"Othello" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subscribers, some of whom of course had wives, Mr. Cooke, of Astley's, began to exhibit a way of making a horse lie down, which bore as much resemblance to Mr. Rarey's system, as Buckstone's or Keeley's travestie of Othello would to a serious performance by a first-rate tragedian. Mr. Cooke pulling at a strap over the horse's back, was, until he grew, by practice, skilful, more than once thrown down by the extension of ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... agree with him though about Tartuffe, though 'tis so wonderfully clever and lively, that a mere villain and hypocrite is a figure too mean to be made the chief of a great piece. Iago, Mr. George said, is near as great a villain; but then he is not the first character of the tragedy, which is Othello, with his noble weakness. But what fine ladies and gentlemen Moliere represents—so Mr. George thinks—and—but oh, I don't dare to repeat the verses ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... drum). Classical "tuck" from Italian "toccata," the preluding "touch" or flourish, on any instrument (but see Johnson under word "tucket," quoting "Othello"). The deeper Scottish vowels are used here to mark the deeper sound of the bass drum, as in more ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 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, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... my hint to speak, such was my process; And of the cannibals that each other eat, The anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their Shoulders."-Othello. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Othello and sprinkle it with cherubs," said Nellie Saunders, who had been made chairman of the cast. "But the one thing to remember, girls, is secrecy," she announced loftily. "No one outside of Lenox must know what the ghosts are, ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... to the Theatre to-night. The play is Othello. This is a really fine play and was a favourite of G. Washington, the father of his country. On this stage, as upon all stages, the good old conventionalities are strictly adhered to. The actors cross each other at oblique angles from L.U.E. to R. I. E. on the slightest provocation. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... "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 ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... 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 ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... father of Desdemo'na; most proud, arrogant, and overbearing. He thought the "insolence" of Othello in marrying his daughter unpardonable, and that Desdemona must have been drugged with love-potions so to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... at the first outbreak, and, in the final madness, all of it streaming dishevelled down her beautiful face. Kemble made no secret of his belief that his sister had the higher genius of the two; but he spoke with rapture of "John's" Macbeth and parts of his Othello; comparing his "Farewell the tranquil mind" to the running down of a clock, an image which he did not know that Hazlitt had applied to the delivery of "To-morrow and to-morrow," in the other tragedy. In all this Harness seemed to agree; and I thought a distinction ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... proportionately keen. The libretto of 'Otello' (1887), a masterly condensation of Shakespeare's tragedy, was from the pen of Arrigo Boito, himself a musician of no ordinary accomplishment. The action of the opera opens in Cyprus, amidst the fury of a tempest. Othello arrives fresh from a victory over the Turks, and is greeted enthusiastically by the people, who light a bonfire in his honour. Then follows the drinking scene. Cassio, plied by Iago, becomes intoxicated and fights with Montano. The duel is interrupted by the entrance of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... 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 stage. ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... judged by the vicissitudes through which it has traveled, it must indeed be acknowledged a hero among plants; and if human pity, respect, or love should be given it for 'the dangers it has passed,' the inspiration of Desdemonia's love for Othello, then might its most eloquent opponent be dumb, or yield it no inconsiderable ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... in romances, but which here were reality; easy conversation on the events of the county; a little political talking with the vicar; a few details of persons and fashions at the castle, to which the ladies listened as Desdemona might have listened to Othello's history—for the Castle was so seldom visited by them, that it had almost the air of a Castle of Otranto, and they evidently thought that its frowning towers and gilded halls belonged to another race, if not to another ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... enquire about, shall be my last play—for it is but a play, woe's me! I have one done here, 'A Soul's Tragedy,' as it is properly enough called, but that would not do to end with (end I will), and Luria is a Moor, of Othello's country, and devotes himself to something he thinks Florence, and the old fortune follows—all in my brain yet, but the bright weather helps and I will soon loosen my Braccio and Puccio (a pale discontented man), and Tiburzio (the Pisan, good true fellow, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... was over, and the Southern nobility turned its thoughts once more to social arrogance and political dominion, it found that Othello's occupation was entirely gone. A revolution had swept over the country more iconoclastic and merciless than that which followed in the wake of the French revolution nearly a hundred years before. The bottom rail had been violently placed upon the top; industrial ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... manner? Are we not reminded here of the position of thirsty Toby Belch towards the simple Aguecheek, if not even of honest [12] Iago in his dealings with the liberal Rodrigo? Neither in Olivia's uncle, nor in Othello's