old Italians ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... Antiquities, 6 vols. 8vo. Lond. 1813,—which was suppressed by the author after a few copies had been sold. I have the second and third volumes, being all that relates to Shakspeare. They consist of an edition of Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Merchant of Venice, and the third satire of Horace, copiously illustrated with notes and woodcuts, intended to prove that in the works in question, in common with "all the classics and the different specimens of the arts which have come ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... upon her studies, they were distracted by speculations on marriage and the marriage tie. A young Wallachian student named Yanko Racowitza crossed her path. His loneliness—he was far from home and friends—kindled her sympathy. Dark and ugly, she compared him to Othello, and called him her "Moor." In spite of some parental opposition she insisted upon plighting her troth to him, and the Italian lover was scornfully dismissed. Then comes the opening scene of the present story. It was ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... one evening after dark, accompanied by an acquaintance and fellow-lodger in the gas-fitting way of life. He is very good company, having worked at the theatres, and, indeed, he has a theatrical turn himself, and wishes to be brought out in the character of Othello; but whether on account of his regular work always blacking his face and hands more or ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... administration. 3. I consulted Webster, Worcester, and Walker's dictionary. 4. This state was south of Mason's and Dixon's line. 5. These are neither George nor Fanny's books. 6. Howard's, the philanthropist's, life was a noble one. 7. It is Othello's pleasure, our noble and valiant general's. 8. He visited ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer that ever gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors, men are mere personifications. We have not an Othello, but jealousy; not an Iago but perfidy; not a Brutus, but patriotism. The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative, that personifications, when he dealt with them, became men. A dialogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more dramatic effect than a dialogue between two human ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... possesses, has with those low tricks upon the eye and ear, which a player, by observing a few general effects, which some common passion, as grief, anger, &c., usually has upon the gestures and exterior, can so easily compass. To know the internal workings and movements of a great mind, of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the when and the why and the how far they should be moved; to what pitch a passion is becoming; to give the reins and to pull in the curb exactly at the moment when the drawing in or the slackening is most graceful; seems to demand a reach of intellect of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... is the fundamental theme. At the same time the effect is heightened by those race contrasts which had been so abundantly used in The Return of the Druses. Luria is a Moor who has undertaken the service of Florence, and whose religion it is to serve her. Like Othello,[22] he has been intrusted, alien as he is, by a jealous and exacting State, with the supreme command of her military forces, a position in which the fervour of the Oriental and the frank simplicity of the soldier inevitably lie open to the subtle ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... lady, and still more wondering footmen, glared upon the apparition before them with the most inexplicable amazement, totally at a loss to conceive the cause of such a novel reception. The terrified pair were, like Othello, "perplexed in the extreme," when they found themselves, instead of being in the confusion of a fire, deposited beneath the windows of a magnificent carriage, attended by footmen with white torches, and a full dressed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... "No more notable than the death of Edmund Kean, who, when he reached the passage 'Farewell, Othello's occupation's gone!' fell back unconscious; or that of John Palmer, who, after reciting 'There is another and a better world,' ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... by the gentleman who had been selected to play the part of Othello, with the remark that it was hardly fair to dispose of him at such an early stage of the performance, more especially on the ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... autobiography, and made me forget that writing was a new art, to me, and that I was rather old to try my hand at a new art. My memory suddenly began to seem not so bad after all. For weeks I had hesitated between Othello's "Nothing extenuate, nor write down aught in malice," and Pilate's "What is truth?" as my guide and my apology. Now I saw that both were too big for my modest endeavor. I was not leaving a human document for the benefit of future ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... trusting himself to the spur of the moment for throwing himself into a part passionately;—the fact being exactly the reverse in his regard, according to the earliest and most accurate of his biographers. Erratic, fitful though the genius of Edmund Kean unquestionably was—rendering him peerless as Othello, incomparable as Overreach—we are told in Mr. Procter's life of him, that "he studied long and anxiously," frequently until many hours after midnight.{*} No matter what his occupations previously might have been, or how profound ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Elizabeth executed the Earl of Essex for treason, and on the same charge threw the Earl of Southampton into the Tower. Even Shakespeare himself may have been suspected. The great plays of this period are tragedies, among which we may instance Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... about thee," was published in 1719 by Allan Ramsay in his "Tea-Table Miscellany," and was probably a sixteenth century piece retouched by him. Iago sings the last stanza but one—"King Stephen was a worthy peer," etc.