strengthened by an ambiguous and apparently punning allusion to AEsop's
_Kidde_ in the passage by Nash mentioned above. A crude and brutal
German play on the subject has been discovered, which is believed by
many to be a translation of Kyd's original tragedy. If this is true,
it shows how enormously Shakespeare improved on his source.

+Editions+.--A very badly garbled and crude form of this play was
printed in 1603, and is known as the First Quarto. A much better one,
which contained most of the tragedy as we read it, appeared in 1604,
and is called the Second Quarto. Several other quartos followed, for
the play was exceedingly popular. The Folio omits certain passages
found in the Second Quarto, and introduces certain new ones. Both the
new passages and the omitted ones are included in modern editions; so
that, as has often been said, our modern _Hamlet_ is longer than any
_Hamlet_ which Shakespeare left us. The First Quarto is generally
regarded as a pirated copy of Shakespeare's scenario, or first rough
draft, of the play.

+Othello+.--This play has often been called the tragedy of jealousy,
but that is a misleading statement. Othello, as Coleridge pointed out,
is not a constitutionally jealous man, such as Leontes in _The Winter's
Tale_. His distrust of his wife is the natural suspicion of a man lost
amid new and inexplicable surroundings. {183} Women are proverbially
suspicious in business, not because nature made them so, but because,
as they are in utter ignorance of standards by which to judge, they
feel their helplessness in the face of deceit. Othello feels the same
helplessness. Trained up in wars from his cradle, he could tell a true
soldier from a traitor at a glance, with the calm confidence of a
veteran; but women and their motives are to him an uncharted sea.
Suddenly a beautiful young heiress falls in love with him, and leaves
home and friends to marry him. He stands on the threshold of a new
realm, happy but bewildered. Then comes Iago, his trusted subordinate,
--who, as Othello knows, possesses that knowledge of women and of
civilian life which he himself lacks,--and whispers in his ear that his
bride is false to him; that under this fair veneer lurks the eternal
feminine as they had seen it in the common creatures of the camp; that
she has fooled her husband as these women have so often fooled his
soldiers; and that the rough-and-ready justice of the camp should be
her reward. Had