Ancient is it reckoned a merit to have omitted doing pimp service to friends. Their policy of taking advantage of amorous inclinations, although they did not even try to promote them by the reading of poetical productions, remains ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... "Othello" stops your breath—that passage full of bitter double intention in which Othello's suspicion tips with evil what he says about Desdemona's hand; and she in innocence answers only the innocent meaning of his words: "For 'twas that hand that ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... his characteristic perception of the profound significance of a circumstance or a single word even, having written of the knocking at the door in "Macbeth," or having used, with all its marvellous cumulative effect, the word 'wrought' towards the close of "Othello," when the Moor cries in his bitterness of soul, "But being wrought, perplext in the extreme": we can imagine this, and yet could not credit the suggestion that even the author of "The Ring and the Book" could by any possibility have composed the two most moving tragedies ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... a certain degree of circumspection no suspicions would have been excited by his conduct; but the devil prompted him to make love to a pretty woman who was present in company with her husband, the latter an old man, ugly as sin, and jealous as Othello. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... down aught in malice," said Othello to Lodovico, and these Scotland Yard men, charged with so great a responsibility, never ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... conscious of any steep inferiority: no, but of great equality; only he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying his facts, which we lacked. For, notwithstanding our utter incapacity to preduce anything like HAMLET or OTHELLO, we see the perfect reception this wit and immense knowledge of life and liquid eloquence find in us all." This aggrandisement of our common stature rests on questionable ground. If our capacity of being moved by Shakspeare discloses a community, our ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... of the sufferer, but do not lay it open before you, it is permitted for the 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 ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... malady. He said "that sort of woman," because the vagueness of the term gave scope to the bitterness of resentment with which he tried to overwhelm her. It enabled him to create some such paradise of pain as that into which the souls of Othello and Desdemona might have gone together. Had he been a Moor of Venice he would doubtless have smothered her with a pillow; but being a New York banker he could only try to slay the image, whose eyes and voice had never haunted him so persistently as now. In his rage of suffering he was as little ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... 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 ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... of Othello, The Moore of Venice. As it hath beene diuerse times acted at the Globe, and at the Black-Friers, by his Maiesties Seruants. Written by William Shakespeare. London, Printed by N. O. for Thomas Walkley, ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... Like Othello, Clemenceau swore that this demon of lasciviousness should betray no more men. The force of depravity should no farther flow to corrupt the finest and best. He entered the boudoir of the royal favorite and stabbed her to the heart. In the morning, he gave himself ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... something in the Shakespearian width of sympathy and in the Shakespearian humour which lies beyond Hazlitt's sphere. His criticism of Hamlet is feeble; he does not do justice to Mercutio or to Jaques; but he sympathises more heartily with the tremendous passion of Lear and Othello, and finds something congenial to his taste in Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. It is characteristic, too, that he evidently understands Shakespeare better on the stage than in the closet. When he can associate Iago and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... You would? Why, Frank, you're quite delightful,— Hot as Othello, and as black of hue; Borrow my fan. I would not look so frightful, If ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... stay in Boston. Every one who was present remembers the delighted crowds that assembled nightly in the Tremont Temple, and no one who heard Dickens, during that eventful month of December, will forget the sensation produced by the great author, actor, and reader. Hazlitt says of Kean's Othello, "The tone of voice in which he delivered the beautiful apostrophe 'Then, O, farewell,' struck on the heart like the swelling notes of some divine music, like the sound of years of departed happiness." There were thrills of pathos in Dickens's readings ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... commentators might have added this passage to the long list of others they have brought forward (see note on "Othello," act i. sc. 3), to show that intention and attention, and intentive and attentive, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... woman—she wore a flowing white veil upon her head, the queerest petticoats, and funniest shoes—at that time I had not seen the Chinese Collection and thought it was Desdemona (whom I had seen Mr Kean put to death a few nights before) "walking" in some of Othello's clothes. What she said, or if she said any thing, I was too much astonished to make out; but she walked into my room, smiling with her wonderful teeth, and curtsying with the extraordinary petticoats down to the very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... where I have garnered up my heart, Where either I must live, or bear no life; The fountain from the which my current runs Or else dries up; to be discarded thence! Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubim! Aye there, look grim as hell!" Othello, Act 4, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... "Othello's occupation's gone, I see!" returned the doctor, rising. "But I may visit you occasionally as a friend, I presume, if not as ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... had consulted me, I have wrote two— And a Parcell of us intend next Winter to have one of the Theatres, and to treat the Public with the finest Pantomime that ever was seen, in Immitation of the Gentlemen Who Play'd Othello. ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... English embassy, after her return from Pau, 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
