yet we cannot but pity him when at last we find him "perplexed in
the extreme."

There is always danger lest wickedness conjoined with abilities
should steal upon esteem, though it misses of approbation but the
character if Iago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene
to the last hated and despised.

Event he inferiour characters of this play would be very conspicuous
in any other piece, not only for their justness but their strength.
Cassio is brave, benevolent, and honest, ruined only by his want
of stubbornness to resist an insidious invitation of Rodegigo's
suspicious credulity, and impatient submission of the cheats which
he sees practised upon him, and which by persuasion he suffers to
be repeated, exhibit a strong picture of a weak mind betrayed by
unlawful desires, to a false friend and the virtue of AEmilia is
such as we often find, worn loosely but not cast off, easy to commit
small crimes, but quickend and alarmed at atrocious villanies.

The Scenes from the beginning to the end are busy, varied but happy
interchanges, and regularly promoting the progression of the story;
and the narrative in the end, though it tells but what is known
already, yet is necessary to produce the death of Othello.

Had the scene opened in Cyprus, and the preceding incidents been
occasionally related, there had been little wanting of a drama of the
most exact and scrupulous regularity.