Thursday, September 24, 2009

Othello as a Legal Thriller

Move over John Grisham. William Shakespeare's Othello is the real king of the legal thriller genre -- or so Richard McAdams argued in his summer WIP talk.
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3 comments:

PG said...

In contrast the first Act, where Othello is vindicated by virtue of procedural rights, he flatly refuses to grant Desdemona any, including a rejection of her plea to call Cassio as a witness. The tragedy of Desdemona's death, after all, could have been averted the same way that Othello was freed -- through exculpatory witness testimony. Yet Othello, by choosing the path of private vengeance rather than public law, sowed his own bitter harvest, wrongfully killing his wife and love.

I just saw Othello (the one with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Iago), and I could have sworn that Othello believes Cassio to be dead at this point in the play. Here's the lines:

DESDEMONA: He found it then;
I never gave it him: send for him hither;
Let him confess a truth.

OTHELLO: He hath confess'd.

DESDEMONA: What, my lord?

OTHELLO: That he hath used thee.

DESDEMONA: How? unlawfully?

OTHELLO: Ay.

DESDEMONA: He will not say so.

OTHELLO: No, his mouth is stopp'd;
Honest Iago hath ta'en order for't.

DESDEMONA: O! my fear interprets: what, is he dead?

OTHELLO: Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge
Had stomach for them all.

DESDEMONA: Alas! he is betray'd and I undone.

6:00 PM
David Schraub said...

I have never read or seen Othello. Fortunately, if there is one thing law school teaches, it's how to BS knowledge effectively.

6:21 PM
PG said...

:-) So long as you were accurately summarizing the author's apparent error, no blame to you.

9:16 AM

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