Explore Shakespeare’s presentation of the relationship between Othello and Iago

PLAN – put together by Mrs Borrett’s Year 12 English Literature Class.

“There are Iagos everywhere!”

Prof. John McRae

Key Ideas: Control, Trust, Plotting, Audience’s omniscience (soliloquies), Audience’s helplessness, Abuse of trust, Machiavellian characters everywhere (John McRae), Moorish stereotypes, Comedy becomes tragic, Power, Motive, Truth.

ARGUMENT 1

Trust – The relationship between Othello and Iago is explored through the misuse and abuse of trust.

Quotation: ‘…honest Iago…’ (1.3) – response: Othello’s understanding of Iago is shown in complete contrast to the audience’s understanding of Iago (soliloquy ‘I hate the Moor’ (1.3)). Although the audience is omniscient, they soon become aware of their helplessness to the unfolding of Iago’s plot. Their relationship is one of uncertainty, encapsulated by the audience’s fleeting understanding of the trust shared between them. We, just like all but one of the characters in the play, are left uncertain by Iago’s motive, though we may well understand the gravity of his plotting’s trajectory.

“Motive-hunting of motiveless malignity.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Response: though at certain points in the play Iago does reveal motives, they soon become so convoluted that we grow wary of the truths within them. Our disillusionment with Iago’s soliloquies grows so great by the end of the play that his silence after the death of Desdemona becomes agonising. The only thing we understand is his action, so I would agree that Iago is motiveless, even to the point of his uncertainty about his own motive.

Whether his soliloquies are ‘motive-hunting’, however, as Coleridge writes, is questionable. Iago’s ‘And what’s he then that says I play the villain,’ does not seem to be on-the-spot ‘motive-hunting’, but rather a premeditated lure to draw in the audience to the more comical ideas in the play, to repress the ideas of tragedy, and make them complicit in his plot. This malignant, Machiavellian inconsistency shatters the trust between the audience and Iago as it reinforces Othello’s reliance on his betrayer.

ARGUMENT 2

Power – The relationship between Othello and Iago is explored through the pendulum of power that Shakespeare places between them.

Quotations: ‘I am your own forever’ (3.3). Response: when looking at power, we can explore the shift from Venice to Cyprus as a symbolic entrance into Iago’s world, a world in which the Venetian state holds no authority, and Iago plays the puppet master. Shakespeare offers us the metaphor of tuning instruments throughout the play to explore this dynamic, especially as Iago takes complete hold of the narrative in the Scene of Asides (4.1), capturing Othello’s need for ocular truth by his webbing of fatal misunderstandings, another comedic theme that Shakespeare has taken to the extremes in this play.

Iago is also the lens through which the audience sees the play. His soliloquies open up this world of impending doom to Shakespeare’s public. By the Scene of Asides (4.1), we must also ask ourselves how much of what Iago is presenting to us is in fact truth. To link with the argument on Truth, we will use McEvoy as a critic.

“Audience becomes complicit in Iago’s intention.”

Sean McEvoy

Response: the Othello that the audience understands is a constructed character. Iago is the primary source of information about our tragic hero: his introduction, his trust, his downfall, his language, his passion and his jealously.

I would argue that before 3.3, the audience is complicit in Iago’s plot. In 3.3, however, when we gain the knowledge that Iago now wishes to kill Desdemona, a character who is solely virtuous, the audience, I believe, must turn on Iago.

CONCLUSION

As the play reaches its final lines, Othello kills himself. Who holds power now? Othello is dead, as is his world. Iago, the character who dominates and orchestrates the entirety of the action up until this moment, becomes dormant. He gives no motive for his action. He got what he wanted, or at least what he told the audience he wanted. The audience is never given closure, nor is Othello, only catharsis in the restoration of order from chaos. Shakespeare ultimately burdens his audience with the brutal truth that Iagos are everywhere, and the dangers of naïveté. The play is based, in its simplest form, around the relationship between Othello and Iago. This is a tragedy of misplaced trust and the torment of invisible villains.

Alexander Stephenson