“He calls his extravagance, generosity; and his trusting everybody, universal benevolence.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

Act I.
The Good-Natured Man (1768)

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Oliver Goldsmith 134

Irish physician and writer 1728–1774

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Variant translations:
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As translated in Free China Review, Vol. 5 (1955)
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“But beyond the personal tragedy, the terrible agony of Othello, the irretrievability of his world, the complete destruction of all his trusted and sacred values — all these suggest the shattering of a universe.”

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Context: It was deeply fascinating to watch how strikingly contemporary American audiences from coast to coast found Shakespeare's Othello — painfully immediate in its unfolding of evil, innocence, passion, dignity and nobility, and contemporary in its overtones of a clash of cultures, of the partial acceptance of and consequent effect upon one of a minority group. Against this background, the jealousy of the protagonist becomes more credible, the blows to his pride more understandable, the final collapse of his personal, individual world more inevitable. But beyond the personal tragedy, the terrible agony of Othello, the irretrievability of his world, the complete destruction of all his trusted and sacred values — all these suggest the shattering of a universe.