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Love's Reason in OthelloAuthor(s): E. K. Weedin, Jr.Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 15, No. 2, Elizabethan and JacobeanDrama (Spring, 1975), pp. 293-308Published by: Rice UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/449673 .

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Love's Reason in Othello

E. K. WEEDIN,JR.

Among Shakespeare's tragedies, none- not even King Lear-matches Othello in the persistence and thoroughness with which it anatomizes the operation of reason in man. No other of the tragedies is so occupied with "judgment" in both public court and private rumination. There are two distinct sorts of reasoning exercised in the drama, one displayed by lago, and another by the Duke, Desdemona, and, early in the play, Othello. The tragedy occurs in Othello's relinquishing of the one sort while remaining persuaded, under lago's tutelage, that he is still using it when he judges, sentences, and executes Desdemona. A close ex- amination of both kinds of reasoning will clarify the place of reason within the play and make some comments upon the play's other major concern, love. It will offer a different statement of the nature of the tragedy from that suggested by critics who argue that Othello's error is to reason where he ought to love, it will try to show more exactly than has been so far done the sort of reasoning that lago displays throughout the drama, and it will argue that the distinct nature of the tragedy and the subtle differences between the two kinds of reasoning were evident to a large number in Shakespeare's audiences. More than the opposition between two ways to reason is involved in their conflict, for each manner of reasoning is based upon an assumption concerning human nature and the universe that man inhabits. In the struggle between lago and Desdemona and the struggle within Othello, the view of man in such a world as that of this play is revealed.

It is not Othello's error to reason where he should love;' it is his error, as he realizes, to love "not wisely." Love in this play, unlike that in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra, not only is suscepti- ble to reason's guidance, it ought to be so governed. Were it to be, lago would be powerless in his attack upon Othello's love for Desdemona. It is not a purer love (one unmitigated by such rational actions as "im-

I "The moment Othello asks for proof of lago, he has stepped down from the 'higher' world into the world of that 'lower' reasoning which will destroy him; it is a fall of an archetypal design." Terence Hawkes, "lago's Use of Reason," Studies in Philology, 58 (1961), 167.



294 OTHELLO

putation," "indict[ment]," "arraign[ment]," and "judgment"- some of the very many legal terms noticeable in this play's vocabulary) that Othello needs; he needs a purer use of reason, one unmitigated by such irrational actions as doubting before one sees, and proving before one informs the accused of the charges or even calls for testimony from the accused or other pertinent witnesses.

Lamentable and terrifying, however, as are Othello's errors in reasoning, they are clearly distinct from lago's exercise of it. lago's most explicit and closely argued remarks on the operation of reason and the nature of man occur when he converses with Roderigo near the end of I.iii:

'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many-either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry-why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect or scion. (319-331)2

These lines are taken by scholars as saying quite different, even op- posite things. It is important to come to as exact and accurate an understanding of lago's remarks as we can because they disclose the sort of reasoning that he is going to use throughout the play, the sort of reasoning upon which the success of his machinations will largely depend. In his discussion of the speech, J. V. Cunningham says that lago "picks up Roderigo's assertion that it is not in his power not to be a sinning fool, to go kill himself for love, and maintains that we do have the power to make ourselves one thing or the other, good or evil, to control or not to control our bodies, our lower natures, and that this power is our will. This, so far as I can see, is a notorious commonplace of the Christian tradition, as well as of the Aristotelian. It is plain and hoary orthodoxy."3 In Magic in the Web Robert Heilman refers to this paragraph by Cunningham to note his agreement with

2A11 quotations from Shakespeare are taken from William Shakespeare: The Com- plete Works, gen. ed. Alfred Harbage (Baltimore, 1969).

3James Vincent Cunningham, Woe or Wonder: The Emotional Effect of Shakespearean Tragedy (Denver, 1951), p. 25.



