Othello: Iago's charater
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Q1: Bring out evil in Iago how at last he betrays himself?Q2: Write a note on Othello as a tragedy of evil?Q3: Contrast Iago and Othello as characters who are different from what they appear to common views?Q4: The character of Iago, Iago as a villain.
"I look down towards his feet, but that's a feeble;
If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee".
Iago is one of the most brilliant characters of Shakespeare although he uses his cunning in diabolical purposes.
2- In spite of his hypocrisy, Iago reveals himself to the readers as an active force of evil in the first scene of the play. It is interesting that all the characters in the play, except for Roderigo ( to whom he sometimes shows his real face) have a high opinion of Iago and refers to him as 'honest Iago'. But Roderigo is a fool who cannot perceive the implications of what he sees until it is too late. Iago is an embittered cynic and a man with a deceased imagination.
Iago sees as "a duteous and knee-crooking knave" who serves his master like an ass who is discarded when he is old. Iago appears to be such a servant, but his semblance of loyalty is but a mask.
"Though I do hate him, as I do hell's pain,
Yet, for necessity of present life,
I must show out a flag, and sign of love,
Which is indeed but sign".
He is always a self- seeker. He shares none of the " leave and duty" which hold together the social order and link it to God himself. Iago is all seeming false appearance:
"I follow him to serve my turn upon him,
We cannot be all masters, nor all masters.
Cannot be truely follow'd ".
Further, he says:
"In following him I follow but myself.
Heaven is my judge, nor I for love and duty,
But seeming so for my peculiar end."
3- The supreme egotism of Iago is a manifestation of the code of ' reason' by which he lives. Iago's 'reason' is the sin of pride, for it denies the supremacy of God and sees man as the sole author of his destiny, able to control himself and others by the power of his mind. This is expressed in his speech to Roderigo, which begins with the words " virtue! a fig! ' tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus", and where he compares our bodies to garden, our wills to gardeners and our reason to something which can cool our raging lusts and passions.
"He is, as Coleridge has said, 'all will in intellect'. He is the incarnation of absolute egotism, an egotism, that without passion or ever apparent purpose is at chronic fend with the moral order of the world. 'Virtue' is to him 'a fig', love 'a lust of the blood, and a permission of the will'; reputation ' an idle and most false imposition', whose loss is a trifle compared with a bodily wound. He is at the bottom, to use Coleridge's phrase, a 'motiveless malignity' ". [F.S Boas]
He can see man only as a creature of animal passion, out off from the grace of God. Love, the guiding principle in God's plan; is only a lust of blood and a permission of the will.
4- Iago's betrayal of himself is quite expected. He is, in fact, a bigoted person as his misjudging both the relationship between Othello and Desdemona, and the character of his own wife, Emilia. The love of Othello and Desdemona, a love of mind divorced from physical passion, can appear to Iago only as 'a frail vow bet wixt an erring barbarian and a super-subtle Venetian'. Viewing love like an animal lust he can only conclude that Desdemona will be governed by lust. He can perceive only the outward appearance of Othello; he cannot see the qualities for which Desdemona married him, and thus their relationship seems only a product of lust which lust must destroy.
Iago's character had no place for love in it, and this brought about the destruction of those around him as of Iago himself. As Bradley puts it. Iago was:
"Destroyed by the power that he attacked, the power of love, and he was destroyed by it because he could not understand it; and he could not understand it because it was not in him."
Out of Iago's failure of perception will come his own destruction, but this failure is inherent in the very 'reason' by which he lives.
5- What the audience thinks of Iago is not the same as the view which other characters have about him. Since he reveals himself in his soliloquies, the audience knows him to be a demi-devil. Shakespeare evidently has taken to tell us that Iago says and does everything that has the appearance of good and the reality of evil. We may note, for example, how Othello wholeheartedly believes in his honesty of purpose. "Honest Iago" is what Othello and others keep on repeating throughout the play. In other words, we know more about Iago then the characters on the stage know. That is why his honesty is credible to them, which it is incredible to us.
6- Iago is personified evil in the guise of good whereas, in Othello himself, we have a depiction of true virtue which seems to be wearing many of the signs of evil. In order to do so Shakespeare develops a suggestion that he got in his source, the story in Cinthio, that the marriage of Othello and Desdemona was unnatural. Cinthio does not stress the blackness of the Moor, mentioning it only once in his story; but Shakespeare seized upon it as a poetic symbol by which he could emphasize the theme of the unnatural. That Shakespeare intended his audience to think of Othello as a Negro of dark complexion is clear. We must recognize that Jacobean audience could not have failed to view the marriage of a white Italian girl to a black African with some horror. In the Renaissance, the color black was a symbol of lechery. It is commonly so used in the emblem books of the period- and it was also the color of the devil, whose redness is a fairly recent innovation.
7- The first two acts of the play have these two themes, the evil of the allegedly unnatural union and that of Iago's seeming honesty, dominating them. Othello has the blackness of Satan, Iago the whiteness of truth and virtue. True virtue bears the mask of evil, and evil is marked with the semblance of honesty. Shakespeare assures the audience of the falsity of these outward signs, that Iago is only seemingly honest, and that Othello, in spite of his appearance, is a man of true nobility whom Desdemona can love for ' his honors and his valiant parts'. There is also a fear that appearance may still be a truth. This fear is supported by Brabantio's warning:
'Look to her, Moor, if you thou hast eyes to see
She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee'
Upon this seeming violation of nature.'
Iago will work in his temptation of Othello under Iago's influence, Othello will see Desdemona exactly as Brabantio has seen her, falsely conclude that their union is unnatural as thus cast off Desdemona as foul and evil.