pell of a feeling which can give
glory to the truth but can also give it to a dream.

(3) This consciousness in any imaginative man is enough, in such
circumstances, to destroy his confidence in his powers of perception. In
Othello's case, after a long and most artful preparation, there now
comes, to reinforce its effect, the suggestions that he is not an
Italian, not even a European; that he is totally ignorant of the
thoughts and the customary morality of Venetian women;[98] that he had
himself seen in Desdemona's deception of her father how perfect an
actress she could be. As he listens in horror, for a moment at least the
past is revealed to him in a new and dreadful light, and the ground
seems to sink under his feet. These suggestions are followed by a
tentative but hideous and humiliating insinuation of what his honest and
much-experienced friend fears may be the true explanation of Desdemona's
rejection of acceptable suitors, and of her strange, and naturally
temporary, preference for a black man. Here Iago goes too far. He sees
something in Othello's face that frightens him, and he breaks off. Nor
does this idea take any hold of Othello's mind. But it is not surprising
that his utter powerlessness to repel it on the ground of knowledge of
his wife, or even of that instinctive interpretation of character which
is possible between persons of the same race,[99] should complete his
misery, so that he feels he can bear no more, and abruptly dismisses his
friend (III. iii. 238).

Now I repeat that _any_ man situated as Othello was would have been
disturbed by Iago's communications, and I add that many men would have
been made wildly jealous. But up to this point, where Iago is dismissed,
Othello, I must maintain, does not show jealousy. His confidence is
shaken, he is confused and deeply troubled, he feels even horror; but he
is not yet jealous in the proper sense of that word. In his soliloquy
(III. iii. 258 ff.) the beginning of this passion may be traced; but it
is only after an interval of solitude, when he has had time to dwell on
the idea presented to him, and especially after statements of fact, not
mere general grounds of suspicion, are offered, that the passion lays
hold of him. Even then, however, and indeed to the very end, he is quite
unlike the essentially jealous man, quite unlike Leontes. No doubt the
thought of another man's possessing the woman he loves is intolerable to
him; no doubt the sense of in