Iago. I mock you not, by Heaven, &c.

The part indeed would hardly be tolerated, even as a foil to The
virtue and generosity of the other characters in the play, But for
its indefatigable industry and inexhaustible resources, Which divert
the attention of the spectator (as well as his own) from the end he
has in view to the means by which it must be accomplished.--Edmund
the Bastard in Lear is something of the same character, placed in
less prominent circumstances. Zanga is a vulgar caricature of it.






TIMON OF ATHENS

TIMON OF ATHENS always appeared to us to be written with as intense
a feeling of his subject as any one play of Shakespeare. It is one
of the few in which he seems to be in earnest throughout, never to
trifle nor go out of his way. He does not relax in his efforts, nor
lose sight of the unity of his design. It is the only play of our
author in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind. It is
as much a satire as a play: and contains some of the finest pieces
of invective possible to be conceived, both in the snarling,
captious answers of the cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and
more terrible imprecations of Timon. The latter remind the classical
reader of the force and swelling impetuosity of the moral
declamations in Juvenal, while the former have all the keenness and