rick's Othello seemed to be a "little nigger boy." The judgment of Victor was, on the contrary, favorable to Garrick's embodiment, and particularly he extolled that actor's treatment of the piteous scene of Othello's epileptic trance, -a scene which, in almost all modern presentments of the tragedy, on the English-speaking stage, has been omitted. Henry Irving, in his production of "Othello," February 14, 1876, restored it. Garrick's costume as Othello is not particularly described. One of his biographers, Arthur Murphy, says that "he chose to appear in a Venetian dress," in which case he chose aright. Another recorder, of later date, affirms that he wore Moorish garments. It was not his habit to consider correctness of apparel, nor was it the stage custom of his time to be fastidious as to congruity of attire. His venture as Othello was as decisive a failure as Cooke's venture in Hamlet, and he discarded the part, after giving only three performances of it.

Spranger Barry, with his fine, manly person, handsome face, melodious voice, and sympathetic temperament, made the part of Othello so much his own that, in the prime of his popularity, 1747 to 1758, no competitor for the public favor undertook to vie with him in it. Colley Cibber, speaking from personal observation, esteemed him superior, as Othello, to either Betterton or Booth. He dressed the part in a suit of scarlet cloth, decorated with gold lace, and wore a small cocked hat, knee-breeches, and silk stockings, the better to display his shapely legs, of which he was vain,-as men usually are who possess those accidental advantages. He had profited much by the instruction that he received from Macklin, who, if not always able to exemplify his own teaching, was unquestionably an actor of extraordinary intellectual resource and power. Macklin never acted Othello, but he acted Iago, not only to the Othello of Garrick but to that of Foote. In the opinion of Macklin, Barry's exhibition of the contrasted passions of love and jealous rage was finer than that accomplished by any other actor of Othello whom he had ever seen, and Macklin's mature and competent memory of the stage covered the entire period from the time of Betterton to that of Kemble. One enthusiast mentions that when Barry uttered the words, "Rude

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am I in my speech," his tones were "as soft as feathered snowflakes that melt as they fall." Barry made Othello a black man, but, as his person was tall, - more than five feet eleven inches, -and absolutely symmetrical, his countenance expressive, his smile winning, his voice rich and sweet, and as, being a remarkably expert dancer and fencer, his demeanor and motions were graceful, he was able to overcome that disadvantage. There is no reason for doubt that among all the performers of Othello who appeared on the English stage in the course of the eighteenth century, Spranger Barry was the best.

John Henderson, obviously, from the authentic records, an actor of various and copious ability, did not undertake Othello, but he played Iago, and he was the first among actors of that part to speak the rhymed lines with which Iago responds to Desdemona's inquiry concerning what would be his praise of "a deserving woman indeed" as if he were slowly and carefully composing them, and not speaking them as a composition which had been committed to memory. He dressed Iago in any military garb that chanced to please his fancy, for he was absolutely heedless of propriety of costume. Record is made of the fact that he prided himself on having, in the course of one London season, acted ten different parts in the same apparel.

Kemble, in accordance with his custom when performing in a work of imagination, acted Othello as a poetic character. "From his first entrance to his last," says Boaden, "he wrapped that great and ardent being in a mantle of mysterious solemnity, awfully predictive of his fate." The same conscientious authority declares that he was "grand, awful, and pathetic, but a European," and adds that he "never so completely worked himself into the character as to be identified with it." The fact that he was "a European" can scarcely be deemed surprising, when it is remembered that Othello, although called "a Moor," is, unequivocally, drawn as an Englishman, and whoever plays that part conformably to the text cannot avoid playing it in accordance with that delineation. Kemble's dress, as Othello, was strangely incorrect. At one time he wore a portion of the uniform of a British military officer and with that he combined Turkish trousers and a turban! At another time he

utterance of the Farewell was the final, overwhelming, surpassingly pathetic impartment of a desolate spirit, a ruined life, and a broken heart. His delirium of jealousy struggling with love was prodigious and awful. His killing of Desdemona was sacrificial. His ultimate despair was that of a bleak agony that drowned his being in a sea of grief. His manner of death, making a futile attempt to kiss the face of his dead wife, was unspeakably piteous. Such is the purport of many narratives which, written by contemporary observers, have survived to the present day. Hazlitt designated Kean's Othello as "the finest piece of acting in the world.”

An opinion generally prevalent among commentators on this subject is that Othello, like Macbeth, because he is a soldier, has had much experience in warfare, has performed feats of valor and endured many hardships, should be represented by a man of large size. He is called "the Moor"; the text seems to imply that he is a native of Mauritania; he declares himself to be of royal lineage. Moors are not, racially, large men. The point is not material. It does not signify whether the actor who appears as Othello is tall or short, if he truly is able to act the part. Barry was tall and of large frame; Kean was of low stature and slender figure; each was magnificent as Othello.

A question of practical and decisive importance, however, is that of Othello's color. All the actors who played Othello prior to Kean's assumption of the part, made him "black," and the text contains phrases which, by some judges, have been thought to justify that usage. Such phrases as "the sooty bosom" and "old black ram" are, it should be observed, spoken by persons hostile to Othello and intent on expressing their malicious antagonism toward him. There is no better reason for accepting "black" as literally descriptive of his color than there is for thinking him a four-footed beast because Iago calls him His own expression, "haply for I am black" occurs in a speech in which he is humbly depreciating himself, in comparison with the beautiful girl whom he has wedded, and it is figurative, not literal. A Moor is not necessarily black; he is tawny.