E. K. WEEDIN, JR. 295

it, calling lago's remarks "a traditional exhortation on the utility of will and reason."4

Hardin Craig, however, studies lago's argument and concludes that "Iago ... offers a grand perversion of the theory that good is the end and purpose of reason."5 The theory to which Craig refers is one expounded by many of the Christian humanist philosophers and divines writing before and during the time of Othello. It is the one of which Cunningham offers a paraphrase, but his paraphrase differs subtly and significantly from the theory shared by so many Renaissance writers, as does lago's account. Far from presenting to Roderigo "plain and hoary orthodoxy," Iago, by a deft rearrange- ment of the terms used to frame the orthodoxy, rehearses not "a grand perversion" but a distinctly and subtly different scheme of man's soul.

I say "rehearses" because Iago's proffered notions are new only in the sense that they were newer and less widely known to Shakespeare and his audience than those of the Christian humanists. Iago's thoughts here are not original, but they are current. The commen- taries on man's nature recently written by such persons as Machiavelli and Montaigne possessed as antique a heritage as did those by other sixteenth-century writers, such as Charron and Hooker, but the theories organized by the latter two had been received from a large number of medieval scholars who had shared and refined the ideas over a long period of time. Far fewer writers during the medieval period had dealt with the theories proposed by Montaigne and Machiavelli, who were questioning the firmly established medieval and now Renaissance assumptions, but these "newer" arguments were scarcely unknown to a reasonably large portion of learned peo- ple in Shakespeare's audience. "Elizabethan playwrights and playgoers ... undoubtedly were familiar," as Lawrence Babb states, "with the rather broad psychological principles upon which one finds general agreement in learned works."6

At the time of Othello these reasonably learned would surely have been familiar with the two major opposing schools of psychology and moral philosophy, and the uneducated, also, would have been familiar with at least the notion of man's soul set down by Hooker (even if they could not read him) because these assumptions about

4Robert B. Heilman, Magic in the Web: Action and Language in Othello (Lex- ington, 1956), p. 195.

5Hardin Craig, The Enchanted Glass: The Elizabethan Mind in Literature (New York, 1936), p. 27.

6Lawrence Babb, "On the Nature of Elizabethan Psychological Literature," in Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies, ed. James G. McManaway, Giles E. Dawson, and Edwin E. Willoughby (Washington, 1948), p. 520.



296 OTHELLO

man, his reason, and his laws had been so long and so widely known by the world in which all the Elizabethans lived. One could not make his required attendance to the weekly sermons without receiving a detailed account of the divine's arguments and the opposing arguments against which he inveighed. It is part of lago's skill that his views of the soul appear innocent by virtue of their being hoary doctrine. They slide past Roderigo without arousing any expressed uneasiness or dispute. But Roderigo is a gull and he is wrought upon by his passion for Desdemona. On the other hand, it is likely that lago's smooth sententiae alerted many of the playgoers to much of the play's matter. The uneducated would have realized that lago was depicting man and reason's place in his nature in a way out of keeping with most received beliefs of the time; the learned would have seen more exactly the sort of reasoning that he was advocating and the view of human nature that he held. Placed as it is in an early scene, one in which much important action depends upon the exercise of reason, lago's attractive metaphor of the soul's garden is the first in- dication to all members of the audience of his distinctive way of direc- ting his thoughts and actions.

lago's opening argument to Roderigo, "our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many-either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry-why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills," makes two revealing assertions of much con- sequence in the play. Let us consider, first, how these two assertions differ from the theories put forth by the Christian humanist moral philosophers. It is true that "flowers, as such, are not at all common in the emblem books." 'Hyssop is not a vicious herb, contrasted by Shakespeare with the thyme which lago would supplant with the hyssop. (Indeed hyssop was even thought a remedy for some wounds.) But the remainder of lago's horticultural conceit makes evident a large part of what the Christian humanists would see as lago's misapprehension of man's soul. There have been in the world's history times in which idle behavior by man was held an acceptable alternative to industriousness, but Renaissance England was not one of them. In one of several books from the time that are devoted to an ex- egesis of man's proper nature, Charron offers a piece of agricultural philosophizing himself: "Idle and unmanured grounds, if they be fat and fertile, abound with a thousand kinds of wild and unprofitable

7Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books (London, 1948), p. 93.




hearbs, untill they be sowed with other seeds."8 Moreover, though hyssop and thyme were of equal value in a garden, one never sensibly elected to "plant nettles." An important pair of words that Shakespeare balanced against each other complete his silent com- mentary on lago's gardening advice. No matter in which sense the word "supply" is taken at the time of Othello, it is a "good" action; that to which the supplying is done is made satisfied, even fulfilled. On the opposing hand, "distract" had nothing but unfortunate meanings, which could be so serious as "to draw or turn away from actual position, destination, or purpose . . . to perplex or confuse by divergent aims or interests; to cause dissension or disorder in" (OED).

In his selection of examples of alternative modes of behavior (industriousness and idleness, supplying and distracting), lago is no nearer such writers as Machiavelli and Montaigne than he is the Christian humanists. Machiavelli no more proposes aimless sloth or distracting conflict within oneself as proper conduct than does Hooker. But, then, does one ever see lago idle in Othello? lago is offering noticeably extreme examples of behavior as the poles of a man's choices in order to give sharp point to the principle upon which the choosing is based. It is his voicing of and adherence to this principle for electing proper actions throughout the play that allies lago with Machiavelli's view of man and opposes him to Hooker's. He offers such conduct as desirable and approvable because of his conception of the will: the will is the gardener; the will makes all decisions and governs all actions in a properly functioning man; the will has the power and the right, with all the logic of tautology, to choQse what it wills, even idleness or distraction. Such a notion is a clear distortion of Renaissance England's orthodox psychology and theology. Hooker iterates a commonplace when he writes: "To choose is to will one thing before another. And to will is to bend our souls to the having or doing of that which they see to be good. " The corrigible, the controlling and correcting, authority lies, then, not in our will but in that by which we can distinguish good. "Goodness is seen with the eye of the understanding. And the light of that eye is reason."' 0

By "goodness," Hooker means virtuous thought and deed. In a universe governed by the First and Second Laws Eternal, the exercise of man's reason in keeping with such governance leads him to conduct his thoughts and actions in a way that benefits himself and every

8Pierre Charron, Of Wisdome Three Bookes, trans. Samson Lennard (London, 1630), p. 58.

9Richard Hooker, The Works of ... Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble, 5th ed. (Ox- ford, 1865), I, 220.

'?Hooker, p. 220.



298 OTHELLO

other affected man. The universe posited by Cornelius Agrippa and Machiavelli is not ruled by such eternal principles. Machiavelli con- curs with Hooker that man's reason reveals what is good and proper for him, but the good need not be virtuous. It need only be pragmatically beneficial, and it need be beneficial only to him. Whether it benefits others as well, let alone is in keeping with such a thing as the Second Law Eternal, is, at best, a secondary considera- tion.

It is this sort of reasoning that Iago chooses, unfettering (as he sees it) his will from subservience to right, virtuous reason. His descrip- tion of the functions of will and reason shows that he is indeed what he has been called more often than precisely, Machiavellian: "If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason, to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect or scion." He sees reason in man as one half of a scale, a half that is present to keep in equilibrium with the other half, sensuality. Compounding lago's belief that the-will, even when reason outweighs sensuality, can elect a course of conduct vicious to other men is his disagreement with the Christian humanists' belief that man's soul is ordered in a hierarchic scale, not one of equals balancing each other. The second half of Iago's speech sounds a little more orthodox than the first half, but the audience, having been alerted by Shakespeare in the first half, would have been likely to see the full extent of lago's misapprehension. Hooker, again, states the conventional assumption: "The Will, properly and strictly taken, as it is of things which are referred unto the end that man desireth, differeth greatly from that inferior natural desire which we call Appetite. The object of Appetite is whatsoever sensible good may be wished for; the object of Will is that good which Reason doth lead us to seek.. .. It is not altogether in our power whether we will be stirred with affections or no: whereas actions which issue from the disposition of the Will are in the power thereof to be performed or stayed." "I The power resides, of course, in government exercised by the reason. Charron, in Samson Lennard's translation, sets forth man's "reasonable Soule" in an exact and rigid hierarchy:

The action and office, or exercise of this force and power, which is to assemble, conjoin, separate, divide the things,

"Hooker, p. 221.




received, and to adde likewise others; this is discourse, reasoning.