—in "Othello," ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... of John Kemble (June 23, 1817), he had no rival on the stage, especially in such parts as "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," "Sir Giles Overreach," and the two already mentioned. His last appearance on the stage was in "Othello" at ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... unwitting crime. It would be a mere play upon words to recognize as a dramatic "struggle" the writhing of a worm on a hook. And does not this description apply very closely to the part played by another great protagonist—Othello to wit? There is no struggle, no conflict, between him and Iago. It is Iago alone who exerts any will; neither Othello nor Desdemona makes the smallest fight. From the moment when Iago sets his machination to work, they are like people sliding down an ice-slope to an inevitable ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... preached that could make filial ingratitude so hateful to men as the sinful play of "King Lear"? Or where was there ever a sermon that could so convince men of the wrong and the cruelty of harboring a pampered and unanalyzed jealousy as the sinful play of "Othello"? And where are there ten preachers who can stand in the pulpit preaching heroism, unselfish devotion, and lofty patriotism, and hold their own against any one of five hundred William Tells that can be raised upon ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... but with an extensive verandah which protected the inner part from rain and sun. Now and again I caught glimpses of Arakeeta's fairy form flitting in, or obscuring, the lamplight. I could see two other women and two men. Who and what were they? Was one of those dark forms an Othello, ready to smother his Desdemona? Or were either of them a Valentine between my Marguerite and me? Though there was no moon, I dared not venture within the lamp's rays, for her sake; for my own, I was reckless now - I would ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... long swinging gait. They were wearing blue turbans above the flowing white "haik" which fell back upon their shoulders, and the white burnous which reached to their ankles. They were dark, bearded men; one of them at least with the noble air of Othello, the Moor, and with his ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... with Bacon, and he no doubt valued and studied with attention, the writings of that great man. The working up of the splendid dialogue between Iago and Othello, may not impossibly have been suggested by this sentence of Lord Bacon: "Breaking off in the midst of what one was about to say, (as if he took himself up) breeds a greater appetite in him with whom you confer, to know more." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... more in this: I pray thee, speak to me as to thy thinkings, As thou dost ruminate; and give thy worst of thoughts The worst of words. —OTHELLO. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... least unequal ever so done. The latter statement is likely to be more questioned than the former; but I have no fear of failing to make it out. In one sense, no doubt, Shakespere is unequal—as life is. He is not always at the tragic heights of Othello and Hamlet, at the comic raptures of Falstaff and Sir Toby, at the romantic ecstasies of Romeo and Titania. Neither is life. But he is always—and this is the extraordinary and almost inexplicable difference, not merely between him and all his contemporaries, but between him and all other ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... his nature warred like opposing forces. The wild passion of Othello was in him. He could have snatched up the slender white-and-gold figure, wrapped the shining jewelled head in the trailing scarf of point lace, and rushed away with the girl in his arms—anywhere, far from these people who had no right to be near her. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... thought of them in his mighty men I do not find: it is not usually in the nature of such men; and if he had loved the flowers the least better himself, he would assuredly have been offended at this, and given a botanical turn of mind to Caesar, or Othello. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... That virtue ought not to suffer in a tragedy, is not well considered: Monimia in the Orphean, Belvidera in Venice Preserved, Athenais in Theodosius, Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear, Desdemona in Othello, Hamlet, (to name no more,) are instances that a tragedy could hardly be justly called a tragedy, if virtue did not temporarily suffer, and vice for a while triumph. But he recovers himself in the same paragraph; and leads us to look up to the FUTURE ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... humanity; and as such he even deigns to explain his policy and to enter into a contest of magnanimity with Posa. But the large-hearted monarch of whom we get a glimpse in this scene is soon reduced back to the jealous husband of St. Real, and his jealousy is closely patterned upon that of Othello. The Philip of the last two acts is sometimes pitiable, sometimes repulsive, never great. One is not very much surprised when he hires an assassin to kill Posa, instead of handing him ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Italian school of operatic writing and shows the unmistakable signs of Wagner's influence upon him. Now, in his seventy-third year, comes the intelligence that he has completed still another opera, on the subject of "Othello," which will soon be placed in rehearsal in Paris. In the interval between "Aida" and "Othello" he wrote the "Manzoni Requiem," a "Pater Noster" for five voices, and an "Ave Maria" for soprano solo. He has also written several marches, short symphonies, concertos for ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... order of vision. Even Head and Kirkman, as we have observed, had perceived the advantage of foreign scenery and travel to vary their matter; Afra had herself been in Guiana; and, as she was of a very inflammable disposition, it is quite possible that some Indian Othello had caught her fresh imagination. On the other hand, there was the heroic romance, with all its sighs and flames, still the rage: and a much less nimble intellect than Afra's, with a much less cosmopolitan experience, might ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... thing for him. It was not Byron who made the first advances, for his powers of seduction were only the attractions with