ul example of
this love, and the most pathetic heroine in Shakespeare's world. If her
part were acted by an artist equal to Salvini, and with a Salvini for
Othello, I doubt if the spectacle of the last two Acts would not be
pronounced intolerable.

Of course this later impression of Desdemona is perfectly right, but it
must be carried back and united with the earlier before we can see what
Shakespeare imagined. Evidently, we are to understand, innocence,
gentleness, sweetness, lovingness were the salient and, in a sense, the
principal traits in Desdemona's character. She was, as her father
supposed her to be,

a maiden never bold,
Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion
Blushed at herself.

But suddenly there appeared something quite different--something which
could never have appeared, for example, in Ophelia--a love not only full
of romance but showing a strange freedom and energy of spirit, and
leading to a most unusual boldness of action; and this action was
carried through with a confidence and decision worthy of Juliet or
Cordelia. Desdemona does not shrink before the Senate; and her language
to her father, though deeply respectful, is firm enough to stir in us
some sympathy with the old man who could not survive his daughter's
loss. This then, we must understand, was the emergence in Desdemona, as
she passed from girlhood to womanhood, of an individuality and strength
which, if she had lived, would have been gradually fused with her more
obvious qualities and have issued in a thousand actions, sweet and good,
but surprising to her conventional or timid neighbours. And, indeed, we
have already a slight example in her overflowing kindness, her boldness
and her ill-fated persistence in pleading Cassio's cause. But the full
ripening of her lovely and noble nature was not to be. In her brief
wedded life she appeared again chiefly as the sweet and submissive being
of her girlhood; and the strength of her soul, first evoked by love,
found scope to show itself only in a love which, when harshly repulsed,
blamed only its own pain; when bruised, only gave forth a more exquisite
fragrance; and, when rewarded with death, summoned its last labouring
breath to save its murderer.

Many traits in Desdemona's character have been described with
sympathetic insight by Mrs. Jameson, and I will pass them by and add but
a few words on the connection between this character and the catastroph