The repetition and action of ruminating, reconcocting, trying by the whetstone of reason, and rewarding of it, to frame a resolution more solide: this is judgment.

The effect in the end of understanding: this is knowledge, intelligence, resolution.

The action that followeth this knowledge and resolution, which is to extend itselfe, to put forward, and to advance the thing knowne: this is will.'2

No one, least of all Hooker, denies that the reason can become clouded through various agencies and then, by a wrong decision, permit the will to be exercised in an unfortunate action. But the critical difference between Hooker and lago on this point is precisely Hooker's assertion that such will can operate only when the reason has failed to function properly: "Whereas therefore amongst so many things as are to be done, there are so few, the goodness whereof Reason in such sort doth or easily can discover, we are not to marvel at the choice of evil even then when the contrary is probably known. "13 One errs as a man ("I dare do all that may become a man;/ Who dares do more is none. ") when he plants nettles, chooses to be idle, distracts his garden, speaks what lago speaks to Roderigo. But by lago's and Machiavelli's lights what becomes a man is what most prospers him, and he is the autonomous judge of what prospers him, not a "right reason" implanted in him to enable him to determine what properly prospers him. Indeed, a Machiavellian errs unless he exercises his reason and will so that he profits as much as he can, not as much as he ought.

lago, then, in his remarks to Roderigo early in the play "places" himself among all these widely known arguments. He disputes reason's natural disposition toward an absolute good mode of conduct (not toward an expedient, apparently self-serving action) and reason's proper place as the natural and rightful head of a hierarchy in man's soul. From the beginning of the play lago shows no reasonable regard for the order of any hierarchy. All the disturbances and disruptions that he works in the play stem from his own disrup- tion of his own proper service to his general. As he says to Roderigo, "I follow him to serve my turn upon him" (I.i.42), and "In following him, I follow but myself" (I.i.58).

Perhaps, however, as has been frequently argued, any exercise of

'2Charron, pp. 56-57. '3Hooker, p. 223.



300 OTHELLO

discursive reason, whether Christian humanist or other, is itself an error in certain areas of experience in the world of this play. Perhaps the action of the play reveals that, though reason may suffice to figure out the destination of the Turks and similar problems, it is too clumsy and faulty to distinguish and to direct either love and loyalty or one's self-determined self-interests. Othello may favor neither sort of rationality, but instead show the preferability of love, a higher reason, to both. Terence Hawkes has argued for the superiority of such love over reason in the play by noting the distinction between ratio superior and ratio inferior: "The higher reason is an angelic quality in man, and its method of knowing and of acquiring knowledge is exactly that of the Angels. No ratiocination is involved in it, and no discursive thought-process is required; all knowledge is infused in a moment, in an intuitive flash.... The lower reason, on the other hand, is of the order most commonly thought of as 'rational,' and involves the logical, almost syllogistic progression of the mind from fact to fact in a discursive movement toward the contingent truths of the world. The process is wholly ratiocinative."'4 Hawkes finds the love that Othello feels for Desdemona representative of ratio superior until it falters in III.iii under the eroding force of lago's ratio inferior. An example of Iago's reasoning that Hawkes cites is his definition of love in lines immediately following those already quoted from I.iii: "It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will" (333- 334). "As an 'explanation,' " Hawkes states, "this is hardly accurate, hardly complete, but, by the light of the 'lower' reason, it holds water.""5 Hawkes argues, then, that lago's error is to rely solely upon ratio inferior, and Othello's is to descend to it from ratio superior.

