"Othello" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this: that, while he was able to go down to the simple and grand realities of human nature, which are all tragic; and while, therefore, he must rejoice most in such contemplations of human nature as find fit outlet in a "Hamlet," a "Lear," a "Timon," or an "Othello," the tragedies of Doubt, Ingratitude, and Love, he can yet, when he chooses, float on the very surface of human nature, as in "Love's Labour's Lost," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "The Comedy of Errors," "The Taming of the Shrew;" ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... assured her. "Don't think I'm finding fault with you. On the contrary, you're really a marvelous being. But Othello's occupation's gone." ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... 'Otello' (1887), a masterly condensation of Shakespeare's tragedy, was from the pen of Arrigo Boito, himself a musician of no ordinary accomplishment. The action of the opera opens in Cyprus, amidst the fury of a tempest. Othello arrives fresh from a victory over the Turks, and is greeted enthusiastically by the people, who light a bonfire in his honour. Then follows the drinking scene. Cassio, plied by Iago, becomes intoxicated and fights with Montano. The duel is interrupted by the entrance of Othello, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... woman! He may tread her in the mire; he may clasp her and then scorn her; he may kiss her close, and then dash her from him into a dung-heap, but he must not strike her—that would be unmanly! Oh! grace itself is the rage of the pitiful Othello to the forbearance of many a self-contained, cold-blooded, self-careful slave, that thinks himself a gentleman! Had not Faber been even then full of his own precious self, had he yielded to her prayer or to his own wrath, how many ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... portrait of the first Howat Penny hung on a yellow painted wall, his gilt-braided major's facings still vivid, his dark, perceptible scorn undimmed. There were, too, framed in oak, a large photograph of Tamagno, as Othello, with a scrawled, cordial message; another of a graceful woman in the Page's costume of Les Huguenots, signed "Sempre ... Scalchi"; a water colour drawing by Jan Beers; and a Victorian lithograph in powdery ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... "If judged by the vicissitudes through which it has traveled, it must indeed be acknowledged a hero among plants; and if human pity, respect, or love should be given it for 'the dangers it has passed,' the inspiration of Desdemonia's love for Othello, then might its most eloquent opponent be dumb, or yield it no ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... if possessed of Aladdin's lamp. Had he been actually in possession of this gift of the genii, he could scarcely have found a wish to gratify, as money had already provided him with all it can supply in this country, and the pursuit of wealth itself was his delight. Deprived of this, Othello's occupation were gone. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... misunderstood phrases in the language is "the Spanish Main." To the ordinary individual it suggests the Caribbean Sea. Although Shakespeare in "Othello," makes one of the gentlemen of Cyprus say that he "cannot 'twixt heaven and main descry a sail," and, therefore, with other poets, gives warrant to the application of the word to the ocean, "main" really refers ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... England, Othello is usually played as a black, while in America he is played as a nondescript; or of no colour that is ordinarily seen. It is not clear that England is nearer right than America, however; the Moor not being a negro, any more than he ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... seems everywhere. In "Julius Caesar" the virtue of Brutus is foiled by its ignorance of and isolation from mankind; in Hamlet even penetrating intellect proves helpless for want of the capacity of action; the poison of Iago taints the love of Desdemona and the grandeur of Othello; Lear's mighty passion battles helplessly against the wind and the rain; a woman's weakness of frame dashes the cup of her triumph from the hand of Lady Macbeth; lust and self-indulgence blast the heroism of Antony; pride ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... to deadly pale; Will make thy hair, tho' erst from gipsy poll'd, By barber woven, and by barber sold, Though twisted smooth with Harry's nicest care, Like hoary bristles to erect and stare. The hero of the mimic scene, no more I start in Hamlet, in Othello roar; Or, haughty Chieftain, 'mid the din of arms In Highland Bonnet, woo Malvina's charms; While sans-culottes stoop up the mountain high, And steal from me Maria's prying eye. Blest Highland bonnet! once my proudest dress, Now prouder still, Maria's temples press; ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... than a grenadier, Dwindles into a stripling of eighteen; Or sabled in Othello breaks the ear, Exerts his voice, and totters ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... a story of an Irishman who saw from the pit a friend of his acting Othello, and he called out, 'Larry, Larry, Larry, there's the least taste in life of your linen hanging out!' One day in America near the falls of Niagara Moore saw this scene:— An Indian whose boat was moored to the shore was making love to the wife of another Indian; ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the courtier had thought the work of Samuel the poet silly, and had given warranty of his opinion by suffering loss of one shilling eightpence on his purchase of the book. A view not to be wondered at in one who sets down "Midsummer Night's Dream" as "insipid and ridiculous," and "Othello" as a "mean thing"! Perhaps it was because Butler had a keen knowledge of Shakespeare, and unconsciously used much of the actor's quick-witted method, that his delicately feathered barbs made no dent on the hard head of Pepys. Like his neighbor ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... thought, God forgive him! that the admired original would ever be charged with the imaginary vices of the fictitious creature, than he has himself ever thought of charging the blood of Desdemona and Othello, on the innocent Academy model who sat for Iago's leg in the picture. Even as to the mere occasional manner, he meant to be so cautious and conscientious, that he privately referred the proof sheets of ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... comedy,' said Devereux, who liked Puddock, and would not annoy him, and saw he was hurt by Othello's borrowing his properties from the kitchen; 'I venture to say you were well entertained: and for my part, Sir, there are some characters'—(in farce Puddock was really highly diverting)—'in which I prefer Puddock to any ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... any steep inferiority: no, but of great equality; only he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying his facts, which we lacked. For, notwithstanding our utter incapacity to preduce anything like HAMLET or OTHELLO, we see the perfect reception this wit and immense knowledge of life and liquid eloquence find in us all." This aggrandisement of our common stature rests on questionable ground. If our capacity of being moved by Shakspeare ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... the sentence. A few evenings ago he jocosely thought to establish, by a quotation from Shakespeare, the unreliability of a member of our party who was telling what seemed a "fish story," and he clinched his argument by adding that he would apply to the case the words of the immortal Shakespeare, "Othello's reputation's gone." ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... father of Desdemo'na; most proud, arrogant, and overbearing. He thought the "insolence" of Othello in marrying his daughter unpardonable, and that Desdemona must have been drugged with love-potions so ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Lady Jersey's to-night? It is a large party, and you won't be bored into 'softening rocks,' and all that. Othello is to-morrow and Saturday too. Which day shall we go? when shall I see you? If you call, let it be after three, and as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Duffus Hardy, only daughter of the late Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, was educated chiefly at home, and began writing stories at a very early age. Amongst the many popular novels she has published are "A New Othello," "Glencairn," "Only a Love Story," "A Broken Faith," "Hearts or Diamonds," and "Love in Idleness." She has also published two well-known volumes of American reminiscences, "Between Two Oceans" and "Oranges and Alligators." ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... by your Bills I thought there was a Pantomime in it. I wish you had consulted me, I have wrote two— And a Parcell of us intend next Winter to have one of the Theatres, and to treat the Public with the finest Pantomime that ever was seen, in Immitation of the Gentlemen Who Play'd Othello. ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... the spur of the moment for throwing himself into a part passionately;—the fact being exactly the reverse in his regard, according to the earliest and most accurate of his biographers. Erratic, fitful though the genius of Edmund Kean unquestionably was—rendering him peerless as Othello, incomparable as Overreach—we are told in Mr. Procter's life of him, that "he studied long and anxiously," frequently until many hours after midnight.{*} No matter what his occupations previously might have been, or how profound his exhaustion through rehearsing ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... revelation of promiscuous worship, threatened by Escovedo, sounded like a knell to Perez and the princess. Was it a mad defiance, or a profound prescience, of the consequences, which, when Escovedo, stung on one occasion beyond forbearance by the demonstration of iniquity which Othello in his agony demands of Iago, declared loudly his purpose of divulging every thing to the king?—was it, we say, the fury or the shrewdness of despair which then drew from the lady a reply of outrageous ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the consideration of Government, whether some means should not be taken for its correction; but is the Opera-house so very pure in its purlieus? and are the habitual admirers of the ballet likely to be corrupted by occasionally seeing Othello and Juliet? The prevailing, and in fact universal, passion for reading novels at home, unquestionably affords an inexhaustible fund of domestic amusement; but does experience prove that the imagination once kindled, the heart once touched, are willing to stop short in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Greeks, in their tragedies, did their slaughter behind the scenes, and occasionally the cries of the supposed victims were heard. But theatre-goers of to-day would feel cheated if the last act of Othello were left to their imagination. When Salvini thrusts the crooked knife into his throat, with that ghastly sound of death that one never forgets, the modern spectator would not understand what the death-rattle meant, did he not see the action that ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... deepening conviction of the boundless capacities of the human soul. Not as a theological dogma, but as a human fact man knew himself to be an all but infinite power, whether for good or for ill. The drama towered into sublimity as it painted the strife of mighty forces within the breasts of Othello or Macbeth. Poets passed into metaphysicians as they strove to unravel the workings of conscience within the soul. From that hour one dominant influence told on human action; and all the various energies that ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... have already laid stress, is strikingly developed in his Iago, and yet it is so judiciously governed that his Iago is not in the least picturesque according to the conventional ways of frowning, sneering, diabolically grinning, and elaborately doing everything else that would induce Othello to run him through the body very early in the play. Mr. Fechter's is the Iago who could, and did, make friends, who could dissect his master's soul, without flourishing his scalpel as if it were a walking-stick, who could overpower Emilia by other arts than a sign-of-the-Saracen's-Head ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... characters was a very modest one for a beginner. It embraced only Richelieu, Bertram, Brutus, Lear, Richard, Shylock, Sir Giles Overreach, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. My principal literary recreation for several years had been in studying these parts; and as I knew them by heart, I did not doubt that a few rehearsals would put me in possession of the requisite stage-business. And yet my familiarity with the theatre was very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... and nursemaids, 'Paradise Lost' might have been an average pantomime: it might have been called 'Harlequin Satan, or How Adam 'Ad 'em.' For who would trouble to bring to perfection a work in which even perfection is grotesque? Why should Shakespeare write 'Othello' if even his triumph consisted in the eulogy, 'Mr. Shakespeare is fit for something better than ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... disputed on both sides with a warmth which surprised me in Elysium, till I discovered by intuition that every soul retained its principal characteristic, being, indeed, its very essence. The line was that celebrated one in Othello— ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... writing the two worst plays in which he took part (for portions only seem to have been supplied by him), Pericles and Titus Andronicus, or his two best, conceived so massively and executed in such a masterly manner, Macbeth and Othello. In the Two Noble Kinsmen, which he wrote with Fletcher, any body familiar with his acknowledged dramas, can trace him as easily as a traveller follows with his finger the course of the Rhone while that river is traversing ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... had on to me. For instance, she was very much in love with herself, and therefore called me the most egoistical of men. She drank, and called me a drunkard; she rarely changed her linen and said I was dirty; she was jealous, even of my men friends, and called me Othello. She was masterful and called me Nero. Niggardly ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... times. I ought to be able to commit to memory several of the plays, too, and that would be good fun. If those chaps back yonder could recite the Koran word for word I shall certainly be able to learn equally well some of these plays. It would be worth while to recite "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Hamlet," "The Tempest," and "As You Like It," the last week of the year just before I take my vacation of two weeks. If I can recite even these six plays in those six evenings I shall feel that I did well in deciding for Shakespeare ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... "Not at all. Othello's occupation's only beginning. You can't criticize these people, but you must review them. And I assure you it means far more labour and a finer discrimination to pick out your little man from a crowd of little men than to recognize your great man ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the theatres, and some of whose gay and spirited verses still live in the memory of hundreds of thousands. From Henry Carey descended that Edmund Kean, who, in our time, transformed himself so marvellously into Shylock, Iago and Othello. