Othello and Desdemona In the play The Tragedy of Othello, Shakespeare really challenges our conception of what love is and where it can and cannot exist. Judging from the relationship between Desdemona and Othello, the play seems to say that marriage based on innocent romantic love or profane love is doomed to fail. Shakespeare is pessimistic about the existence and survival of a true kind of love. There is a common thread of betrayal and deceit especially among his female characters. Othello and Desdemona, as depicted in the play, are the two greatest innocents who ever lived. At first the two seem to love each other romantically, but this romantic love becomes more of a profane love, or more likely it really was a profane love all along. This is because there is no basis for a relationship here. There is no trust, no communication and no understanding. Othello has spent much of his life in battle, which makes him good at some things, namely battle. Othello says, "I am unkind in my speech, / And little blessed with the sweet phrase of peace; / For since these arms of mine had the marrow for seven years, / Till now about nine wasted moons, they have us / Their deed dearer in the tent camp;/And little of this great world can I speak/More than belongs to deeds of blood and battle" (1113). Desdemona is little more than a little girl, inexperienced in the ways of the world. She is deceived by Othello's war stories. Desdemona takes one look at that piece of burning love that is Othello, at his manhood and manliness, and is swept away. But is this true love? She speaks of him with such affection, yet she barely knows him. While defending her new-born love for Othello, Desdemona says (among other things): "My very violence, and tempest of fortunes, / May fuck the world. My heart is subservient / Even to the very quality of my lord. / I have seen Othello's face in his mind, / And to his honors and his valiant parts / I have devoted my soul and my fortune first part of the relationship, some things are said that perhaps suffer from the blindness of Love. Put these two together and you have the equivalent of a couple of kids playing doctor, two big clumsy children "lurching towards ecstasy". they could have done it if they had been free from external forces.