He was exactly the kind of actor, moreover, to impress
him. He was great, grand, passionate, overwhelming with a like
emotion the apprentice and the critic. Everybody after listening to
a play or reading a book uses it when he comes to himself again to
fill his own pitcher, and the Cyprus tragedy lent itself to Zachariah
as an illustration of his own Clerkenwell sorrows and as a gospel for
them, although his were so different from those of the Moor. Why did
he so easily suspect Desdemona? Is it not improbable that a man with
any faith in woman, and such a woman, should proceed to murder on
such evidence? If Othello had reflected for a moment, he would have
seen that everything might have been explained. Why did he not
question, sift, examine, before taking such tremendous revenge?--and
for the moment the story seemed unnatural. But then he considered
again that men and women, if they do not murder one another, do
actually, in everyday life, for no reason whatever, come to wrong
conclusions about each other; utterly and to the end of their lines
misconstrue and lose each other. Nay, it seems to be a kind of
luxury to them to believe that those who could and would love them
are false to them.
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