That the ratio superior was, blessedly, available to man is asserted by the Christian humanists. But that man was wrong, in its frequent absence ("We must think men are not gods"), to rely upon his own ratio inferior is a broader claim than that made by most Renaissance writers on such matters. Hooker once more offers a general proposi- tion: "There is not that good which concerneth us, but it hath evidence enough for itself, if Reason were diligent to search it out. Through neglect thereof, abused we are with the show of that which is not.'6 Man can, as in most cases he must, arrive at the good, the true, the proper decision and enacting of the decision by his own reasoning. Charron, by the use of his own discursive ratiocination, arrives at a quite different conclusion from Iago's: carnal love is

'4Hawkes, p. 162. '5Hawkes, p. 166. '6Hooker, p. 224.




"naturall, and (keeping itselfe within it owne bounds) just, lawfull, and neccessarie.''17 It is lago's conception and operation of reason that lead him to his beliefs about the love of Desdemona for Othello and for Cassio, Cassio's love for Desdemona, and even his own love for Desdemona (II.i.281-282, 286ff.). It is lago's particular use of his ratio inferior, not his use of it at all, that results in his definition of love. It is a similar but, again, importantly distinct use of reason by Othello that causes his turning from Desdemona to lago.

The very scene in which lago addresses to Roderigo the "garden speech" offers a "scene" within the scene demonstrating that reason can determine, beyond a reasonable doubt, the presence of love and the absence of mere lust or witchcraft. The senate's trial of Othello is one of a series of actions that makes clear that in this play love can be intelligently and accurately discussed and apprehended in discursive, ratiocinative terms. There is a group of words to which I referred earlier-advocation, arraign, imputation, indict, judgment, perjury, suborn, witness, proof, justice, confession, guilt (to mention the prin- cipal ones)-present throughout the play, a group of words whose conjunction of specifically legal and general layman's meanings repeatedly induces the audience to look upon private judgment as a process precise and formal as any judgment arrived at in a public court. Not only the meanings of these words make such a connection evident; their careful placement in both public and private scenes (indeed, "hearings") alerts the audience to the play's particular join- ing of the two in a significant pattern.

In I.iii all judgment is arrived at in a public court. There are two judgments, arrived at by two different kinds of logic. Forty-five lines are expended upon the first, suggesting that the senate's conclusion regarding the destination of the Turkish fleet is of more importance than merely deciding where Othello should be sent. Especially in view of the later absence of a battle, a five-line directive by the Duke would have been enough to let the audience know that Othello was to go to Cyprus. The lengthy discussion concerning the Turkish fleet offers a demonstration of sensible deduction. Conflicting reports claim that the fleet is making for Rhodes and for Cyprus. The First Senator denies the likelihood of the former because it yields to "no assay of reason" (18). He then lists three premises that make it reasonable to conclude that the Turks will attack Cyprus rather than Rhodes. The Duke agrees, and immediately a messenger enters with news showing that the senator reasoned correctly. He has done so by

I7Charron, p. 87.



302 OTHELLO

deducing from the nature of the Turks (at present abroad to conquer) and the nature of Cyprus (more desirable and more conquerable than is Rhodes) the likely behavior of the Turks. It is worth noting that the Venetians cannot arrive at an accurate estimation of the numbers of the Turkish fleet because here they have only report, hearsay, and cir- cumstantial evidence for guidance.

At this point, Othello, Brabantio, and their parties arrive. The Duke is, of course, in chatge of Othello's trial, and he comes to his judgment by means that differ from the senator's on the fleet. He does not deduce from premises but instead conducts a hearing to gather as much testimony as he can regarding the conflicting claims of Braban- tio and Othello. Brabantio believes that he is arguing from reasonable premises about the natures of Desdemona and Othello: "It is a judgment maimed and most imperfect/ That will confess perfection so could err/ Against all rules of nature" (99-101). Othello must have stolen her from herself by witchcraft. But the Duke, whose first action to resolve the dispute was to ask Othello to speak in his own defense (74), now tells Brabantio:

To vouch this is no proof, Without more certain and more overt test Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods Of modern seeming do prefer against him. (106-109)

Premises in this case are not sufficiently conclusive in one direction or the other. Testimony must be heard from those with pertinent information, namely Othello and Desdemona. As one would expect, Othello defends himself, but it is his notion to call Desdemona to "witness" (170) what he has claimed about their love. Her testimony corroborates Othello's, there is no one to support Brabantio's surmise of witchcraft, and the Duke dismisses the charges. By conducting a sensible hearing, the Duke has seen the absence of mere lust and witchcraft and the presence of love persuasively testified to and demonstrated.