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I hope she won't be pricked by that queer conscience of hers to tell Brian any secrets which concern me as well as Julian and herself. And I hope—whatever happens!—that I shan't be mean enough to be jealous. But—with such a new, exciting "friendship" for Brian's prop, it seems as if, for me—Othello's ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stopping short and exclaiming, "This is just what every son of Adam and daughter of Eve has gone through before; why should we proceed?" Besides, it is the one emotion common to the whole world; we can all comprehend it. Once more, it reveals character. In Hamlet and Othello, for example, what is interesting is not solely the bare love. The natures of Hamlet and Othello are brought to light through it as they would not have been through any other stimulus. I am sure that no ordinary woman ever shows what ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... homicides in general, can yet with mercy distinguish between the degrees of guilt in homicides; and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood- track of an unhappy crazed boy, or grey-haired clodpate Othello, "perplexed i' the extreme," at the very moment that it is sending a Minister of the Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting young girls in their fathers' sight, and killing noble youths in cool blood, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... Steevens, in a note to Othello, explains a jennet to be a Spanish horse; but from the passage just given, I confess it appears to me to mean somewhat more. Perhaps a jennet was a horse kept solely for pleasure, whose mane was suffered to grow to a considerable ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... took place every other night in the drawing-room, and every sofa in the house was more or less damaged by the perseverance and spirit with which Mr. Sempronius Gattleton, and Miss Lucina, rehearsed the smothering scene in 'Othello'—it having been determined that that tragedy should form the first ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Trading Company, and over the Liebfrauenmilch and Tokayer he found a new eloquence. His Western stories, his European experiences vastly interested the dark-eyed enchantress, and, led on by the spell of those wistful eyes—Othello-like—he told her the whole story of his life. For he stood before her, all unarmed in his ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... afraid that I did. That slip about the R.A.F. engine was unpardonable. But then how was I to know that the dear woman knew as much about aeroplanes as I did myself? She was like Desdemona at the feet of Othello, and, of course, I lost my head. You are as crazy about her as I am, with less excuse. Besides, I was on duty. Before Madame had spoken to me for five minutes, I was certain that she was not French. She spoke perfectly, but there was a little accent, ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... of his nature warred like opposing forces. The wild passion of Othello was in him. He could have snatched up the slender white-and-gold figure, wrapped the shining jewelled head in the trailing scarf of point lace, and rushed away with the girl in his arms—anywhere, far from these people ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... remarkable for ... well, well! Denounce me, if you will; you but denounce the dead. I am extinct. It is strange how, at this supreme crisis of my life, I should be haunted by quotations from works of an inexact and even fanciful description; but here," he added, "is another: 'Othello's occupation's gone.' Yes, dear Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter; and how, I ask you, after having tasted of these joys, am I to condescend to a less ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Othello?" interrupted Mr. Bunn. "I have played him many times!" and he threw back his shoulders, and tried to give himself the airs he was wont ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... could not otherwise acknowledge this kind of favor, received it with the best grace in the world: he made one of his most ceremonious bows, and begged the kicking Mussulman "to accept his perfect assurances of high consideration." Our countryman was too wise to imitate Othello in the use of the dagger. He thought it better, as better it was, to assuage his bruised dignity with half a yard square of balmy diplomatic diachylon. In the disasters of their friends, people are seldom wanting in a laudable patience. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Shakespearian width of sympathy and in the Shakespearian humour which lies beyond Hazlitt's sphere. His criticism of Hamlet is feeble; he does not do justice to Mercutio or to Jaques; but he sympathises more heartily with the tremendous passion of Lear and Othello, and finds something congenial to his taste in Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. It is characteristic, too, that he evidently understands Shakespeare better on the stage than in the closet. When he can associate ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... new thoughts, new scenes, and new knowledge of ourselves and our kind, more capable, and, if we choose to be so, more wise. His art is so great that we almost forget its presence,—almost forget that the Macbeth and Othello we have seen and heard were Shakspeare's, and that he MADE them; we can scarce conceive how he could feign as if felt, and retain and reproduce such a play of emotions and passions from the position of spectator, his own soul remaining, with its sovereign reason, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... wished that "Romeo and Juliet" should have ended happily, or that Othello should have discovered the perfidy of his Ancient in time to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... forms of literary art biography demands from the artist not only the greatest courage, but also the happiest combination of the highest gifts. To succeed in painting the portrait of Achilles or of Priam, of Hamlet or of Othello, may be difficult, but is it as difficult as to succeed in painting the portrait of Browning or Rossetti? Surely not. In the one case an intense dramatic imagination is needed, and nothing more. If Homer’s Achaian and Trojan heroes were ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale; Will make they hair, tho' erst from gipsy polled, By barber woven, and by barber sold, Though twisted smooth with Harry's nicest care, Like hoary bristles to erect and stare. The hero of the mimic scene, no more I start in Hamlet, in Othello roar; Or haughty Chieftain, 'mid the din of arms, In Highland bonnet woo