Certainly there are few things more impressive in
drama than to see a man or woman--or a man and woman--come upon the
stage, radiant, confident, assured that
"God's in his heaven,
All's right with the world,"
and leave it crushed and desperate, after a gradual and yet swift
descent into Avernus. Such a scene is of the very marrow of drama. It is
a play within a play; a concentrated, quintessentiated crisis.
In the third act of _Othello_ we have a peripety handled with consummate
theatrical skill. To me--I confess it with bated breath--the
craftsmanship seems greatly superior to the psychology. Othello, when we
look into it, succumbs with incredible facility to Iago's poisoned
pin-pricks; but no audience dreams of looking into it; and there lies
the proof of Shakespeare's technical mastery. In the Trial Scene in _The
Merchant of Venice_ we have another great peripety. It illustrates the
obvious principle that, where the drama consists in a conflict between
two persons or parties, the peripety is generally a double one--the
sudden collapse of Shylock's case implying an equally sudden restoration
of Antonio's fortunes.
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