Had Othello so conducted his trial of Desdemona, he would have arrived at the same conclusions regarding her love for him as did the Duke. That he understands the proper means of determining a just judgment is made evident before he begins the trial:

'Tis not to make me jealous To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances; Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.




Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt, For she had eyes, and chose me. No, lago; I'll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove; And on the proof there is no more but this- Away at once with love or jealousy!

(III.iii. 183-192)

The last three lines reveal a finely accurate sense of the judicial process. It is, in outline, how the Duke conducted Othello's trial. And the other lines of the speech show that Othello is aware also of the importance of making reasonable deductions from premises. He is not here worried by her "liberal heart" (III.iv.38). Her love is clear to him from her nature, the evidence of her spoken and demonstrated love for him, and the absence of any evidence that testifies to any mitigation of her love.

In less than fifty lines, he slips from his own formulation of judiciousness. The charges that lago brings against Desdemona before Othello are almost identical with the charges that lago brings against Othello before Brabantio. The Duke disproves them; Othello does not. lago himself says, "I speak not yet of proof" (III.iii. 196), but he does urge Othello to doubt before he sees: "I am to pray you not to strain my speech/ To grosser issues nor to larger reach/ Than to suspicion" (218-220). Othello's reply gives the audience its first clear sign that he will misjudge Desdemona: "I will not." He will not go farther than suspicion, but that is as far as he need go in order for lago to succeed against him. In another fifty lines, he accepts the charges made against her: "She's gone. I am abused, and my relief/ Must be to loathe her" (267-268). He will swing back to judging her innocent at times (times when he remembers her nature), but that he has come to convict her so soon reveals how far he has departed from his reasonableness earlier in the scene.

Moreover, he will go back to his knowledge that one can reason accurately from premises, even naming some of the ones that he has already listed:

Othello: Hang her! I do but say what she is. So delicate with her needle! an admirable musician! 0, she will sing the savageness out of a bear! Of so high and plenteous wit and invention-

Iago: She's the worse for all this. Othello: 0, a thousand thousand times! And then, of so

gentle a condition! Iago: Ay, too gentle.

(IV.i. 184-191)



304 OTHELLO

But now, having judged her guilty, to reason intelligently from these still evident premises, he must deny the virtue that they possessed "where virtue is." Not only has he doubted before he has seen, he has proved before he has seen. Surely Othello's request for "proof" is not an irrational or injudicious one. The Duke himself sought proof. But the Duke, being head of the state, was required to investigate any charge brought by so responsible and important a citizen (and member of his government) as Brabantio. Othello need not, merely on lago's suspicions, entertain any of his own until he has seen. It is not his asking for proof of a charge, but the time at which he asks for it (prior to a reasonable need to do so), that shows the growing irrationality of Othello. In asking for "ocular proof" he is asking for what he had said would be the beginning of his doubt of Desdemona, but what he now will consider conclusive evidence of her guilt.

Worse, he will never see what he is asking for, yet will think that he has:

Iago: And did you see the handkerchief? Othello: Was that mine?

(IV.i.170-171)

He then takes lago's word that he has seen what he demanded to see. When, in V.ii, Desdemona realizes that she is in jeopardy of having sentence passed upon her, she makes the same request that Othello made of the Duke under identical circumstances in I.iii: "I never gave it [the handkerchief] him. Send for him hither./ Let him confess a truth" (67-68). The Duke immediately acceded; Othello replies, "He hath confessed," a confession that Othello did not hear and im- perfectly saw. He relies completely on just what lago has offered him: "imputation and strong circumstances/ Which lead directly to the door of truth" (III.iii.406-407). Imputation and strong circumstances were exactly what did not lead to truth in I.iii (or in II.iii's trial of Cassio, for that matter). Othello has entirely mishandled the trial of Desdemona's innocence and the trial of his exercise of reason, not even naming the charge to the accused or seeking evidence from a witness other than lago until IV.ii. And then he refuses to accept Emilia's testimony because it disputes the sentence that he has already passed; when he asks Desdemona whether she is not a whore, he shows again how horribly far he is from the Duke and from his own stated process of judgment.

