Critics - Iago

Question 1

Honigmann - Iago (humour and audience appeal)

Answer 1

‘Iago is a seductive character, who is able to get the audience to collude with him. Because his victims lack humour, Iago appeals to us as more amusing’
‘His humour seems to make him cleverer than his victims’

Question 2

John Russell Brown - Iago (like the devil)

Answer 2

‘An audience that believed in devils might see Iago as someone working in close allegiance to an evil power.’

Question 3

Fred West - Iago (characteristics - psychopath, allegorical trappings)

Answer 3

‘Iago has all of the psychological traits of a psychopath.’
‘It is not sufficient to simply drape Iago in allegorical trappings and proclaim him Mister evil. Such a limited view of Iago is an injustice to the complexity of his character’

Question 4

Valerie Wayne - Iago (renaissance)

Answer 4

‘Iago is the presence of misogynist discourse in the renaissance’

Question 5

Andy Serkis - played Iago in 2002 - Iago (not the devil)

Answer 5

‘He is not the devil. He’s you or me being jealous and not being able to control our feelings’

Question 6

Samuel Johnson (18th century) - Iago (hated by audience)

Answer 6

‘The character of Iago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised’

Question 7

Honigmann - Iago (strategy)

Answer 7

‘Iago excels in short-term tactics, not in long-term strategy’

Question 8

Honigmann - Iago’s undoing

Answer 8

‘Emilia’s love of Desdemona is Iago’s undoing’

Question 9

Fintan O’Toole - Iago and Othello

Answer 9

‘So close are Iago and Othello, indeed, that they start to melt into each other… Othello’s grand verse breaks down into jagged, disordered prose. Iago’s prose becomes triumphant verse.’

Question 10

S. Coleridge - Iago’s motives

Answer 10

‘Iago shows motiveless malignity’