isolation by uttering them in an altered, clear, low tone, he aims directly at Othello's heart, and plants in it the first surmise of his wife's infidelity. His addresses to Othello had a fearful symmetry of falsehood. He lied so like truth, that had we been in Othello's place, we felt he would have deceived us too. His soliloquies, and those looks and slight gestures aside, alone revealed his true character. Between his assumed friendship, and these tokens of self-betrayal, he passed with incredible rapidity of transition; and did it with a keen relish, an intense gust of iniquity. Yet was the odiousness of Iago's nature lightened and carried off by the grace and force of Booth's representation. For, disguise it as we may, the love of power is so natural to man, that we take an unmeasured delight in the exhibition of power, whether for good or evil-in a play. The eyeballs of a just-imported leopard, that we saw in our youth, dilating and glancing with a green malignant light, shine still with all the old fascination; and glow in memory by some occult association, as we write of Booth's Iago. He chastened Shakespeare by delivering, as in one continuous line, "It is a common thing to have a foolish wife.” He gave Dangerous conceits Burn like the mines of sulphur," with a voice like a writhing inward flame. Wherever Shakespeare raised one of hist characters above its habitual level, by pluming it with the splendor of his own imagination, Booth instinctively took wing with him; and the manner in which he "Not poppy nor mandragora gave Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world was, as if a boding angel, in tones of profoundest music, banished all the agents of repose, and created the doom he pronounced. In the night scene, where Roderigo encounters Cassio, on the very night when the deeper tragedy of the play is consummated, Iago appears with a light and a drawn sword. The light shone on Booth's pale and fiendish face, as, with a sword-stroke into Roderigo's wounded body, he delivers himself of this stroke of devilish wit: "Kill men i' the dark!" It will be remembered that he had instigated Roderigo to the murder of Cassio. In the last scene, as Iago stands a defeated culprit, his hideous crimes exposed, Othello saying, "If that thou be'st a devil I cannot kill thee," runs at and stabs him. Booth replied, staunching the wound, and mastering the anguish of it, and with a look of steady hatred and defiance, "I bleed, sir, but not killed." As if he would say, "You are right, you cannot kill me. I am a devil.” OTHELLO. DURING a certain week in the autumn of 1847, there came to us a special revelation of the scope of the histrionic art. On Tuesday, September 14th, Mr. Booth enacted Othello. On Wednesday, 15th, Iago — that Iago we have just briefly noticed and on Thursday, 16th, Othello again. The entireness of transition in so short a span; the completeness of identification in characters so essentially diverse, filled us with a wonder that still abides. But a great actor is the only human being who is voluntarily and happily beside himself, with power of complete selfrecovery, and readiness for a fresh transformation. Booth's Iago was so well known to us; his figure rose so surely in our imagination as we read the play, that we heard, not without some misgiving, the announcement of Mr. Booth as Othello, "the first time for many years." We confess to a fear, lest, in his performance, some look, or trait, or tone of the deep-revolving subtle villainy of his more familiar part might appear, to despoil the frank and noble presence of the Moor. But it is scarcely too much to say, that the two characters did not lie more clearly asunder in the mind of Shakespeare, than in Mr. Booth's representation. Othello was a Christian graft upon a wild Arabian stock. He was a Mauritanian prince. The Eastern origin of his race; his birth in Africa; his military life; his Venetian culture; all had part in building up a character, compact of strength, fervency, simplicity, and honor. Accordingly, Booth's personation was marked, especially in the earlier portion of the play, by an oriental largeness and calm. Even when his frame of nature is wrenched from its fixed place, by Iago's preternatural enginery, there is a continual recoil and reinstatement of the Moor's solid virtue; so that he never loses our respect, at the same time that he moves our sympathies beyond any other male character in Shakespeare. We might sum up Mr. Booth's characterization in one word—magnanimity. In this mood of mind he enters on the scene, Iago following. If the reader could |