Neither I, nor you, nor she, nor anyone else in this story could have said more in reply, so true it is that destiny, like all dramatists, does not reveal the twists of the plot or its dénouement. They come in their own time, until the curtain falls, the lights go out, and the spectators go home to their beds. To that extent, it might be a good thing to reform things somewhat, and I would like to propose, as an experiment, that all plays should begin with their endings. Othello would kill himself and Desdemona in the first act, the three following ones would be given over to the slow and decreasing progress of jealousy, and the last would be left with the initial scenes of the threat from the Turks, the explanations of Othello and Desdemona, and the good advice of the subtle Iago: “Put money in thy purse.” In this way, the spectator, on the one hand, would find in the theater the regular puzzle that the newspapers give him, for the final acts would explain the dénouement of the first, as a kind of witty conceit; and, on the other hand, he would go to bed with a happy impression of tenderness and love:
She lov’d me for the dangers I had pass’d,
And I lov’d her that she did pity them.