He is supposed to mean by the last words that his love is _now_
suspended by suspicion, whereas in fact, in his bliss, he has so totally
forgotten Iago's 'Ha! I like not that,' that the tempter has to begin
all over again. The meaning is, 'If ever I love thee not, Chaos will
have come again.' The feeling of insecurity is due to the excess of
_joy_, as in the wonderful words after he rejoins Desdemona at Cyprus
(II. i. 191):
If it were now to die,
'Twere now to be most happy: for, I fear
My soul hath her content so absolute
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate.
If any reader boggles at the use of the present in 'Chaos _is_ come
again,' let him observe 'succeeds' in the lines just quoted, or let him
look at the parallel passage in _Venus and Adonis_, 1019:
For, he being dead, with him is beauty slain;
And, beauty dead, black Chaos comes again.
Venus does not know that Adonis is dead when she speaks thus.
NOTE M.
QUESTIONS AS TO _OTHELLO_, ACT IV. SCENE I.
(1) The first part of the scene is hard to understand, and the
commentators give little help. I take the idea to be as follows. Iago
sees that he must renew his attack on Othello; for, on the one hand,
Othello, in spite of the resolution he had arrived at to put Desdemona
to death, has taken the step, without consulting Iago, of testing her in
the matter of Iago's report about the handkerchief; and, on the other
hand, he now seems to have fallen into a dazed lethargic state, and must
be stimulated to action.
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