Iago Flashcards
1
He is the play’s antagonist
- he is deceitful, duplicitous - he is Othello’s “ancient” and flag bearer, which is ironic as “I am not what I am” “I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / for daws to peck at” - visceral imagery - “I follow him to serve my turn upon him”
He is evil with purely malicious intent
- “Hell and night / must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light” - rhyming couplet - soliloquy in 1,3 - his plan to trick O into thinking D is dishonest - grotesque imagery - devil to Christian audience
He exploits Roderigo without mercy
- “thus do I make my fool my purse” - soliloquy in 1,3 - psychopathic way he sees people as objects. And he does it for “sport and profit”
Motivations
Ambiguous, but jealousy and hatred are key
- “mere prattle without practice / is all his soldiership” - plosives - ridicule - C chosen as lieutenant over him - he derides civility and courtly manners
- “I follow him to serve my turn upon him” - wants revenge
- “I do suspect the lusty Moor / have leap’s into my seat, the thought whereof / doth like a poisonous mineral knaw my inwards” - poison imagery - sexual jealousy
- revenged served on o and C “to plume up my will / in double knavery” - soliloquy 1,3 - killing two birds with one stone but also duplicity
- “I hate the Moor.” - short syntax
deceit
He is brilliantly deceitful:
Virtually all characters know him as “Honest Iago”
He says he will not “wear my heart on my sleeve/ For daws to peck at” grotesque, visceral imagery. In this way he contrasts virtually every other character who openly show their emotion to him (Othello obviously, but also the constantly emoting Roderigo, Cassio in shreds after having lost his lieutenantship, Desdemona confused by her mistreatment - they all go to him openly)
“I am not what I am” (ironic as he is the flag bearer).
Manipulation
He is skilled at manipulation because he understands others: Look how he works on characters when he has got them to a point where they are emotionally vulnerable
Repeatedly tells R to “put money in thy purse” until he is in despair
he tells Othello that Desdemona’s “better judgment,/May fall to match you with her country forms” - working on feelings on racial inadequacy because he knows that he is “of a free and open nature, that thinks men honest” and will “as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are” - imagery. Exploits flaws to his advantage
- His schemes give the play its plot.
Misogyny
He is misogynistic:
Contempt for women in his conversation with Emilia and Desdemona on arrival in Cyprus Act II claiming women “rise to play and go to bed to work” (they are lazy and promiscuous. Thinks in terms of sex not love)
Emilia desperate to please him (“Alas she has no speech” also in II,i) & gives him the handkerchief, which he snatches and calls her a “foolish wife” (III, iii. 301). He kills her to shut her up. Symbolic of his desire to silence all women?
“Do it not with poison: strangle her in her bed, even the bed she has contaminated” - views of sex themselves are poisoned - “prime as goats, hot as monkeys, salt and wolves in pride” - animalistic similes to describe sex between D and C
Unknowable
Ultimately unknowable:
“From this time forth will I never speak a word” (irony of the man who has spent more time talking to the audience directly than any other character, but true to his vow never to wear his heart on his sleeve)
Intro / conclusion
We know no character better, because he has seven soliloquys. Far more than even Othello.
Unlike Othello, Desdemona, Emilia and Cassio we see no character development.
Both the way the treats others and the way he refers to them in his soliloquys demonstrate what we understand in the 21st Century as a psychopathic mentality.