So.

first among actors of the part to recognize that fact, and to make that distinction as to color. Furthermore, it is essential that the actor should consider the imperative questions of facial expression and dramatic effect. The tragedy of "Othello" written mostly in blank verse, and, in general, sustained upon a high level of thought, feeling, invention, and style, if it is to be acted at all, should be acted in a poetical spirit. To take a cue from such expressions in the text as "thick lips" and "Barbary horse," and make Othello a negro, is, necessarily, to lower the tone of the interpretation. Kean made him light brown, and his example, in that respect, has been generally followed. It seems not possible fully to depict in words the image of desolation that Kean became, -according to contemporary testimony, -when he reached the climax of that agonizing scene which culminates with the pathetic Farewell. Recorders of his achievement dwell particularly on the quality of his voice, -the thrilling tones, unaffectedly melodious, flowing as if out of the depth of a broken heart and fraught with despair,-in which he uttered the mournful, hopeless lines beginning:

"O now, forever,

Farewell the tranquil mind!"

and his coincident action, culminating in a complete physical as well as spiritual collapse, when, as he moaned forth "Othello's occupation 's gone!" he raised his arms, clasped his hands, and sank back, in the abject misery of ruin. His voice, said Hazlitt, "struck on the heart like the swelling of some divine music." His manner of ejaculating, to Desdemona,-in the tempest of contention between love and fury that makes Othello almost a madman, in the terrible scene in which he accuses his wife of infidelity,-"Would thou had'st ne'er been born!" is said to have reached the uttermost of pathos. The exclamation, "O fool! fool! fool!" when Desdemona is dead and Iago's monstrous villainy has been revealed, came from his lips in a whisper of indescribable despair.

In our time only one actor whom I recall has caused a like effect with it; Gustavus Vaughan Brooke (1818-1867), a man of deep heart, splendid presence, and ripe artistic skill, whose performance of Othello

was noble, passionate, and true, put into the iterated utterance of that little word the whole vast volume of Othello's love and woe. The sob with which he accented the last word was irresistible in its excitation of sympathy and grief. Kean's frequent employment of a sob is remarked in several contemporary accounts: when his powers were failing he used it so frequently, indeed, that on one occasion he was hissed for it, and he is said to have remarked, "They have found me out." Brooke could not have been an imitator of Kean. He was only fifteen years old, and resident in Dublin, when Kean, whom he had never seen, died, 1833, at Richmond, near London. He had, however, acted with Forrest, who had learned much from Kean, and who, rightly and naturally, made use of what he had learned, and thus, no doubt, transmitted much to Brooke.

It is

Macready seems neither to have satisfied himself (he was a judicious and stern critic of his art), nor deeply moved his auditors, in the acting of Othello, but he particularly excelled as Iago. That result might have been expected. not unjust to the memory of that great actor to say that his intellectuality exceeded his tenderness. Writing in 1835, Macready makes this comment on his Othello: "I do not find that I yet give that real pathos and terrible fury which belong to the character," and also he describes his personation as "elaborate but not abandoned." The part had then been included in his repertory for nineteen years. His make-up for Othello was Venetian and correct. Othello is not only an officer in the military service of the Venetian government, but he has abjured the religion of Mohammed and become a Christian. There can be no question as to the costume that he should wear, and Macready was too much a scholar and thinker and too scrupulous an executant to have made a mistake as to Othello's raiment. Hazlitt, generally a discriminative but sometimes a splenetic, censorious critic, tartly remarked, 1816, relative to Charles Mayne Young and Macready, who were then acting together, in this tragedy, and alternating the two great parts, that "Young, in Othello, was like a great humming-top, and Macready, in Iago, like a mischievous boy whipping him." The greatness of Macready's acting was

Among the performers of Othello on the American stage, in early times, were Robert Upton, David Douglass, William Hallam, and John Henry. The first representation of the tragedy given in America occurred at the theater in Nassau Street, New York City, December 26, 1751. Upton played Othello. The performance given by John Henry, a handsome man, six feet in height, was thought to be more than ordinarily good. He wore the uniform of a British military officer, of the period. His face was black and his hair woolly. He made Othello a negro. James Fennell (1766-1816), long retained the part in his repertory, and his personation of it, when he acted in America, was highly extolled. "His appearance in the Moors, Othello and Zanga," says Dunlap, "was noble. His face appeared better and more expressive and his towering figure superb." Fennell Fennell had light-gray eyes and yellow eyebrows and eyelashes, and he needed "make-up" to produce facial effect, but he was one of the best tragedians of his day. John Hodgkinson, one of the most versatile actors of whom there is record, while better suited for comedy than tragedy, nevertheless attempted tragic parts, but his performance of Othello was neither authoritatively commended nor particularly described. He acted the part, February 6, 1793, at the John Street Theater, New York, with that excellent actor Lewis Hallam, second of the name, nephew of William Hallam, as lago.

Cooper, whose career was brilliant and whose repertory comprised two hundred and sixty-four parts, seems to have won his brightest laurels in Macbeth and Virginius, but the veteran John Bernard, a critical observer not prone to effusive encomium, records the opinion that Cooper's performance of Othello was equal to that of Barry, which, of course, he had seen, -and S. C. Carpenter, writing in 1810, declared that, in the last act of the tragedy, Cooper's acting was "superlatively great." Cooper, it should be borne in mind, was an actor remarkable for intrinsic majesty of bearing and deep tenderness of feeling, as well as lively imagination and exquisite taste. He made Othello's complexion brown and he wore a Venetian dress. He also acted Iago and his performance is recorded as "insidious and pli