The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

Some such squire it was That turned your wit, the seamy side without And made you to suspect me with the Moor.

At one point Iago states that, in order to revenge himself on Othello, he will not rest till he is even with him, wife for wife, but, in the play, no attempt at Desdemona's seduction is made. Iago does not make an assault on her virtue himself, he does not encourage Cassio to make one, and he even prevents Roderigo from getting anywhere near her.

Finally, one who seriously desires personal revenge desires to reveal himself. The revenger's greatest satisfaction is to be able to tell his victim to his face—"You thought you were all- powerful and untouchable and could injure me with im­punity. Now you see that you were wrong. Perhaps you have forgotten what you did; let me have the pleasure of remind­ing you."

When at the end of the play, Othello asks Iago in be­wilderment why he has thus ensnared his soul and body, if his real motive were revenge for having been cuckolded or unjustly denied promotion, he could have said so, instead of refusing to explain.

In Act II, Scene I, occur seven lines which, taken in isolation, seem to make Iago a seriously jealous man.

Now I do love her too, Not out of absolute lust (though peradventure I stand accountant for as great a sin) But partly led to diet my revenge For that I do suspect the lusty Moor Hath leaped into my seat; the thought whereof Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my vitals.

But if spoken by an actor with serious passion, these lines are completely at variance with the rest of the play, including lago's other lines on the same subject.

And it is thought abroad, that twixt my sheets He's done my office: I know not if't be true Yet I, for mere suspicion in that kind, Will do, as if for surety.

It is not inconceivable, given the speed at which he wrote, that, at some point in the composition of Othello

, Shakespeare considered making Iago seriously jealous and, like his proto­type in Cinthio, a would-be seducer of Desdemona, and that, when he arrived at his final conception of Iago, he overlooked the incompatibility of the poisonous mineral and the -wife-for- wife passages with the rest.

In trying to understand lago's character one should begin, I believe, by asking why Shakespeare should have gone to the trouble of inventing Roderigo, a character who has no prototype in Cinthio. From a stage director's point of view, Roderigo is a headache. In the first act we learn that Brabantio had forbidden him the house, from which we must conclude that Desdemona had met him and disliked him as much as her father. In the second act, in order that the audience shall know that he has come to Cyprus, Roderigo has to arrive on the same ship as Desdemona, yet she shows no embarrassment in his presence. Indeed, she and everybody else, except lago, seem unaware of his existence, for Iago is the only person who ever speaks a word to him. Presumably, he has some official position in the army, but we are never told what it is. His entrances and exits are those of a puppet: whenever Iago has company, he obligingly disappears, and whenever Iago is alone and wishes to speak to him, he comes in again immediately.

Moreover, so far as Iago's plot is concerned, there is nothing Roderigo does which Iago could not do better without him. He could easily have found another means, like an anonymous letter, of informing Brabantio of Desdemona's elopement and, for picking a quarrel with a drunken Cassio, he has, on his own admission, other means handy.

Three lads of Cyprus, noble swelling spirits That hold their honour in a wary distance, The very elements of this warlike isle Have I to-night flustered with flowing cups.

Since Othello has expressly ordered him to kill Cassio, Iago could have murdered him without fear of legal investigation. Instead, he not only chooses as an accomplice a man whom he is cheating and whose suspicions he has constantly to allay, but also a man who is plainly inefficient as a murderer and also holds incriminating evidence against him.

A man who is seriously bent on revenge does not take unnecessary risks nor confide in anyone whom he cannot trust or do without. Emilia is not, as in Cinthio, Iago's willing ac­complice, so that, in asking her to steal the handkerchief,