... still very young, not many years, indeed, in advance of his majority. There is exaggeration, we grant, in passages, but it is exaggeration as essential to the circumstances and the characters as Lear's insane language is to his madness, or Othello's turbid tide of figures to his jealousy. The hero—an enthusiast—speaks always in enthusiastic terms; but of extravagance we find little, and of absurdity or affectation none. Diffusion there is, but it is often the beautiful diffusion of one who dallies with beloved thoughts, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... lord and 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
... therefore, was very slight; it seems he has spoken of me, but I don't know what he says.' I translated for him, in a somewhat milder form, Byron's words, which happened to be fresh in my memory: 'They have been crucifying Othello into an opera; the music good but lugubrious, but, as for the words, all the real scenes with Iago cut out, and the greatest nonsense instead, the handkerchief turned into a billet-doux, and the first singer would not black his face—singing, dresses, and music very ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... not enter into the scheme of the present work, and are but minor characters of our Snob drama; just as, in the play, kings and emperors are not half so important as many humble persons. The DOGE OF VENICE, for instance, gives way to OTHELLO, who is but a nigger; and the KING OF FRANCE to FALCONBRIDGE, who is a gentleman of positively no birth at all. So with the exalted characters above mentioned. I perfectly well recollect that the claret at Hawbuck's was not by any means so good as that of Hipsley's, while, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now dull, now dark. Till it has been painted, and sung by poet, and described by writers, nothing is human. Venice has been made human by poet, painter, and dramatist, yet what was Venice to this—this the Fact of our own day? Two of the caravels of the Doge's fleet, two of Othello's strongest war-ships, could scarcely carry the mast of my Australian clipper. At a guess it is four feet through; it is of iron, tubular; there is room for a winding spiral staircase within it; as for its height, I will not ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... account of the pretended analogy with the fish of this name, the mouth of which seems as if forced downwards below the body. This singular legend has been spread far and wide over the earth. Shakespeare has described Othello as recounting ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and whenever characters of varied views 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 recklessness of the one sets off the smooth ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... dethroned, to whom 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
... desk. Moreover, the rumour ran that Mr. Repton had once been an actor—his very curly hair no doubt lent weight to the report—and Class Two was fond of picturing the comely limbs in the tights of a Hamlet or Othello. It also, of course, invented for him a lurid life outside the College walls—notwithstanding the fact that he and his sonsy wife sat opposite the boarders in church every Sunday morning, the embodiment of the virtuous commonplace; and whenever he looked at a pupil, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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
... begged as a favour that she might die by his hand. What about Othello, mademoiselle, do you look on ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... the use of the English language to the greatest height of which it was capable. He employed 15,000 words. "The last act of 'Othello' is a rare specimen of Shakespeare's diction: of every five nouns, verbs, and adverbs, four are Teutonic" ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... believe that saying true to the present time. Yet he did not hesitate to steal Othello when he wanted to write Zaire, or, rather, he went out on the boulevards, picked out the first good-looking barber he could find, dressed him up in Eastern garments, and then fancied that he had created a French Othello." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls" —Othello, III, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... 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 his exhaustion through rehearsing in the forenoon, and performing ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... of our nautical Othello were thus brought to a conclusion. Mr. and Mrs. Melville resided in New York City until 1850, when they purchased a farmhouse at Pittsfield, their farm adjoining that formerly owned by Mr. Melville's ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... CRUIKSHANK has presided over a temperance meeting at Bristol. He maintained in his address that if Shakspeare were alive now, he would be of their society! "In 'Othello,' there was the character of a bad man, one Iago, who, setting himself to work the ruin of another, begins by making him drunk, and when it is first offered to him the answer is, 'Not to-night, good Iago. I have very poor and unhappy brains ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... precipitated the impending trouble. Fadeaway, riding for the Blue, was left with a companion to ride line on the mesas. Sundown, although very much unlike Othello, found that his occupation was gone. Assistant cooks were a drug on the range. He was equipped with a better horse, a rope, quirt, slicker, and instructions to cover daily a strip of territory between the Concho and the sheep-camps. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... and Discoveries in Hieroglyphics and other 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 down to us from the ancients, no part of them ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... me; you were right in your suspicions; jealousy is ever a true diviner. I make no doubt Othello was quite right, and Desdemona was no better than she should be. Maltravers has proposed to my ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... its faults as a story 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 ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to be altogether condemned for the unsuitableness of the person whom she selected for her lover. Bating that Othello was black, the noble Moor wanted nothing which might recommend him to the affections of the greatest lady. He was a soldier, and a brave one; and by his conduct in bloody wars against the Turks, had risen to the rank of general in the Venetian ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... ce n'est pas pour ces raisons cachees que l'on est oblige de s'avouer que la plupart des grands poemes de l'humanite ne sont pas sceniques? Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Antoine et Cleopatre, ne peuvent etre representes, et il est dangereux de les voir sur la scene. Quelque chose d'Hamlet est mort pour nous du jour ou nous l'avons vu mourir sous nos yeux. Le spectre d'un acteur l'a detrone, et nous ne pouvons ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... to him 'Italian, the language of angels'—you know the old rhyme—and see what a chance he has among the "liquid l's and bell-voiced m's and crushed tz's." To-night you will hear Desdemona call Othello 'Il mio marito,' in a way that will start the tears. What are the stiff English words to that? 'My husband!' Husband is a ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... jolly well can't, my dusky Othello. But aren't you two booked for the Houser's this afternoon? I thought you ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... 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 up Cassio to Kynaston for the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... character as the tulip is of colour or the hyacinth of grace, and as delicate and refined as an exquisite bit of old china—those actors made a group, the like of which it would be hard to find now. Shall we ever see again such an Othello as Edwin Forrest, or such a Lord Duberly and Cap'n Cuttle as Burton, or such a Dazzle as John Brougham, or such an Affable Hawk as Charles Mathews? Certainly there was a superiority of manner, a tinge of intellectual character, a tone ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... absorbed in the highest themes 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.) and one of the greatest speeches (Claudio on the fear of death, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... refinement or philosophy by a man who had the world, himself, mankind, and his trade still to learn. I prefer the Vicomte de Bragelonne to Richard III.; it is better done of its kind: I simply do not mention the Vicomte in the same part of the building with Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or any of those masterpieces that Shakespeare survived ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... go far to witness the street sights in carnival time. Many of them I can enjoy from my position on my balcony. 'Enter' the shade of an Othello in false whiskers. He is attired in a red shirt, top boots, and a glazed cap. In his mouth is a clay pipe; in his hand a black bottle: both products of Great Britain. He is followed by a brother black, in the disguise of a gentleman, with enormous ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... a noble and magnanimous Moor called Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and after he marries her, harbours (as in too many cases) ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... in some respects the most amusing thing I ever saw upon the stage. In the dagger-scene, Ira was, to my mind, quite equal to Forrest; it was impossible to deny him unusual dramatic talent; but his complexion, continually suggesting Othello, quite confounded me. The amiable Russian Lady Macbeth was much better adapted to the part of Desdemona: all softness and gentleness, she smiled as she lifted her languishing eyes, and murmured in the tenderest accents, "Infirm of purpose! give me the dagger!" At least, I took it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... his rivals opposite. In an advertisement of the cafe in the musical programme it is stated that, "the oldest and most aristocratic establishment of its kind in Venice, it can count among its clients, since 1720, Byron, Goethe, Rousseau, Canova, Dumas, and Moor," meaning by Moor not Othello but Byron's friend and biographer, the Anacreon of Erin. How Florian's early patrons looked one can see in a brilliant little picture by Guardi in the National Gallery, No. 2099. The cafe boasts that its doors are never shut, day or night; and I have no doubt that this ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... but what is painful and disgusting. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm in which he goes out is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements than any actor can be to represent Lear. In the acted Othello, the black visage of the Moor is obtruded upon you; in the written Othello, his color disappears in his mind. When Hamlet compares the two pictures of Gertrude's first and second husband, who wants to see the pictures? But in the acting, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward." Thus Mr. Carlyle writes in "Heroes and Hero-Worship." If Mirabeau, why not Savonarola, or Marcus Aurelius. In that case a "Twelfth Night," or an "Othello," might have come from Luther. Nature does not work so loosely. Rich is she, unspeakably rich, and as artful as she is profuse in the use of her riches. She delights in variety, thence her ineffable radiance, and much of her immeasurable efficiency. Diverseness ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... now let us be literary;—a sad falling off, but it is always a consolation. If 'Othello's occupation be gone,' let us take to the next best; and, if we cannot contribute to make mankind more free and wise, we may amuse ourselves and those who like it. What are you writing? I have been scribbling at intervals, and Murray will ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... into the first secret of imaginative literature, which is that one may portray a hero sympathetically without making believe that his vices are virtues. Shakespeare no more endorses Coriolanus's patrician pride than he endorses Othello's jealousy or Macbeth's murderous ambition. Shakespeare was concerned with painting noble natures, not with pandering to their vices. He makes us sympathize with Coriolanus in his heroism, in his ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... its faults, but glorious is its flame, may not improperly be said of it, as has been said of Shakespear's Othello. ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... without indicating anywhere or it striking the spectator that they were committing a crime. At bottom it is the same on our own stage; for instance, Palmira in Mahomet, Mortimer in Maria Stuart, Othello, Countess Terzky. Is Hamlet's monologue the meditation of a criminal? He merely states that considering the nature of the world, death would be certainly preferable, if we were sure that by it we should ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... 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
... conventions undoubtedly give me the right to be outraged because my wife is in love with another man; I can denounce him, and humiliate her. But if I am willing to forego this right, if I do not care to play Othello to her Desdemona, what then? Who can claim to be ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... 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, Act III. ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... children and nursemaids, 'Paradise Lost' might have been an average pantomime: it might have been called 'Harlequin Satan, or How Adam 'Ad 'em.' For who would trouble to bring to perfection a work in which even perfection is grotesque? Why should Shakespeare write 'Othello' if even his triumph consisted in the eulogy, 'Mr. Shakespeare is fit for ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... right, Bracy. It is nonsense denying the young fellow's talent; but his Othello, now, Bracy! be ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... and those who had to supply its demands laid their hands upon whatever came within their reach: they were not particular as to the means, so that they gained the end. Lear is founded upon an old ballad; Othello on an Italian novel; Hamlet on a Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch tradition: one of which is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the last in Hollingshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in each, are authenticated in the old Gothic history. There was also this connecting link between the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... "Any man that believes that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Hamlet or Lear is a fool." In its issue of March 27th 1889, the Rochdale Observer reported John Bright as scornfully angry with deluded people who believe that Shakespeare wrote Othello. ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... about 1787, but of him came many sons, and one, Jack, who helped in the War of 1812. Of Jack and his wife, Violet, was born a mighty family, splendidly named: Harlow and Ira, Cloe, Lucinda, Maria, and Othello! I dimly remember my grandfather, Othello,—or "Uncle Tallow,"—a brown man, strong-voiced and redolent with tobacco, who sat stiffly in a great high chair because his hip was broken. He was probably a bit lazy and given to wassail. At any rate, grandmother had ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... 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
... upon, is due to the fact that the apartment has been recently cleared for a parlour game. The company express a well-bred gratification by bowing. Enter the Prince of Morocco (who is of course identified by various Spectators in the Stalls without Catalogues as "Othello," or "the Duke of Thingumbob—you know the chap I mean"), followed by his retinue; he kisses Portia's hand, as she explains to him, the Prince of Arragon, and Bassanio, the rules of the game in three simple gestures. ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... of a hero whether I would or not. The girls were full of little shudderings over the dangers of our journey. And I thought it would be ungallant not to take my cue from the ladies. My mishap of yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced a deep sensation. It was Othello over again, with no less than three Desdemonas and a sprinkling of sympathetic senators in the background. Never were the canoes more flattered, or ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out 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 ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... making the rain fall also upon the sea, was like the man who, when he was to play Othello, must needs ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... was well that I had not found my way to Shakespeare earlier, though it is rather strange that I had not. I knew him on the stage in most of the plays that used to be given. I had shared the conscience of Macbeth, the passion of Othello, the doubt of Hamlet; many times, in my natural affinity for villains, I had mocked and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... much" in his bill Empty, valueless, heartless flirtation Ending—I never yet met the man who could tell when it ended Enjoy the name without the gain Enough is as good as a feast Escaped shot and shell to fall less gloriously beneath champagne Every misfortune has an end at last Exclaimed with Othello himself, "Chaos was come again;" Fearful of a self-deception where so much was at stake Fighting like devils for conciliation Finish in sorrow what you have begun in folly Gardez vous des femmes, and more especially if they be Irish Green silk, "a little off ...