It is almost enough to make one think that in this play love, par- ticularly sexual love, is not properly within the province of reason, can be attacked by reason but not defended or detected by it, must be




found wanting when it appears before any private or public bar of judgment. Brabantio's love for a daughter makes it impossible for him to judge Othello or Desdemona accurately, and that love is, presumably in this play, free from the complication of sexuality. lago urges Roderigo, "Now, sir, be judge yourself,/ Whether I in any just term am affined/ To love the Moor" (I.i.38-40). He, too, in most productions of the play, experiences no sexual feeling in his bond with Othello. But the justice, the rationality of his reasons for not loving the Moor has been rightly questioned by most scholars of the play. Roderigo, admittedly no touchstone of the Rational Soul (while holding Desdemona to be in a "blessed condition" and impervious to Cassio, he maintains his hope that she will permit him to enjoy her), cannot reason adequately even about matters in which love plays no part. lago does not need to urge Roderigo to be a judge of Othello's treatment of lago, as an earlier exchange shows:

Iago: And I-God bless the mark!-his Moorship's ancient.

Roderigo: By heaven, I rather would have been his hangman.

(Ii.33-34)

With the exception of Othello's "Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,/ And very seamark of my utmost sail" (V.ii.268-269), it is the most succinct passing of judgment and sentence in the play.

There is, however, besides the Duke (who, not involved in the love that he judges, is thereby potentially more able to judge), one other figure in the play who is much involved in the love that she rationally, even legalistically judges. Desdemona does resent Othello's treatment of her in III.iv, but immediately upon her resentment she decides that it is unjust:

Beshrew me much, Emilia, I was, unhandsome warrior as I am, Arraigning his unkindness with my soul; But now I find I had suborned the witness, And he's indicted falsely. (III.iv. 150-154)

Shakespeare's accumulation here of legal terminology insistently carries the audience back to I.iii. In this later scene Desdemona is much like the First Senator in her reasoning. She can think of no reason for Othello to feel anger toward her; therefore she concludes that some other irritation (a matter of state, probably) causes him to



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direct his displeasure even against her. Like the First Senator, Desdemona reasons sensibly from reasonable premises. Like the Duke, she discovers no evidence to support her own momentary charge against Othello, and she finds against her testimony as the Duke found against Brabantio's. Unlike that of the First Senator and the Duke, however, her reasoning is based on premises that turn out to be incorrect. The Turks behaved rationally in making for Cyprus rather than Rhodes. Othello does not behave rationally in his jealousy for Desdemona. Her error occurs not in reasoning about love. Her words and her actions show pointedly that it can be done: her love is eminently rational and fine. Her error lies in assuming that the love felt for her is correspondingly rational. Yet even this error is largely averted by her soul's sure knowledge of human nature: "We must think men are not gods" (III.iv.148).

When Desdemona discovers, just before dying, how wrong she has been in her surmises and conclusions about Othello's anger, she can still acquit him of the anger and the murder: "Nobody-I myself. Farewell./ Commend me to my kind lord. 0, farewell!" (V.ii.125- 126). As the "kind" cannot be ironic (and spoken by Desdemona), it must be charitable. Surely, then, it does pass all understanding, and reflects her great kindness but no exercise of judgment. Yet Desdemona has made two distinctions earlier in the play that suggest she is as human and reasonable as she is angelic and loving in her final words. After Othello has accused Desdemona of being a whore, Emilia asks, "Good madam, what's the matter with my lord?"

Desdemona: With who? Emilia: Why, with my lord, madam. Desdemona: Who is thy lord? Emilia: He that is yours, sweet lady. Desdemona: I have none.

