And perhaps he
said to himself, No one in the theatre will notice that all this makes
an impossible position: and I can make all safe by using language that
implies that Othello has after all been married for some time. If so,
probably he was right. I do not think anyone does notice the
impossibilities either in the theatre or in a casual reading of the
play.
Either of these suppositions is possible: neither is, to me, probable.
The first seems the less unlikely. If the second is true, Shakespeare
did in _Othello_ what he seems to do in no other play. I can believe
that he may have done so; but I find it very hard to believe that he
produced this impossible situation without knowing it. It is one thing
to read a drama or see it, quite another to construct and compose it,
and he appears to have imagined the action in _Othello_ with even more
than his usual intensity.
NOTE J.
THE 'ADDITIONS' TO _OTHELLO_ IN THE FIRST FOLIO. THE PONTIC SEA.
The first printed _Othello_ is the first Quarto (Q1), 1622; the second
is the first Folio (F1), 1623. These two texts are two distinct versions
of the play. Q1 contains many oaths and expletives where less
'objectionable' expressions occur in F1. Partly for this reason it is
believed to represent the _earlier_ text, perhaps the text as it stood
before the Act of 1605 against profanity on the stage.
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