'it is too late.'

(2) V. ii. 286 f.

_Oth._ I look down towards his feet; but that's a fable.
If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.
[_Wounds Iago._

_Lod._ Wrench his sword from him.

_Iago._ I bleed, sir, but not killed.

Are Iago's strange words meant to show his absorption of interest in
himself amidst so much anguish? I think rather he is meant to be
alluding to Othello's words, and saying, with a cold contemptuous smile,
'You see he is right; I _am_ a devil.'

NOTE O.

OTHELLO ON DESDEMONA'S LAST WORDS.

I have said that the last scene of _Othello_, though terribly painful,
contains almost nothing to diminish the admiration and love which
heighten our pity for the hero (p. 198). I said 'almost' in view of the
following passage (V. ii. 123 ff.):

_Emil._ O, who hath done this deed?

_Des._ Nobody; I myself. Farewell:
Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell! [_Dies._

_Oth._ Why, how should she be murdered?[267]

_Emil._ Alas, who knows?

_Oth._ You heard her say herself, it was not I.

_Emil._ She said so: I must needs report the truth.

_Oth._ She's, like a liar, gone to burning hell:
'Twas I that kill'd her.

_Emil._ O, the more angel she,
And you the blacker devil!

_Oth._ She turn'd to folly, and she was a whore.

This is a strange passage. What did Shakespeare mean us to feel? One is
astonished that Othello should not be startled, nay thunder-struck, when
he hears such dying words coming from the lips of an obdurate
adulteress. One is shocked by the moral blindness or obliquity which
takes them only as a further sign of her worthlessness. Here alone, I
think, in the scene sympathy with Othello quite disappears. Did
Shakespeare mean us to feel thus, and to realise how completely confused
and perverted Othello's mind has become? I suppose so: and yet Othello's
words continue to strike me as very strange, and also as not _like_
Othello,--especially as at this point he was not in anger, much less
enraged. It has sometimes occurred to me that there is a touch of
personal animus in the passage. One remembers the place in _Hamlet_
(written but a little while before) where Hamlet thinks he is unwilling
to kill the King at his prayers, for f