Malvina's charms; While sans culottes stoop up the mountain high, And steal from me Maria's prying eye. Blest Highland bonnet! Once my proudest dress, Now prouder still, Maria's temples ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... affection simply, but because it is affection of a high kind; and its elevation is of more consequence to him than its intensity, or even than its continuance. He would sooner that at the expense of its intensity it remained pure, than that at the expense of its purity it remained intense. Othello was certainly not a husband of the highest type, and yet we see something of this even in his case. His sufferings at his wife's supposed inconstancy have doubtless in them a large selfish element. Much of them is caused by the mere passion of jealousy. But the deepest sting of all ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... of some uncouth member or other, as though he could not yet take upon him human shape entirely, for that man is not entirely and utterly fallen as he is.' Whatever form he may assume, the cloven foot must always be visible under every disguise; and Othello looks first for that fabulous but certain sign when ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Hamlet or Lear is a fool." In its issue of March 27th 1889, the Rochdale Observer reported John Bright as scornfully angry with deluded people who believe that Shakespeare wrote Othello. ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... and it's a blessing to be grateful for, isn't it? We moody people know its worth. Glad you like my first tableau. Come and see number two. Hope it isn't spoilt; it was very pretty just now. This is "Othello telling his ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... player, by observing a few general effects, which some common passion, as grief, anger, &c., usually has upon the gestures and exterior, can so easily compass. To know the internal workings and movements of a great mind, of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the when and the why and the how far they should be moved; to what pitch a passion is becoming; to give the reins and to pull in the curb exactly at the moment when the drawing in or the slackening is most graceful; seems ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... hint as the play of "Othello" performed in the Russian language in a railroad station by Dockstader's minstrels. A royal and generous lady this Pittsburg, though—homely, hearty, with flushed face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kid slippers, and bidding Raggles sit before the roaring fireplace and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... si ce n'est pas pour ces raisons cachees que l'on est oblige de s'avouer que la plupart des grands poemes de l'humanite ne sont pas sceniques? Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Antoine et Cleopatre, ne peuvent etre representes, et il est dangereux de les voir sur la scene. Quelque chose d'Hamlet est mort pour nous du jour ou nous l'avons vu mourir sous nos yeux. Le spectre d'un acteur l'a detrone, et nous ne pouvons ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... "'Yes, certainly. Othello is now in preparation; and Hamlet and Macbeth are stock pieces. But even your Shakspeare was far from the truth, the great truth, that the drama should represent the progress, development, and accomplishment of the natural and moral world, without ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... "Mr Pontifex is the exact likeness of Othello, but with a difference—he hates not wisely but too well. He would dislike the literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them and they him; there is no natural solidarity between him and them, and if he were brought ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... from his happy but threatening manner of holding his cane, when sallying from his own domicile towards the coffee-room, which he usually entered about two o'clock, to study the news of the day in the pages of the Courier. The gallant Captain frequently indulged, like Othello, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... not have had Othello's flaw, Not erred with Brutus,—greater, then, than those For all their nobleness. Oh, albeit with awe, Leave we the mighty phantoms and draw near The man that fashioned them and gave them law! The Master Poet found with scarce a peer In all the ages his domain ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... she explained. "It was dreadful. He raged, he shook the whole block as he trotted to and fro tearing his hair. I think he wished to tear my hair. He really resembled the elder Salvini as Othello—you know the scene I mean. I gave him a check to compensate him. He tore it up and blew it into the air with a curse. Oh, it was beautiful comedy. I told him our interview would make a hit as a 'turn' on the vaudeville stage. Nothing could calm him. I was firm, and ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Desdemona to be altogether condemned for the unsuitableness of the person whom she selected for her lover. Bating that Othello was black, the noble Moor wanted nothing which might recommend him to the affections of the greatest lady. He was a soldier, and a brave one; and by his conduct in bloody wars against the Turks, had risen to the rank of general in the Venetian service, and was esteemed ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... Paris and gave, in English, "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," "Othello," and "The Merchant of Venice." Dumas went to see them and described the impression made upon him by Shakspere, in language identical with that which Goethe used about himself.[36] He was like a man born blind and suddenly restored to sight. Dumas' "Henry III." (1829), ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... master of the brig "Othello," reports that his brig foundered off Portland, December 27;—encountering a strong gale, and shipping two heavy seas in succession, which hove the ship on her beam-ends. "Observing no chance of ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bears a distant resemblance to "honest Iago" in Othello, though Molire has only faintly shadowed forth what Shakespeare has worked out in so ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... gone,—for awhile; for awhile." Then she came up to him and put both her hands on his breast. "But yet, Othello, I shall not ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... heard of their mother's death they rent the air with their cries of anguish; even Miss Watson shed real tears, her occupation, like that of Othello, being gone. Poor Mr. D'Alton was almost beside himself. He had never loved another woman; and, though he was not blind to his wife's failings and shortcomings, he nevertheless lamented the loss of one, who, whatever her ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... breath with the name Tell (for ass IS baudet, I know; though Monsieur is pleased to translate it ESPRIT-FORT) your mountain maid will some night smother her Breton-bretonnant, even as your own Shakspeare's Othello smothered Desdemona." ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the lock!" she cries; and all around "Restore the lock!" the vaulted roofs rebound. Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain Roared for the handkerchief that caused his pain. But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed, And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost! The lock, obtained with guilt, and kept with ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... said if he was. Hesione, there are men who have done wonderful things: men like Othello, only, of course, white, and very ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... shameful manner? Are we not reminded here of the position of thirsty Toby Belch towards the simple Aguecheek, if not even of honest [12] Iago in his dealings with the liberal Rodrigo? Neither in Olivia's uncle, nor in Othello's Ancient is it reckoned a merit to have omitted doing pimp service to friends. Their policy of taking advantage of amorous inclinations, although they did not even try to promote them by the reading of poetical productions, ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... point of interest in view has nothing to inflame; and a matter frivolous in itself, becomes important, when it serves to bring to light the intentions and characters of men. The foreigner, who believed that Othello, on the stage, was enraged for the loss of his handkerchief, was not more mistaken, than the reasoner who imputes any of the more vehement passions of men to the impressions of mere ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... it open before you, it is permitted for the genius of the actor to co-operate with that of the poet in producing an effect, for which neither was singly competent. Those who have witnessed the representation of the heart-rendings of jealousy in Kean's Othello, or of the agonies of "love and sorrow joined" in Miss O'Neil's Belvidera, will, we are persuaded, acknowledge the truth of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... enlightens. Shakespeare undoubtedly owed his marvelous insight into the human soul, to his profound sympathy with man. He might have conned whole libraries on the philosophy of the passions, he might have coldly observed facts for years, and never have conceived of jealousy like Othello's,—the remorse of Macbeth, or love ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... of Pope's circle who holds a more enviable position than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect and readiness of wit Swift only was his equal, and in classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like Othello, Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends clung to him with an affection that was almost womanly. He had the fine impulses of Goldsmith combined with the manliness and practical sagacity of Dr. Johnson, and Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a kindred ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... noble and magnanimous Moor called Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and after he marries her, harbours (as in too many cases) ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... swerving a hair from the line of cold, calm, even-handed justice: yet how do our feelings, how do our moral sympathies, run in these cases? I need not say they run wholly and unreservedly with the chivalrous but infirm Cassio, the honest and honour-loving Othello, the innocent though not faultless Desdemona; with the pious and unsuspecting Edgar, the erring indeed but still upright and sound-hearted Gloster. Nay, more; we would rather be in the place of the victims than of the victors: virtue wronged, betrayed, crushed, seems to us a more eligible ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... but to do the duty of police in the whole world of thought. Wherever it espies sophistry or superstition they are to be bidden to stand; nay, they are to be followed to their very dens and there apprehended and exterminated, as Othello smothered Desdemona, "else ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the faint exquisite music of a dream " [Moore]; " music arose with its voluptuous swell " [Byron]; " music is the universal language of mankind " [Longfellow]; " music's golden tongue " [Keats]; " the speech of angels " [Carlyle]; " will sing the savageness out of a bear " [Othello]; music hath charms ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Shelley himself. All that Beatrice says in The Cenci is beautiful and conceivable and admirable: but unless we except her exquisite last words—and even they are more beautiful than inevitable—we shall hardly find what we find in "King Lear" and "The White Devil," "Othello" and "The Duchess of Malfy"—the tone of convincing reality; the note, as a critic of our own day might call ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... excited in us by similar dramas in our own language. Few, I trust, would be rash or ignorant enough, to compare Schiller with Shakspeare, yet, merely as illustration, I would say, that we should proceed to the perusal of Wallenstein, not from Lear or Othello, but from Richard the Second, or the three parts of Henry the Sixth. We scarcely expect rapidity in an historical drama; and many prolix speeches are pardoned from characters, whose names and actions have ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... the effect is heightened by those race contrasts which had been so abundantly used in The Return of the Druses. Luria is a Moor who has undertaken the service of Florence, and whose religion it is to serve her. Like Othello,[22] he has been intrusted, alien as he is, by a jealous and exacting State, with the supreme command of her military forces, a position in which the fervour of the Oriental and the frank simplicity ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... was over, and the Southern nobility turned its thoughts once more to social arrogance and political dominion, it found that Othello's occupation was entirely gone. A revolution had swept over the country more iconoclastic and merciless than that which followed in the wake of the French revolution nearly a hundred years before. The bottom rail had been violently placed upon ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... occur during Washington, Jefferson, or Adams's administration. 3. I consulted Webster, Worcester, and Walker's dictionary. 4. This state was south of Mason's and Dixon's line. 5. These are neither George nor Fanny's books. 6. Howard's, the philanthropist's, life was a noble one. 7. It is Othello's pleasure, our noble and valiant general's. 8. He ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... place. Lastly, when Leontes beholds, as he imagines, the statue of his lost wife, it descends from the niche: it is she herself, the still living Hermione, who has kept herself so long concealed; and the piece ends with universal rejoicing. The jealousy of Leontes is not, like that of Othello, developed through all its causes, symptoms and variations; it is brought forward at once full grown and mature, and is portrayed as a distempered frenzy. It is a passion whose effects the spectator is more concerned with than with its origin, and which does not ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... us tedious," she remarked. "I suppose you were telling Millicent about your adventures when we came in; playing Othello, and she seemed to be listening as ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... Shakespeare, "and Shakespeare of men. We find in Cato innumerable beauties, which enamour us of its author, but we see nothing that acquaints us with human sentiments, or human actions; we place it with the fairest and the noblest progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction with learning; but Othello is the vigorous and vivacious offspring of observation, impregnated by