e attending its method of
construction, and may even wonder why Shakespeare employed this
method--at any rate in its purity--in this tragedy alone. Nor is it any
answer to say that it would not elsewhere have suited his material. Even
if this be granted, how was it that he only once chose a story to which
this method was appropriate? To his eyes, or for his instinct, there
must have been some disadvantage in it. And dangers in it are in fact
not hard to see.

In the first place, where the conflict develops very slowly, or, as in
_Othello_, remains in a state of incubation during the first part of a
tragedy, that part cannot produce the tension proper to the
corresponding part of a tragedy like _Macbeth_, and may even run the
risk of being somewhat flat. This seems obvious, and it is none the less
true because in _Othello_ the difficulty is overcome. We may even see
that in _Othello_ a difficulty was felt. The First Act is full of stir,
but it is so because Shakespeare has filled it with a kind of
preliminary conflict between the hero and Brabantio,--a personage who
then vanishes from the stage. The long first scene of the Second Act is
largely occupied with mere conversations, artfully drawn out to
dimensions which can scarcely be considered essential to the plot. These
expedients are fully justified by their success, and nothing more
consummate in their way is to be found in Shakespeare than Othello's
speech to the Senate and Iago's two talks with Roderigo. But the fact
that Shakespeare can make a plan succeed does not show that the plan is,
abstractedly considered, a good plan; and if the scheme of construction
in _Othello_ were placed, in the shape of a mere outline, before a
play-wright ignorant of the actual drama, he would certainly, I believe,
feel grave misgivings about the first half of the play.

There is a second difficulty in the scheme. When the middle of the
tragedy is reached, the audience is not what it was at the beginning. It
has been attending for some time, and has been through a certain amount
of agitation. The extreme tension which now arises may therefore easily
tire and displease it, all the more if the matter which produces the
tension is very painful, if the catastrophe is not less so, and if the
limits of the remainder of the play (not to speak of any other
consideration) permit of very little relief. It is one thing to watch
the scene of Duncan's assassination at the beginning of the Second