Neither could Iago have written an _Othello_. (From
this theorem, by the way, a reasoner or a casuist benighted enough to
prefer articulate poets to inarticulate, Shakespeare to Cromwell, a fair
Vittoria Colonna to a "foul Circe-Megaera," and even such a strategist as
Homer to such a strategist as Frederic-William, would not illogically
draw such conclusions or infer such corollaries as might result in
opinions hardly consonant with the Teutonic-Titanic evangel of the
preacher who supplied him with his thesis.) "But what he can do, that he
will": and if it be better to make a tragedy than to write one, to act a
poem than to sing it, we must allow to Iago a station in the hierarchy of
poets very far in advance of his creator's. None of the great
inarticulate may more justly claim place and precedence. With all his
poetic gift, he has no poetic weakness. Almost any creator but his would
have given him some grain of spite or some spark of lust after Desdemona.
To Shakespeare's Iago she is no more than is a rhyme to another and
articulate poet. {179} His stanza must at any rate and at all costs be
polished: to borrow the metaphor used by Mr.
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