genius. Cato affords a splendid exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers just and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated and harmonious; but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... about, shall be my last play—for it is but a play, woe's me! I have one done here, 'A Soul's Tragedy,' as it is properly enough called, but that would not do to end with (end I will), and Luria is a Moor, of Othello's country, and devotes himself to something he thinks Florence, and the old fortune follows—all in my brain yet, but the bright weather helps and I will soon loosen my Braccio and Puccio (a pale discontented man), and Tiburzio (the Pisan, good true fellow, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... one of his own, who is more nearly conformed to himself. Shakspeare spoke the language of nature, when he made the senate and people of Venice attribute to the effect of witchcraft, Desdemona's passion for Othello—though, as Coleridge has said, we are to conceive of him not as a negro, but as a high bred ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... even at a low price. Whether he sold the jewels so cheap as the books no one ever knew; but certainly the pundit caste did well out of the sale. Within the week the shop below was denuded, and there were nothing but bare shelves, much to the disgust of Bart, who, like Othello, found his occupation gone. The next day the furniture was to be sold, and when Deborah was comforting Sylvia at the week's end the fiat had already gone forth. Whither he intended to transfer his household the old man did not say, and this, in ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... interrupt me. . . . Ha! thought I, I'll have to show him! And although I was all trembling with emotion I assumed a tragic pose and began to recite. . . . I writhed, shouted, burst out in a fit of passion like Othello, seethed with hatred, like a samovar and finally finished, all covered with perspiration. 'Some more,' said Richter, continually peeling the potatoes, while not a single muscle of his face betrayed what he thought of it all. I thought that everything was going fine, so I selected ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... at a great hotel on the Lido. Our days were unimportant. We bathed in the Adriatic. We revisited familiar churches and picture galleries in Venice. We mingled with a cosmopolitan crowd and developed the complexions (not only in our faces) of an Othello family. Doria, too, made holiday abroad. Every August, Mr. Jornicroft repaired the ravages of eleven months' civic and other feasting at Marienbad, and Doria, as she had done before her marriage, accompanied him. She and Barbara exchanged letters ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... haste, each black-leg fellow, Quit the turf or loaded bone; Like your brother-black Othello, Own your occupation's gone. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Florence Nightingale, Harriet Hosmer, Rosa Bonheur, Mrs. Siddons, represent as much love for the causes they lived or live for as did Vittoria Colonna for her husband, Hester and Vanessa for Swift, Heloise for Abelard, Marguerite for Faust, Ophelia for Hamlet, Desdemona for Othello, or Juliet for Romeo. These last, I repeat, were bound in the cause of love not less than the former; and they all owed their endeavors—their success, if they gained it—to the feelings ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... After a little they rose. He put his arm about her and kissed her, and he ran his fingers through her hair. She had such fine golden hair—so light, and it lifted to every breath. Something got into my brain. I know now it was the maggot which sent Othello mad. The world in that hour was malicious, awful. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Owing to Dryden's statement "Shakespeare's plots are in the one hundred novels of Cinthio" (Preface to Astrologer), his name has been generally fixed upon as the representative Italian novelist from whom the Elizabethans drew their plots. As a matter of fact only "Othello" (Ecat. iii. 7), and "Measure for Measure" (ib. viii. 5), can be clearly traced to him, though "Twelfth Night" has some similarity with Cinthio's "Gravina" (v. 8): both come from a common ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... have been preferred to genius itself, or at least often mistaken for it. Betterton had a voice of that kind which gave more spirit to terror than to the softer passions; of more strength than melody. The rage and jealousy of Othello became him better than the sighs and tenderness of Castalio: for though in Castalio he only excelled others, in Othello he excelled himself, which you will easily believe, when you consider, that, in spite of his complexion, Othello ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... newspaper "organ" approached their end. Forney's occupation, like Othello's, was gone, for he was nothing if not an organ grinder. Facile with pen and tongue, he seemed a born courtier—a veritable Dalgetty, whose loyal devotion to his knight-at-arms deserved better recognition than the cold and wary Pennsylvania chieftain was willing to give. It is only fair ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... squabbled over some amateur theatricals, and she has cut my acquaintance ever since. I always did say that there is nothing like amateur theatricals for bringing out all the worst vices of humanity. If a Shakespearian revival ever reaches the heavenly host, Gabriel and Michael will have to play Othello and Iago turn and turn ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... advances, for his powers of seduction were only the attractions with which nature had endowed him. His person, his voice, his look,—all in him was irresistible. In presenting himself anywhere, he could very well say with Shakspeare, in "Othello,"— ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... she has probably said to him, paraphrasing Othello's speech to Cassio; "it is my duty, and—as by this time you must be aware—it is my keen if occasionally somewhat involved, sense of duty that is the cause of almost all our troubles in this play. You will always remain the object of what I cannot help feeling is misplaced ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... bestowed on a subject unparticipated by her. My sister was by nature destitute of the common feelings of anxious, petulant jealousy. The treasure which she possessed in the affections of Raymond, was more necessary to her being, than the life-blood that animated her veins—more truly than Othello she might say, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... and his sister: indeed the work seems at first to have been intended for Mary's hand alone, but her brother undertook the telling of the stories of the tragedies, and to use his own words, out of the twenty tales he was "responsible for Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail-piece or correction of grammar, for none of the cuts, and for all of the spelling." When the work was originally produced it had illustrations to which Lamb objected. His reference to tail-pieces ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... set down. I have called his Diary a work of art. Now when the artist has found something, word or deed, exactly proper to a favorite character in play or novel, he will neither suppress nor diminish it, though the remark be silly or the act mean. The hesitation of Hamlet, the credulity of Othello, the baseness of Emma Bovary, or the irregularities of Mr. Swiveller, caused neither disappointment nor disgust to their creators. And so with Pepys and his adored protagonist: adored not blindly, but with trenchant insight and enduring, human toleration. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... seen Neb, if the truth were told, Miss Chloe," I cried; "and he has been charming your ear with Othello-tales, of his risks and hardships, to make ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... seems, into the first secret of imaginative literature, which is that one may portray a hero sympathetically without making believe that his vices are virtues. Shakespeare no more endorses Coriolanus's patrician pride than he endorses Othello's jealousy or Macbeth's murderous ambition. Shakespeare was concerned with painting noble natures, not with pandering to their vices. He makes us sympathize with Coriolanus in his heroism, in his sufferings, in his return to his better nature, in his ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... intensity and energy, which bore few traces of the trammels of a Court, thenceforth illumined every scene that he contrived. To 1604 the composition of two plays can be confidently assigned, one of which—'Othello'—ranks with Shakespeare's greatest achievements; while the other—'Measure for Measure'—although as a whole far inferior to 'Othello,' contains one of the finest scenes (between Angelo and Isabella, II. ii. 43 sq.) and one of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... makes me less esteem all human kind; He made one nature, and another found, Both in his page with master strokes abound: His witches, fairies, and enchanted isle. Bid us no longer at our nurses smile; Of lost historians we almost complain, Nor think it the creation of his brain. Who lives, when his Othello's in a trance? With his great Talbot(62) too he conquer'd France. Long we may hope brave Talbot's blood will run In great descendants, Shakespeare has but one; And him, my lord, permit me not to name, But in kind silence spare his rival's shame:— Yet I in vain that ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... to Paris. At the theatre they were preparing for a benefit performance for Bressant, who was about to retire from the stage. It was agreed that Mounet-Sully and I should play an act from Othello, by Jean Aicard. The theatre was well filled, and the audience in a good humour. After the song I was in bed as Desdemona, when suddenly I heard the public laugh, softly at first, and then irrepressibly. Othello had just come in, in ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... "In the Maurel conception, Othello's Ancient was not painted black in black—the heart of darkness, but with many nuances, many gradations. He was economical of gesture, playing on the jealous Moor as plays a skillfully handled bow upon a finely attuned violin. His was truly an objective characterization. His ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... beat in argument. To salute by touching the head-covering, as Shakspeare makes Iago's friends act to Othello. It is now more an academic than ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... advertisement of the cafe in the musical programme it is stated that, "the oldest and most aristocratic establishment of its kind in Venice, it can count among its clients, since 1720, Byron, Goethe, Rousseau, Canova, Dumas, and Moor," meaning by Moor not Othello but Byron's friend and biographer, the Anacreon of Erin. How Florian's early patrons looked one can see in a brilliant little picture by Guardi in the National Gallery, No. 2099. The cafe boasts that its doors are never ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... "It's the contrast that's killing me. The only women who would look at me to-day are mercenary ones that wouldn't care if I was black as Othello or big as George IV. Why, I could show you a trunkful of letters, written me by the finest women in this country, when I was at my best. They breathe but one thing—love, love, love! I lived on it! It was the ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... actors solely, and this idea persisted with the Frenchwoman, as with many another, throughout. Seven military characters arranged themselves in a kind of state on the unpainted, slanting stage. They might have been supernumeraries, like the "senators" in "Othello." At least their severe demeanor became them awkwardly. They wore uniforms, but not of appalling rank. He who presided was only a lieutenant colonel, the other six were captains. Before them, each on a square stool, sat two generals, one with a bandaged cheek. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... tell you it was a woman—she wore a flowing white veil upon her head, the queerest petticoats, and funniest shoes—at that time I had not seen the Chinese Collection and thought it was Desdemona (whom I had seen Mr Kean put to death a few nights before) "walking" in some of Othello's clothes. What she said, or if she said any thing, I was too much astonished to make out; but she walked into my room, smiling with her wonderful teeth, and curtsying with the extraordinary petticoats down to the very floor—and calling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... so sonderbare und ihm eigne Wege er auch whlet, und der Franzose erreicht ihn fast niemals, ob er gleich die gebahnten Wege der Alten betritt. Nach dem 'Oedipus' des Sophokles muss in der Welt kein Stck mehr Gewalt ber unsere Leidenschaften haben als 'Othello,' als 'Knig Lear,' als 'Hamlet' u.s.w. Hat Corneille ein einziges Trauerspiel, das Sie nur halb so gerhret htte als die 'Zaire' des Voltaire? Und die 'Zaire' des Voltaire, wie weit ist sie unter dem 'Mohren von Venedig,' dessen schwache Copie sie ist, und von welchem der ganze Charakter ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... preceded him, by which means the world of letters will see what they have really lost in Lord Byron. To commence with the great Shakspeare himself, to whom universal admiration continues to be paid. Had Shakspeare been cut off at the same early period as Byron, The Tempest, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and several others of an equal character, would never have been written. The high reputation of Dryden would also have been limited—his fame, perhaps, unknown. The Absalom and Achitophel is the earliest of his best productions, which was written about ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? And Millamant and Romeo? Into the night ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... resolution," but in the real conflict what Shakspeare designates as "soldiers and afeard." There was in our train a young prig, who "played the braggart with his tongue," telling of his brave exploits, like a very Othello recounting the "dangers he passed," ending with a defiant show of how he should act in the event of an attack from marauding Indians, to which the trains were at that time so subject, after which he fell into a profound slumber, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... very cool and undemonstrative. He would let her get accustomed to him. And certainly in these conversations he was entertaining. Walking, or sitting on the bank under some old beech or oak tree, he had endless things to tell Dolly; things to which she listened as eagerly as ever Desdemona did to Othello; stories out of which, avoid personalities as he would, she could not but gain, step by step, new knowledge of the story-teller. And hour by hour Dolly's respect for him and appreciation of him grew. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... upon the shop, Whence fair Verona's youth his breath did stop: And what if Leonardo, in foul scorn, Some lean Apothecary should suborn To take my hated life? A "tortoise" hung Before my eyes, and in my ears scaled "alligators" rung. But my Othello, to his vows more zealous— Twenty Iagos ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm in which he goes out is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements than any actor can be to represent Lear. In the acted Othello, the black visage of the Moor is obtruded upon you; in the written Othello, his color disappears in his mind. When Hamlet compares the two pictures of Gertrude's first and second husband, who wants to see the pictures? But in the acting, a miniature must be lugged out. "The truth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a great deal of gas about these war meetin's. A war meetin', in fact, without gas, would be suthin' like the play of HAMLET with the part of OTHELLO omitted. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... a fresh bouquet of flowers over the parterre, and, now caresses, now plays with her voice; but she rarely moves to tears. Radziwill, on the other hand, thinks that she sings and acts the last scene of Desdemona in Othello in such a manner that nobody can refrain from weeping. To-day I asked her if she would sing us sometime this scene in costume (she is said to be an excellent actress); she answered me that it was true that she had often seen tears ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Othello, speak— Did you by indirect and forced courses, Subdue and poison this young maid's affection? Or came it by request, and such fair question ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... to Othello, the Moor of Venice, is jealous of Cassio, his lieutenant. He plots to oust Cassio ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... blood the old Greek sensitiveness to suffering, and they dislike painful scenes and disastrous catastrophes; and this sentiment they carry to extremes. Although they have the finest representative of Othello—Salvini—at this moment in Europe, the terrible scene of the murder of Desdemona is a shock that many would shrink from witnessing. They will bear any strain on the imagination, but their fine-strung nerves revolt against the terrible in action. To this natural refinement is owing much of ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... 'Stello' (1832), in the manner of Sterne and Diderot, and 'Servitude et Grandeur militaire' (1835), the language of which is as caustic as that of Merimee. As a dramatist, De Vigny produced a translation of 'Othello—Le More de Venice' (1829); also 'La Marechale d'Ancre' (1832); both met with moderate success only. But a decided "hit" was 'Chatterton' (1835), an adaption from his prose-work 'Stello, ou les Diables bleus'; it at once established his reputation on the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "Othello? Who speaks of Othello?" interrupted Mr. Bunn. "I have played him many times!" and he threw back his shoulders, and tried to give himself the airs he was wont to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... marriage seemed a big thing and a wonderful thing, and her country home in Devonshire a small, breathless place where nothing ever happened, and where life was one long Sunday at Home, and Draycott, back from the East, had appeared as interesting as a white Othello. ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... hands, as we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without effort the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will, for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson, they can leave generalities and begin at once ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... worthy magazine that The Easiest Way is the father of all modern American tragedy. Sir, does Mr. Broun forget that there once lived a man named William Shakespeare? Is it possible to overlook such immortal tragedies as Hamlet and Othello? I think not. Fiat justitia, ruat colum. Sincerely, SHERWIN ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... simply disgusting. This style of acting culminated in the debut of a local celebrity, possessed of a sonorous voice and seized with a sudden longing for Thespian laurels. He chose the part of Othello, and all Virginia assembled to applaud. The part was not well committed, and sentences were commenced with Shakespearian loftiness and ended with the actor's own emendations, which were certainly questionable improvements. Anything ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... was the man he picked out for that purpose. He was one of the Lords of the Treasury; he was handsome and well-made; he had wit enough to be able to affect any part he pleased and a romantic turn in his conversation that could entertain a lady with as many adventures as Othello,—and it is no ill way of gaining Desdemonas. Women are very apt to take their lovers' characters from their own mouths; and if you will believe Mr. Methuen's account of himself, neither Artamenes nor Oroondates ever had more valour, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... kettle, and waited uneasily for it to sing as a kettle should. "Now I'll shave," he said; "and when I am less like that too conscientious Othello, I'll go out ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... dear, that these Sioux Fallians have already complained because I bathe my dear, shaggy Othello in the bath tub. And there isn't a human being here with a ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... With the dawn of the new era there came greater possibilities, and now it may be said we have a few Shakespearian operas that will endure for several decades at least: let us say Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor," Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet," Verdi's "Othello" and "Falstaff." Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet" and Saint-Sans's "Henry VIII" seem already to have outlived their brief day, at least in all countries save France, where the personal equation in favor of a native composer seems strong enough to keep second-class composers afloat while ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... serious things, as well as beat them in all the lighter accomplishments. French iron-clad steamers have been followed by the curious spectacle of a French actor teaching an English audience how Shakespeare should be acted. I would give a good deal to see M. Fechter in Hamlet, Othello, or Iago,—the only parts he has yet attempted; the rather, because the low condition of the stage in England, where Mr. Macready and Mr. Charles Kean are called great actors, makes the English newspaper-criticisms of little value. In default ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... estate. She cannot do this, is ruined, and thrown out into the unsympathetic world. Chekhov is the dramatist, not of action, but of inaction. The tragedy of inaction is as overwhelming, when we understand it, as the tragedy of an Othello, or a Lear, crushed by the wickedness of others. The former is being enacted daily, but we do not stage it, we do not know how. But who shall deny that the base of almost all human unhappiness is just this inaction, manifesting ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov |
