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Iago

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.

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Iago

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  1. Iago A summary

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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)

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

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