(IV.ii.98- 102)

One is reminded of "She's gone. I am abused, and my relief/ Must be to loathe her." But there Othello blamed Desdemona, indeed found her guilty. Here Desdemona, as she does in the play's conclusion, ac- quits the Othello who is not her lord, the Othello who mistakenly ac- cuses and convicts her, the Othello who is the absence of her lord; the kind Othello who is her lord she need not acquit, for she does not charge him. She sees the two Othellos, the one who would, because of reasonable premises about her nature and the evidence of her love for him, love her despite "imputation and strong circumstances," and the one who, for a time, inexplicably cannot. Because she is aware of both, the Othello who is her lord and the one who is not, she, unlike




Othello (who forces himself to see only the false Desdemona), can per- sist in believing in the fidelity of her spouse's love for her.

She has demonstrated such clear and loving reason in remarks made to Othello about Cassio: "If he be not one that truly loves you,/ That errs in ignorance, and not in cunning,/ I have no judgment in an honest face" (III.iii.48-50). Such judgment about love and man's frailty in offering it is consistently made by Desdemona throughout the play. It is the critical distinction that the play makes between the errors of reasoning committed by lago and those by Othello, for the action of this play does show that lago, as well as Othello, errs in his reasoning and his actions based-upon the reasoning. He errs in cunning, Othello in ignorance. lago knows the damage and evil that he is working, yet he is persuaded (by himself) that deliberately causing such evil reflects no flaw in his rational soul. On the contrary, he tells Roderigo (and nothing in the play suggests that he is not honestly speaking his mind when he does) that the rational soul can rationally decide to carry out evil rationally, that the rational soul (so long as it is not led by passion) can function properly, according to its nature, whether it directs a man to act out good or evil. lago has, in rejecting the Christian humanist notions of man's nature and the operation of reason in it, spoken and acted in keeping with many notions of contrary Renaissance writers; yet no more than Desdemona and Othello has he succeeded in the world of this play. Granted, he gained the lieutenancy in III.iii, but by then it was only a part of what he wanted to relish; he has by the end of the play destroyed much of the beauty that makes him ugly, but he has destroyed himself, too, for he will soon be as dead as Desdemona and Othello, and after a longer and more tortured dying. Machiavellian exercise of reason and will succeeds in some pieces of fiction and history, but not in Othello.

It might well be argued that many of the characters who attempt (even Desdemona, who succeeds) to reason in a manner that they consider morally right are no more successful in living in this play than is lago, for at its conclusion they are already dead. Perhaps, indeed, Othello does finally present a bleak estimate of the efficacy of any sort of reasoning. But surely in this tragedy, as in many others, the success of a figure's life is not indicated by his being alive at the drama's conclusion. Both opposing modes of reasoning are intended and believed to afford a man a life in which he takes a serious delight, even if such a life accords him suffering as well as pleasure. lago's only pleasant moments are the transitory ones of carrying out his plots: "Pleasure and action make the hours seem short," he says of the night in which he dupes Cassio (II.iii.361). In their worst suffering Othello and Desdemona still experience their love for each other. lago's greatest



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error and harshest punishment during the play have been, largely because of his deliberate choice of a particular way of thought and conduct, to be lago; Desdemona and Othello, too, have been themselves, but their selves have been more enjoyable and enjoyed by themselves than has lago's.

Though all three come to the sameness of death, they lead significantly different lives on the way. Othello tries to reason properly, to determine by judicious process whether he must justly accuse, sentence, and execute Desdemona. He persuades himself that by kill- ing her he is removing some evil from the world, not introducing more. lago believes that he can direct himself to evil and succeed; he fails. Othello thinks that he has directed himself to good (justice); he is mistaken. It is the primary misfortune in the play that both errors in reasoning result in a reliance, despite each character's conviction to the contrary, upon a will undirected by reason. lago proclaims the primacy of the will to Roderigo. And nowhere in the play is there a depiction of a will more unrelenting, more uncontrolled by reason, than Othello's:

Never, lago. Like to the Pontic sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the Hellespont, Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up. (III.iii.453-460)

Vassar College



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