ABSTRACT
“Why, what is this?” asks Othello, when Iago has first brought up the idea of jealousy. “Think'st thou I'd make a life of jealousy, / To follow still the changes of the moon / With fresh suspicions?” (3.3.190–93). Othello's first response seems fully in accord with the character we have come to know thus far in the play. He rejects the idea of jealousy with the firm determination of one who knows, as a military commander, how to settle a question. “To be once in doubt / Is once to be resolved.” Othello believes of himself that he will test any suspicion carefully and rationally. He will “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” (204–206). This forthright course of decision making seems postulated, so far as we can tell, upon a complete faith in Desdemona's virtue. It allows for two possibilities, love or the rejection of love, but proceeds from the assumption that his love for Desdemona is unassailable.
