critism on othello

Essay text:

He has not, indeed, the meditative or speculative imagination of Hamlet; but in the strictest sense of the word he is more poetic than Hamlet. Indeed, if one recalls Othello's most famous speeches -- those that begin, "Her father loved me", "O now for ever", "Never, Iago", "Had it pleased Heaven", "It is the cause", "Behold, I have a weapon", "Soft you, a word or two before you go" -- and if one places side by side with these speeches an equal number by any other hero, one will not doubt that Othello is the greatest poet of them all. There is the same poetry in his casual phrases -- like "These nine moons wasted", "Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them", "You chaste stars", "It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook's temper", "It is the very error of the moon" -- and in those brief expressions of intense feeling which ever since have been taken as the absolute expression, like 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, or If she be false, O then Heaven mocks itself, I'll not believe it; or No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand, or But yet the pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago! or O thou weed, Who are so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born...