It is impossible to escape this result. The suggestion that the imputed
intrigue of Cassio and Desdemona took place at Venice before the
marriage, not at Cyprus after it, is quite futile. There is no positive
evidence whatever for it; if the reader will merely refer to the
difficulties mentioned under B above, he will see that it leaves almost
all of them absolutely untouched; and Iago's accusation is uniformly one
of adultery.
How then is this extraordinary contradiction to be explained? It can
hardly be one of the casual inconsistencies, due to forgetfulness, which
are found in Shakespeare's other tragedies; for the scheme of time
indicated under A seems deliberate and self-consistent, and the scheme
indicated under B seems, if less deliberate, equally self-consistent.
This does not look as if a single scheme had been so vaguely imagined
that inconsistencies arose in working it out; it points to some other
source of contradiction.
'Christopher North,' who dealt very fully with the question, elaborated
a doctrine of Double Time, Short and Long. To do justice to this theory
in a few words is impossible, but its essence is the notion that
Shakespeare, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to produce on the
spectator (for he did not aim at readers) two impressions.
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