which nature had endowed him. His person, his voice, his look,—all in him was irresistible. In presenting himself anywhere, he could very well say with Shakspeare, in "Othello,"— ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... But I saw him catch her playfully by the chin! After a little they rose. He put his arm about her and kissed her, and he ran his fingers through her hair. She had such fine golden hair—so light, and it lifted to every breath. Something got into my brain. I know now it was the maggot which sent Othello mad. The world in that hour was malicious, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... without a mixture of Love; and even Shakespear, (who seem's to have had so little of the Soft or Tender in his Genius) was obliged to have some recourse to that Passion, in forming his most regular Tragedy; I mean Othello. Not that an Hero should be soften'd, much less drawn in his most degenerate Hours, when he is in Love. For, methinks, the French seem a little too fond of introduceing Love, when they draw their greatest Hero's as amorous ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... question. Know, then, that the Sannazarian performance above quoted, so different from the language of the malignant and turbaned Turks, filled with rapture the first Senator and the second Senator and all the other Senators mentioned in Act I., Scene 3, of "Othello," so that, in grand committee, and, for all I know to the contrary, with Brabantio in the chair, they voted to the worthy author a reward of three hundred zechins, or, to state it cambistically in our own beloved Columbian currency, $1,233.20,—this being the highest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... purpose, and will probably fall to pieces before long. Their fate is a type of that of their once master. That ornamental individual, shorn of his ornamental character, is useless. His raison d'etre is gone as entirely as Othello's occupation was. And it will probably not be long before the fate of the cardinal's wheels ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... the troops off-saddled, attended to the horses, pitched tents, and performed other camp duties. Rations consisted of bread, tea, coffee, sometimes meat and potatoes. Water was a luxury, and so little was wasted for external application that several troopers offered to play the part of Othello without any make up. The war kit of the men was somewhat of the Christmas-tree order. On them were haversacks containing food, horse-brush, currycomb, and towel, water-bottle, bandolier with fifty cartridges, waistbelt and gun weighing ten pounds. Often as not they turned in to rest, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... was the man he picked out for that purpose. He was one of the Lords of the Treasury; he was handsome and well-made; he had wit enough to be able to affect any part he pleased and a romantic turn in his conversation that could entertain a lady with as many adventures as Othello,—and it is no ill way of gaining Desdemonas. Women are very apt to take their lovers' characters from their own mouths; and if you will believe Mr. Methuen's account of himself, neither Artamenes nor Oroondates ever had more valour, honour, constancy, and discretion. Half of these bright ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... you go to Lady Jersey's to-night? It is a large party, and you won't be bored into 'softening rocks,' and all that. Othello is to-morrow and Saturday too. Which day shall we go? when shall I see you? If you call, let it be after three, and as near four ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... both laughed, and she explained. "It was dreadful. He raged, he shook the whole block as he trotted to and fro tearing his hair. I think he wished to tear my hair. He really resembled the elder Salvini as Othello—you know the scene I mean. I gave him a check to compensate him. He tore it up and blew it into the air with a curse. Oh, it was beautiful comedy. I told him our interview would make a hit as a 'turn' on the vaudeville ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... to our right, down Star Hill, lies the famous White Lion Inn, now a miserable pot-house, where George IV. used to stay, and where, on the day that the London and South-western Railway was opened, the old ostler cut his throat in sheer despair, for Othello's occupation was gone. Ten miles up the road lies Bagshot Heath, the terror of travellers in those coaching days. There stood, and stands still, a little wayside inn called the Golden Farmer, where many of the coaches stopped to water the horses. The wearied travellers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... hanging is quite the wholesomest process for its homicides in general, can yet with mercy distinguish between the degrees of guilt in homicides; and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood- track of an unhappy crazed boy, or grey-haired clodpate Othello, "perplexed i' the extreme," at the very moment that it is sending a Minister of the Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting young girls in their fathers' sight, and killing noble youths in cool blood, faster than a country butcher kills lambs in spring. And, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... Cf. Shakespeare, "Othello", ii. I, where Cassio, speaking of Othello's marriage with Desdemona, says: "he hath achieved a maid That paragons description and wild fame; One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens, And in the essential vesture of creation Does ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... Ronsard and "The Pleiade." Later the Old French Text Society was founded for the preservation and publication of mediaeval remains. But in general the innovating school sought their inspiration in foreign literatures. Antony Deschamps translated the "Inferno"; Alfred de Vigny translated "Othello" as the "Moor of Venice" (1829), and wrote a play on the story of Chatterton,[21] and a novel, "Cinq Mars," which is the nearest thing in French literature to the historical romances of Scott.