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PARTISAN REVIEW
figure. It is one of the most crucial features of these tragedies that
the hero is never understood by any other character in the play. The
fact that Shakespeare's heroes generally do not soliloquize about the
failure of other men to understand them does not prove that they are
understood, but only that Shakespeare does not romanticize his
heroes; and again this is not a failure of his art but an essential
feature of his greatness: instead of becoming pathetic his heroes re–
tain the stature of majesty; instead of being mere projections of
author, reader, or audience, they
are
what others think or dream
they are, and retain the full impact of myth.
Instead of having Othello tell us that his stature precludes
his
being understood by any of the others in the play, Shakespeare com–
posed a murder scene in which Othello acts and speaks in a manner
convincing us that he lives in a world in which none of the others
can participate. Iago has succeeded in his scheme insofar as the Moor
kills his wife, but he has patently not succeeded in reducing Othello
to his own level. The scene is the most numinous in the whole drama,
awe-inspiring rather than fearful, and Othello, instead of frothing
at the mouth with jealousy, acts with a solemn majesty suggesting
the hierophant. Desdemona, Iago, and the others in the play, as well
as most readers and listeners, to be sure, take that for "a murder,
which I thought a sacrifice." Othello's lines in this scene underscore
the inadequacy of the purely exoteric interpretation of the action
and suggest another level of meaning-even as Shylock's famous
speeches, "Signior Antonio, many a time and oft ... " and "Hath
not a Jew eyes? ... " underline the insufficiency of any reading
which sees only the comedy in
The Merchant of Venice.
There is
one level on which it
is
a comedy and on which
Othello
is the story
of Iago's villainous success. On another level of interpretation, how-
ever, Shylock is a great tragic figure; and Othello's murder, a sacri-
fice. He had not thought of Desdemona as mortal; she was his very
god. In that sense, there was no proportion between Othello's con–
ception of Desdemona and the essentially inconsequential, if beauti-
ful and faithful, object of his love.
If
the Moor were to understand
her limitation and the sheer brevity of her existence, this would not
be another insight but the catastrophic dissolution of his faith, his
religion. Iago is the poet's instrument for bringing about this tragic
end and does it not by opening Othello's eyes to Desdemona's true
