Perhaps no one who has not lived in the East can understand that such a character as Salvini's _Othello_ is a possible, living reality.

It is certain that American audiences, even while giving their admiration, withhold their belief.

They go to see _Othello_, that they may shudder luxuriously at the sight of so much suffering; for it is the moral suffering of the Moor that most impresses an intelligent beholder, but it is doubtful whether Americans or English, who have not lived in Southern or Eastern lands, are capable of appreciating that the character is drawn from the life.
The great criticism to which all modern tragedy, and a great deal of modern drama, are open is the undue and illegitimate use of horror.
Horror is not terror.

They are two entirely distinct affections.

A man hurled from a desperate precipice, in the living act to fall, is properly an object of terror, sudden and quaking.