[22] Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... for us now and here that Hannibal was overthrown at Zama, and was banished from Carthage; yet our hearts will always cry out with Othello, ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... "'Yes, certainly. Othello is now in preparation; and Hamlet and Macbeth are stock pieces. But even your Shakspeare was far from the truth, the great truth, that the drama should represent the progress, development, and accomplishment of the natural and moral world, without reference to ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden,[627] the nimble air of Scone Castle,[628] the moonlight of Portia's villa,[629] "the antres vast[630] and desarts idle," of Othello's captivity,—where is the third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor's file of accounts, or private letter, that has kept one word of those transcendent secrets? In fine, in this drama, as in all great works of art,—in the Cyclopean ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and daughter of Eve has gone through before; why should we proceed?" Besides, it is the one emotion common to the whole world; we can all comprehend it. Once more, it reveals character. In Hamlet and Othello, for example, what is interesting is not solely the bare love. The natures of Hamlet and Othello are brought to light through it as they would not have been through any other stimulus. I am sure that no ordinary woman ever shows what she really is, except when she is in love. ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... drawing of the Ancient. But there is a weakness in the character of Iago regarded as a purely instinctive and malignant criminal; indeed it is a weakness in the consistency of the play. On two occasions Iago states explicitly that Othello is more than suspected of having committed adultery with his wife, Emilia, and that therefore he has a strong and justifiable motive for being revenged on the Moor. The thought of it he describes ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... family, and died. All these things do not as a rule happen to myths. In addition to this, those who knew him believed him to be the author of the plays. Bacon's friends never suspected him. I do not think it would have hurt Bacon to have admitted that he wrote "Lear" and "Othello," and that he was getting "coppers and shillings" to which he was justly entitled. Certainly not as much as for him to have written this, which if fact, though not in exact form, he did write: "I, Francis Bacon, a gentleman of gentlemen, have been taking coppers and shillings to which ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... with the men of the Restoration. The creative impulse of a century had at length spent its force. For the first time since Wyatt and Surrey, England deserted the great themes of literature, the heroic passions of Tamburlaine and Faustus, of Lear and Othello, for the trivial round of social portraiture and didactic discourse; for Essays on Satire and on Translated Verse, for the Tea-Table of the Spectator, for dreary exercises on the Pleasures of the Imagination and the Art of Preserving Health. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... effect of a beautiful object, kept constantly before the eye in a story or poem, of keeping sensation well awake, and giving a certain air of refinement to all the scenes into which it enters. That sense of fate, which [10] hangs so much of the shaping of human life on trivial objects, like Othello's strawberry handkerchief, is thereby heightened, while witness is borne to the enjoyment of beautiful handiwork by primitive people, their simple wonder at it, so that they give it an oddly significant place among the factors of ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... refuge for the mind that dare not dwell upon realities. Who can say what dull, leaden, care may have weighed down the heart of William Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of a poet's grand imaginings, Othello! There is the flavour of racking care in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by a sordid wretch; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable life wrecked for so poor a motive; that sense of the "something in this world amiss," which the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... as the play of "Othello" performed in the Russian language in a railroad station by Dockstader's minstrels. A royal and generous lady this Pittsburg, though—homely, hearty, with flushed face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... 'tragic hints' are like a fine, pained mockery of love itself, as they struggle open-eyed against the blindness of passion. The poem laughs while it cries, with a double-mindedness more constant than that of Heine; with, at times, an acuteness of sensation carried to the point of agony at which Othello sweats ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... clergymen as play-actors to the families of dead play-actors. What a toilsome life, the play-actor's! On the 25th of March, 1833, Edmund Kean, sick and exhausted, trembled on to the English stage for the last time, when he acted in the character of Othello. The audience rose and cheered, and the waving of hats and handkerchiefs was bewildering, and when he came to the expression, "Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!" his chin fell on his breast, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... least two actors. The suggestion of states of mind does not come from the hero alone, but is given by two persons, or groups of persons, at once. These persons are, normally, in conflict. Othello menaces, Desdemona shrinks; Nora asserts her right, Hilmar his claim; L'Aiglon vaunts his inherited personality, Metternich—holds the candle to the mirror! But what of the spectator? He cannot at once shrink and menace, assert and deny, as the conditions of sympathetic reproduction would ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... their mother's death they rent the air with their cries of anguish; even Miss Watson shed real tears, her occupation, like that of Othello, being gone. Poor Mr. D'Alton was almost beside himself. He had never loved another woman; and, though he was not blind to his wife's failings and shortcomings, he nevertheless lamented the loss of ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... else, raises his character in our estimation, because it shows how many private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents; but his hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but all in honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
