between Iago and Roderigo before they raise the alarm and awaken
Brabantio; but it is carefully non-expository talk; it expounds nothing
but Iago's character. Far from being a real exception to the rule that
Shakespeare liked to open his tragedies with a very crisply dramatic
episode, _Othello_ may rather be called its most conspicuous example.
The rousing of Brabantio is immediately followed by the encounter
between his men and Othello's, which so finely brings out the lofty
character of the Moor; and only in the third scene, that of the Doge's
Council, do we pass from shouts and swords to quiet discussion and, in a
sense, exposition. Othello's great speech, while a vital portion of the
drama, is in so far an exposition that it refers to events which do not
come absolutely within the frame of the picture. But they are very
recent, very simple, events. If Othello's speech were omitted, or cut
down to half a dozen lines, we should know much less of his character
and Desdemona's, but the mere action of the play would remain perfectly
comprehensible.

_King Lear_ necessarily opens with a great act of state, the partition
of the kingdom. A few words between Kent and Gloucester show us what is
afoot, and then, at one plunge, we are in the thick of the drama. There
was no opportunity here for one of those picturesque tableaux, exciting
rather than informative, which initiate the other tragedies. It would
have had to be artificially dragged in; and it was the less necessary,
as the partition scene took on, in a very few lines, just that
arresting, stimulating quality which the poet seems to have desired in
the opening of a play of this class.

Finally, when we turn to _Hamlet_, we find a consummate example of the
crisply-touched opening tableau, making a nervous rather than an
intellectual appeal, informing us of nothing, but exciting a vivid,