Had he omitted
this scene--had he shown us Othello at one moment full of serene
confidence, and at his next appearance already convinced of Desdemona's
guilt--he would have omitted the pivot and turning--point of the whole
structure. It may seem fantastic to conceive that any dramatist could
blunder so grossly; but there are not a few plays in which we observe a
scarcely less glaring hiatus.
A case in point may be found in Lord Tennyson's _Becket_. I am not one
of those who hold Tennyson merely contemptible as a dramatist. I believe
that, had he taken to playwriting nearly half-a-century earlier, and
studied the root principles of craftsmanship, instead of blindly
accepting the Elizabethan conventions, he might have done work as fine
in the mass as are the best moments of _Queen Mary_ and _Harold_. As a
whole, _Becket_ is one of his weakest productions; but the Prologue and
the first act would have formed an excellent first and third act for a
play of wholly different sequel, had he interposed, in a second act, the
obligatory scene required to elucidate Becket's character.
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