Peripeteia

From 'The Art of Drama, Volume 6'

What is it about Iago that has led to so much critical discussion of his character and disagreement in interpretation? Famously, the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wondered what motivated Iago’s machinations, concluding that nothing Iago ever says is substantial enough to explain his malignity. On the other hand, as we shall see, some modern critics, such as Kiernan Ryan, claim that ‘the truth is that nothing could be less mysterious than the source of Iago’s malignity’. Whichever side you take, Iago’s apparent elusiveness has certainly inspired critics, actors and directors to discover various, different sources for his villainy. Hence, among the many interpretations of his character he has been read and/or played as a vice figure from medieval morality plays, as a male witch, as a repressed homosexual, as a reactive puritan, as a mordant joker and as a psychopath and/or a sociopath. While some readers believe it is Iago’s envy of Cassio and Othello’s nobility that drives him to revenge, others argue that his revenge springs from a suppressed love of Desdemona. Whereas in the source material from Cinthio the Iago character had a clear and obvious motivation, this is missing from Shakespeare’s characterisation, a deliberate gap or hole, a technique of absence that encourages different readers to fill it with their various interpretations and theories. What isn’t in doubt, however, is that Iago is a powerfully disturbing and troubling character, a character with a brilliant mind intent on doing terrible harm to others and this makes him such a consistently compelling stage presence that some critics argue the play should really have been named after him.

Ostensibly, unlike Shakespeare’s other Machiavellian villains, Iago does not appear to be motivated by a lust for power or to damage others as means to an increase in rank, status or power. Whereas Lady Macbeth divests herself of her female qualities to help her husband to the crown and Edmund in King Lear betrays his brother and father to climb the greasy pole and Claudius plans Hamlet’s death to cling to the kingship, for Iago the destruction of Othello and Desdemona appears to be an end in itself. How could Iago benefit by Desdemona’s murder? What would he gain through Othello’s punishment for murdering Desdemona? Nothing, it would seem. For Iago, the payoff for his crimes is perhaps the power he wields in reducing Othello and his love for Desdemona to rubble. Perhaps Iago is not after any worldly benefit; rather he makes others suffer because he enjoys the feeling of power it gives him. Fundamentally, then, perhaps Iago is best understood as a sadist. On the other hand, perhaps he makes them suffer so that they can feel what he has felt, such as the gnawing doubt about whether his wife has been unfaithful to him. Perhaps, then, Iago is best understood as someone seeking revenge.

Sympathy for the devil?
Is it possible to see things from Iago’s perspective, even to forgive him to some extent for his villainy? Clearly, he is a malcontent with some grounds for feeling discontented with Venetian society and its values. This is a society in which rank and status are crucially important. But, despite his manifold talents and high intelligence, he has no opportunities to prosper or increase his status or fulfil his vast potential in the narrow world in which he exists. Even when he does loyal, sterling service, such as he has done for Othello on the battlefield, it will not necessarily be rewarded – it is Cassio who is promoted to a higher rank, not the more deserving Iago. And Cassio is not promoted because he is better qualified or has worked harder for it, but because he comes from a higher class. Adding insult to injury, despite being an outsider, Othello has been promoted to a general due to the service he has done for Venice. Hence it is perfectly understandable that Iago feels his merits have been ignored and he has been treated unjustly.

Additionally, rather than just accepting the injustices of the ways in which the Venetian world works, Iago sets about enterprisingly making up his own rules. Shakespeare was writing at a time when history was going through a mjoar change, with the old world of aristocratic authority and inherited ways of thinking being challenged by new more democratic and meritocratic forces and by the rise of commerce and science. In some ways, doesn’t Iago, embody the new, modern, meritocratic, self-fashioning spirit? If in him an enterprisingly individualistic spirit is distorted and corrupted into doing evil, in part isn’t this because of the ways in which entirely laudable impulses were stifled and thwarted by a world still clinging onto to the vestiges of aristocratic power? If we should feel sympathy for Othello as a cultural outsider and for Desdemona as a woman in a patriarchal world, mustn’t we extend similar feelings to Iago as a class outsider in a culture divided rigidly by rank and status, governed by inherited power and driven by superficial courtly manners?

Iago lives in a world in which lusty fools like Roderigo are richer than he can ever hope to be and where hypocrites like Brabantio wield more legitimate power than he can ever hope to have. Like Hamlet, Iago understands that all’s the world’s a stage. He understands how his world really works and he sees through its hypocrisies. He is wise to the pretensions and pomposities, even of the supposedly noble characters, such as Othello and Cassio. Doubly betrayed by his master, Othello, underestimated and/or unjustly ignored by everyone else, he is an avenger who surely has every right to feel aggrieved. If we protest that he expresses racist and misogynistic views, a close study will reveal he only does so when manipulating other characters. Indeed, his strategies expose the racism and misogyny inherent in characters who otherwise might appear to be noble. Think, for instance, of how quickly Othello is prepared to believe Desdemona has been unfaithful to him.

You might protest that Iago uses the language of evil, calling up the forces of hell to make his plans prosper. But, in doing this he is like Hamlet calling up similar dark voices to force him to take his revenge. Like Hamlet, arguably Iago doesn’t use this language because he is a devil, but as another form of rhetoric, a way of galvanising himself by drawing on imaginary forces in world in which he lacks any real power.

This sympathetic line of thinking can, however, only take us so far, of course. Certainly, thinking like this humanises Iago and makes him seem less like a devil. But it runs up against the malign form his revenge takes, his brutally callous treatment of Roderigo and Cassio and the cowardly killing of his own wife. To agree that Iago has sound reasons to feel aggrieved is not to agree necessarily with what he does about this injustice. Granted he has been mistreated by Othello, but the punishment Iago inflicts is obviously disproportionate. And what has Desdemona ever done to harm Iago? Nothing in the way he has been treated can justify his machinations against her.

Reading the world through Iago’s eyes, coupled with the effect his seductive manipulative charisma can have on an audience, can take us dangerously close to excusing the behaviour of a human monster.