But these moments are fatal to Desdemona, who acts
precisely as if she were guilty; and they are fatal because they ask for
something which, it seems to us, could hardly be united with the
peculiar beauty of her nature.
This beauty is all her own. Something as beautiful may be found in
Cordelia, but not the same beauty. Desdemona, confronted with Lear's
foolish but pathetic demand for a profession of love, could have done, I
think, what Cordelia could not do--could have refused to compete with
her sisters, and yet have made her father feel that she loved him well.
And I doubt if Cordelia, 'falsely murdered,' would have been capable of
those last words of Desdemona--her answer to Emilia's 'O, who hath done
this deed?'
Nobody: I myself. Farewell.
Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!
Were we intended to remember, as we hear this last 'falsehood,' that
other falsehood, 'It is not lost,' and to feel that, alike in the
momentary child's fear and the deathless woman's love, Desdemona is
herself and herself alone?[106]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 85: One instance is worth pointing out, because the passage in
_Othello_ has, oddly enough, given trouble. Desdemona says of the maid
Barbara: 'She was in love, and he she loved proved mad And did forsake
her.
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