Justice and Love in Othello

JUSTICE AND LOVE IN OTHELLO WINIFRED M. T. NOWOTTNY I T is a commonplace of criticism of Othello that the Moor, entering in Act V to the murder of Desdemona, sees himself as a minister of Justice. It is apparent that this act is full of references to judgment and of images drawn from it. Yet it is usually assumed that this is but an additional tum of the screw, a means of throwing an even more lurid light on Othello's crime against the innocent Desdemona. It is the purpose of this article to put the case that the insistence on justice in Act V of Othello is the culmination to which the drama as a whole is designed to lead, and moreover that a fuller perception of the excellence of the dramatic economy will follow upon the recognition that Shakespeare intends in this play an evaluation of justice in its relation to love. In Othello jealousy is treated as a state in which man experiences the opposition of two kinds of belief-belief in "evidence" and belief in the person one loves-and the opposition of the value of justice (as he conceives it ) to the value of love. What is tragic in Othello derives from these oppositions. The character of Othello serves but to bring them on; jealousy is the stage on which they stand forth. For in jealousy of this nature and magnitude, justice and love, which in other situations may be conceived of as parallels, meet. It is therefore no accident that Othello is full of allusions to justice and of metaphors drawn from it, since, in the jealousy of Othello, the value of justice and the value of love become openly contestant and reveal their essential incompatibility. The trend of the play becomes clear when one considers the difference between two judgments Othello makes, the one on Cassio: Cassio, I love thee j But never more be officer of mine, the other on Desdemona: "I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee." The judgment on Cassio can be made, though reluctantly, yet without personal conflict, by subscribing to the idea that justice and love are compatible values; but the judgment on Desdemona is preceded by the personal experience of the conflict of those values, and represents a decision between them. I! is possible to argue that the contention of love and justice begins, in this play, with Brabantio's attempt to bring love under the law, from which attempt it follows that the quality of Othello's and Desdemona 's love is declared in a kind of trial scene. Brabantio's accusa330 Vol. XXI, no. 4, July, 1952 JUSTICE AND LOVE IN OTHELLO WINIFRED M. T. NOWOTTNY I T is a commonplace of criticism of Othello that the Moor, entering in Act V to the murder of Desdemona, sees himself as a minister of Justice. It is apparent that this act is full of references to judgment and of images drawn from it. Yet it is usually assumed that this is but an additional turn of the screw, a means of throwing an even more lurid light on Othello's crime against the innocent Desdemona. It is the purpose of this article to put the case that the insistence on justice in Act V of Othello is the culmination to which the drama as a whole is designed to lead, and moreover that a fuller perception of the excellence of the dramatic economy will follow upon the recognition that Shakespeare intends in this play an evaluation of justice in its relation to love. In Othello jealousy is treated as a state in which man experiences the opposition of two kinds of belief-belief in "evidence" and belief in the person one loves-and the opposition of the value of justice (as he conceives it ) to the value of love. What is tragic in Othello derives from these oppositions. The character of Othello serves but to bring them on; jealousy is the stage on which they stand forth. For in jealousy of this nature and magnitude, justice and love, which in other situations may be conceived of as parallels, meet. It is therefore no...