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TOMMASO SALVINI
the past fifty years. Salvini was Charles
Fechter carried up to the second power of
all the Frenchman's virtues, with scarcely
a hint of his limitations.
The Othello of Salvini was the assump-
tion through which he most strongly im-
pressed the public, by which he will be
inost widely remembered. Fully conscious
of its magnificence and of the unequaled
and terrible force of its passion, which in
the third scene of the third act represents,
perhaps, the highest conceivable stress of
which humanity is capable, I personally
preferred to it several of his other imper-
sonations. It seemed to me that his Othello
was Shakespeare orientalized and super-
sensualized, at the cost of some of the
Master's heroic conception, and of much
of the Poet's beautiful thought. Salvini
knew that Othello was a Moor, and a
Moor he would have him in body, soul,
and spirit; not such a Moor as he might
have discovered from the wondrous text,
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