Iago

Question 1

The disgruntled (angry and dissatisfied) Employee

Answer 1

• Resentful and egocentric individual
• “I know my price” entitled
• Bitterness act 1 scene 1
• Iago wants justice in Act 1 but no recourse to law so he takes affairs into his own hands

Question 2

jilted (reject/ abandoned) husband

Answer 2

• Sexual jealousy
• Toxic masculinity
• Shakespeare demonstrates the hypocrisy within male insecurities through Iago’s contradictory actions: enraged at the prospect of other men sleeping with his wife but doesn’t care for Emilia at all

Question 3

The serpent

Answer 3

• Uncanny ability to identify someone’s biggest wants or insecurities
• Manipulative
• Just like the serpent, Iago does not commit any crimes himself until the end of the play
• Shakespeare shows how Venetian society’s biases and prejudices make it vulnerable to suck manipulation

Question 4

The undecided

Answer 4

• Shakespeare hints at a conflicted, unstable mental state
• No specific reason for doing evil, Cassio, “done his office”,
• Attempts to justify his intentions suggests he isn’t content with his own vices he wants the audience to believe

Question 5

The bigot (unreasonably attached to a belief)

Answer 5

• Prejudice
• Embodies white masculinity
• Pathological fear of outsiders
• Opinions of people of colour and women are degrading

Question 6

The cynic (motivated purely by self-interest)

Answer 6

• Master manipulator
• Iago finds within Othello, a sense of authority
• Almost overpowering frustration to confront or manipulate situations so that one achieves ironic mastery
• A tendency to project one’s own nature, assumes that others also confront life ironically
• Irony bridges the gap between his self-esteem and the place accorded to him by the world