Iago

A summary

Shares his philosophy via his soliloquies and speeches to

Roderigo• Has a cynical view of relationships: victim, used,

abused/ victimiser, user, abuser.• Sees servants as beasts of burden: Wears out

his time much like his mater’s ass,/For nought but provender, and when he’s old cashiered.

• Everything is subject to will: Our bodies are our gardens, to which/ Our wills are gardeners.

• Love is merely a lust of the blood/ and a permission of the will.

His actions

• Continues to serve Othello so he can get revenge: I follow him to serve my turn upon him.

• He is a good judge of character, is perceptive, he can see others’ weaknesses that he can manipulate. He holds me well/ The better shall my purpose work on him. The Moor is of free and open nature/ That thinks men honest but that seems to be so, ?And will as tenderly be led by them/ As asses are.

• Plays on the real weaknesses and vulnerabilities of his victims.

By what he says about others

• Contemptuous way of speaking; calls most other characters ‘fools’: Thus credulous fools are caught; sick fool Roderigo.

• Admits to his negativity: I am nothing if not critical.

• Says his wife has been unfaithful without evidence: For that I do suspect the lusty Moor hath leapt into my seat.

• Fears and loathes women (Misogynist)

By the kind of language he uses

• Curses and exclamations: Pish, ‘sblood, zounds• Sees relationships as predatory: gyve, ensnare,

enfetter, enmesh • His cynical and bestial view of love, sexuality

and women (animal imagery): ass, claws, flies, ram, jennet, guinea-hen, baboon, wild cat, snipe, goats, monkeys, monster, wolves.

• Calls Othello a ‘devil’ – ironic as his character is truly demonic in nature.

By his use of disinformation and dissimulation (form of deception

where one hides the truth) • Offers hypocritical sympathy for the hurt

he has engineered, as when he offers Cassio help; draws attention to his own generosity in offering help.

• Says one thing about reputation to Cassio (II,iii) and the opposite to Othello (III,iii)

• Takes innocent actions and puts on them a gloss of deceit and treachery.

Iago• Is destructively cynical, intellectual, detached –

an limited, mean and evil.• Reduces everything to his own terms.• Has a corrupting view of life, his victims are

drawn into this corrupt world view and tainted by it.

• Makes use of other people’s virtues as well as their vices to catch them.

• Rationalises others’ weaknesses as conscious and deliberate.

• He is impressed by his own wickedness; at the end of the first act he calls it a ‘monstrous birth’ and invokes Hell to assist it.

• Presents us with a consistently ironic perspective of the action.