— Quotes and Images From The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer • Charles James Lever
... a frequenter of theatres of late, I was recently induced, by the flourishing public announcements, to go to Drury Lane Theatre; with the chance, but scarcely in the hope, of seeing what I never yet have seen, a perfect Othello. Alas! echo still answers never yet. But yours are not the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... 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
... speaks of Othello?" interrupted Mr. Bunn. "I have played him many times!" and he threw back his shoulders, and tried to give himself the airs he was wont to assume in ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 words like these: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... 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 strategy of Italians and statesmen. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... "American Flag;" and Mrs. Thrale's "Three Warnings." As an introduction to the thought, imagery and diction of Shakespeare, there were "Hamlet's Soliloquy," "Speech of Henry Fifth to his Troops," "Othello's Apology," "The Fall of Cardinal Wolsey" and his death, the "Quarrel of Brutus and Cassius" (often committed to memory and spoken) and Antony's Oration over dead Caesar. The extracts from orations were chosen largely for their relation to great events in history. There were ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... employed secret philters to win Desdemona's love. Brabantio had only himself to blame; he had taken a liking to Othello, and often invited him to come to him; he did not make him play bezique, but he questioned him on his past. The Moor recounted his life, his sufferings, his adventures, and Desdemona wept. The fathers question, the heroes or adventurers recount, and the daughters ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... be gone,—for awhile; for awhile." Then she came up to him and put both her hands on his breast. "But yet, Othello, I ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... delightful meditation. Here at least Macready was at no disadvantage in a comparison with the most illustrious of his predecessors. Some there may have been who gave more vividly the salient points of a character, or who, as in the case of Kean's Othello, infused into their personations of some of the grandest but least complex of Shakespeare's creations an intensity of passion that defied all rivalry. But none ever brought to the study of the poet the intellectual discernment, the sympathetic spirit, the true and heartfelt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... pleonasm of nakedness'—the idea of nakedness being reduplicated and reverberated in the bare and the bald. This Atrius Umber might be called 'that pleonasm of darkness;' and one might say to him, in the words of Othello, 'What needs this iteration?' To serve under the Gloomy was enough to darken the spirit of hope; but to serve under the Black Gloomy was really rushing upon destruction. Yet it will be alleged that Captain Death ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 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. He could not bear ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Cloak 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
... illustration may help to fix these principles in the mind. When Othello has discovered his fatal error, and is resolved to take his own life, he stops his groaning, and addresses ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... leads to much of the overemphasis in her program and her methods. If she is to attract attention, she must be extreme. The campaigner is like the actor—he must exaggerate to get his effect over the footlights. Moreover, there are natures like that of the actor who could not play Othello unless his whole body was blackened. Nor is the extravagance of the methods, which the militant lady follows to put over her program, so foreign to her nature as it may seem. The suffragette adapts to her needs a form of feminine coquetry as old as the world. To defy and denounce the male ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... hair, tho' erst from gipsy poll'd, 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! ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Desdemona by the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military subordination; for, as Andreas said, "the womankind will not drill (wer kann die Weiberchen dressiren)": nevertheless she at heart loved him both for valour and wisdom; to her a Prussian ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... 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, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Iago: "In the Maurel conception, Othello's Ancient was not painted black in black—the heart of darkness, but with many nuances, many gradations. He was economical of gesture, playing on the jealous Moor as plays a skillfully handled bow upon a finely attuned ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... 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, and he turned to his son and said: "O God, I am dying! speak to them Charles," ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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. ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... explain them who can!" And if it were urged, as it often was, that in Parsifal Wagner desired the very opposite to what he had in Siegfried, the Parsifal is opposed to Siegfried as Hamlet is opposed to Othello, Ulick eagerly accepted the challenge, and like one sure of his adversary's ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... "Othello,"] Shakespeare gives us a very distinct proof that he was acquainted with Admiralty law, as well as with the procedure of Westminster Hall. Describing the feat of the Moor in carrying off Desdemona against ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... written above; I did not intend it: but you were once my little all, and I cannot bear the thought of having lost you for ever, I fear through my own fault. Has any one called? Do not send any letters that come. I should like you and your mother (if agreeable) to go and see Mr. Kean in Othello, and Miss Stephens in Love in a Village. If you will, I will write to Mr. T——, to send you tickets. Has Mr. P—— called? I think I must send to him for the picture to kiss and talk to. Kiss me, my best beloved. Ah! if you can never be mine, still let ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... graces; all this too without swerving a hair from the line of cold, calm, even-handed justice: yet how do our feelings, how do our moral sympathies, run in these cases? I need not say they run wholly and unreservedly with the chivalrous but infirm Cassio, the honest and honour-loving Othello, the innocent though not faultless Desdemona; with the pious and unsuspecting Edgar, the erring indeed but still upright and sound-hearted Gloster. Nay, more; we would rather be in the place of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson |
