Law Courts Bridge

Law Courts Bridge is a bridge in the Emerald City that Elphaba crosses during her surveillance mission on Lurlinemas Eve, marking a key moment in her failed assassination attempt against Madame Morrible.

Location and Setting

Law Courts Bridge spans a waterway in the Emerald City, connecting the Law Courts district to the Ozma Embankment. On the evening of Lurlinemas Eve, as snow falls and darkness gathers, the bridge serves as a thoroughfare for Elphaba as she makes her way toward the Lady's Mystique theatre, where Madame Morrible is scheduled to attend an oratorio. The bridge is part of a route that takes Elphaba through the city's major squares, past the chapel of Saint Glinda, and along the Ozma Embankment before she cuts diagonally through the abandoned rose gardens of the Royal Mall.

Elphaba's Passage

Elphaba crosses Law Courts Bridge during her reconnaissance of the city on the night she intends to kill Madame Morrible. She is dressed in long dark skirts, a tall wide-brimmed hat with a cone-shaped crown, a purple and gold scarf pulled over her mouth, and elegant tight-fitting gloves. Her feet are encased in large steel-toed boots like those worn by miners in the Glikkus. Fiyero, who has been stalking her through the city, watches her cross the bridge from a distance, noting that she does not look behind her or seem to care if she is being followed. The snow pestering her, she keeps her cape wrapped tightly around her thin form as she marches past the cenotaphs and obelisks of the Oz Deer Park.

Narrative Significance

Law Courts Bridge is one of several landmarks Elphaba passes on her circuitous route to the Lady's Mystique theatre, where her assassination attempt ultimately fails when a crowd of schoolgirls from Madame Teastane's Female Seminary unexpectedly swarms out of the adjacent school, blocking her line of fire. The bridge thus marks a stage in the journey that leads to the pivotal moment when Elphaba, confronted with the accidental presence of innocent children, cannot bring herself to carry out the murder. The crossing of Law Courts Bridge is part of the larger sequence in which Fiyero, following her, witnesses her crisis of conscience and her subsequent collapse into self-loathing, which drives her to seek refuge at the Cloister of Saint Glinda.