ABSTRACT
The tragedy of Othello has occasioned a good deal of unrest among those who have made it their business to write commentaries upon Shakespeare’s plays. The punishment of their crimes is in the hands of public justice, and is inadequate. Private justice therefore takes over in the vengeful killing of Othello by Desdemona’s family. The story indeed presented Shakespeare with a tangle of loose ends to be wound afresh before they could be bound into unity. The conflict between Othello and Iago thus takes the form of a revenge-plot whereby Iago seeks to injure Othello by an attack upon the weakest and most sensitive quarter of his defences, and in such a way as to involve his other enemy Cassio in grave injury. The records of the Courts of Star Chamber and of Chancery, from which these instances are cited, are thickly strewn with such exercises of private justice in all parts of England.
