critical essays on iago

William Shakespeare

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Character Analysis Iago

Shakespeare presents Iago as a collection of unsolvable puzzles. Each thing Iago says is cause for worry. He claims a reputation for honesty and plain speaking, yet he invents elaborate lies in order to exploit and manipulate other people. He treats others as fools and has no time for tender emotion, yet he is a married man and presumably once loved his wife. He cares for no one, yet he devotes his whole life to revenge rather than walk away in disdain. He believes in cheating and lying for gain, yet Shakespeare placed some of the most beautiful words in Iago's mouth.

Iago has a reputation for honesty, for reliability and direct speaking. Othello and others in the play constantly refer to him as "honest Iago." He has risen through the ranks in the army by merit and achievement, and Othello, whose military judgment is excellent, has taken him as ancient (captain) because of his qualities. In Iago, Shakespeare shows us a character who acts against his reputation. Possibly Iago was always a villain and confidence trickster who set up a false reputation for honesty, but how can one set up a reputation for honesty except by being consistently honest over a long period of time? Alternatively he might be a man who used to be honest in the past, but has decided to abandon this virtue.

Shakespeare has built the character of Iago from an idea already existing in the theatrical culture of his time: the Devil in religious morality plays, which developed into the villain in Elizabethan drama and tragedy. Iago says (I.1, 65) "I am not what I am," which can be interpreted as "I am not what I seem." But it is also reminiscent of a quotation from the Bible which Shakespeare would have known: In Exodus, God gives his laws to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and Moses asks God his name. God replies: "I am that I am" (Exodus,iii,14). If "I am that I am" stands for God, then Iago's self-description, "I am not what I am" is the direct opposite. Iago is the opposite of God, that is, he is the Devil. Iago in this play, has the qualities of the Devil in medieval and Renaissance morality plays: He is a liar, he makes promises he has no intention of keeping, he tells fancy stories in order to trap people and lead them to their destruction, and he sees other's greatest vulnerabilities and uses these to destroy them. Iago does all this not for any good reason, but for love of evil.

Iago is surrounded with bitter irony: he is not as he seems, his good is bad for others, people repeatedly rely on him, and he betrays them. He likes to have others unwittingly working to serve his purposes. But for all this, as his plot against Othello starts moving and gathering momentum, he loses control of it and must take real risks to prevent it from crashing. Iago is a man with an obsession for control and power over others who has let this obsession take over his whole life. Necessity forces his hand, and, in order to destroy Othello, he must also destroy Roderigo, Emilia, Desdemona, and ultimately himself. The one man who survived Iago's attempt to kill him, Cassio, is the only major character left standing at the end of the play.

William Hazlitt wrote: "Iago is an extreme instance . . . of diseased intellectual activity, with the most perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with a decided preference of the latter, because it falls more readily in with his favorite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope to his actions. He is quite or nearly indifferent to his own fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage, and is himself the dupe and victim of ruling passion — an insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind."

The great nineteenth-century actor Booth wrote about playing Iago: "To portray Iago properly you must seem to be what all the characters think, and say, you are, not what the spectators know you to be; try to win even them by your sincerity. Don't act the villain, don't look it, or speak it, (by scowling and growling, I mean), but think it all the time. Be genial, sometimes jovial, always gentlemanly. Quick in motion as in thought; lithe and sinuous as a snake."

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Iago, Othello

Iago is a character in Shakespeare’s play, Othello . He is a senior officer in the Venetian army under the command of its general, Othello.

Iago is very popular among the characters in the play. He is valued for his loyalty and there is a consensus that he is very honest and straightforward and, in fact, he is repeatedly greeted as ‘honest Iago,’ and spoken of with the same language. All the main characters turn to him for help and advice with their problems.

Kenneth Brannagh as Iago in Oliver Parker’s 1995 Othello

He is charming, clever, and funny, and great company, and right at the center of the military community on Cyprus, where the army has been sent to deter the Turks from an attack on Venice. He lends a sympathetic ear to everyone as they pour out their problems to him and solicit his help.

What they don’t know is that he is actually the cause of their problems and that the more information they give him the more ammunition they are supplying him with to be used against them.

The character qualities listed above are all fake. He is, in fact, hypocritical, manipulative, cruel, unsympathetic, vicious, and, in fact, murderous.

Iago is a very modern character in that he has been diagnosed by critics as a psychopath or a sociopath, or an extreme narcissist. Remarkably, Shakespeare created that character some four hundred years before psychologists began to describe the characteristics of psychopaths and sociopaths. Iago’s behavior is very much like a case history of what we would recognize as a psychopath.

Iago’s symptoms, if one can talk about his character in that way, are that he is devoid of any conscience and any antipathy. He sees other human beings only as objects that can be maneuvered, moved around according to where he wants to place them. And whatever their suffering is as a result of his manipulations, he feels no remorse.

Iago sets out to destroy Othello. The question that we can’t help asking is, why? It is not only Othello who is destroyed but several other characters too, although Othello is his main target.

The answer is that it’s not clear. What is clear is that he enjoys the suffering of others, even though he may not want to get anything out of it apart from pleasure. On two occasions his soliloquies offer some insight but only confuse his motives further. At one point he suggests that Othello has slept with his wife, Emelia, although that’s easily dismissible. At another point he reveals some bitterness that he has been overlooked for promotion when Michael Cassio is made second in command instead. It is better not to search for reasons but simply to accept that he just wants to destroy the happiness of others.

Iago & The Othello Plot

The action centers on his plot against Othello. As it advances the other characters are drawn in. Othello, a black man, has gained the love of Desdemona , the daughter of a wealthy citizen. They marry in secret and although that is frowned upon by the city authorities Othello is a military hero and Venice is in deep trouble. Othello is the only man who can stop an invasion by the Turks so they let his behavior pass and even give permission for Desdemona to accompany the troops to Cyprus.

Iago decides that the way to destroy Othello is by convincing him that Desdemona is being unfaithful to him. He will kill two birds with one stone and make Othello believe that the man she is being unfaithful with is Michael Cassio.

Knowing that Cassio’s weak point is that he reacts badly to alcohol, Iago makes him drunk in a pub and Cassio becomes aggressive and violent. Othello intervenes and demotes Cassio. Cassio appeals to Desdemona to ask Othello to reinstate him. Iago pretends to be Cassio’s friend and advisor in that. Cassio in Othello’s mind. He works hard on that and manufactures ‘evidence’ of the affair.

Othello reveals his weak point, which is jealousy. He goes mad with jealousy and, encouraged by Iago, finally strangles Desdemona. When he is made to see that it is Iago’s villainy that has brought this tragedy about and that Desdemona was innocent, he kills himself.

Iago is arrested and taken back to Venice where he is to be imprisoned and tortured for what he has done.

Common Questions About Iago

Is iago in love with desdemona.

Iago is not in love with Desdemona. He tries to understand why he wants to destroy Othello beyond an irrational hatred of him. He suggests that Othello has slept with his wife at one point. At another point, he bemoans the fact that he has been overlooked for promotion, and he briefly considers that he may be in love with Desdemona but dismisses that very quickly.

Is Iago in love with Othello?

There is no suggestion whatsoever in the play that Iago might be in love with Othello

Why was Iago jealous?

Iago is not jealous of anyone. He has a personality problem in that he takes delight in making people suffer and watching that suffering. All his efforts are directed towards that.

Why does Iago kill his wife?

At the climax of the play, it is Iago’s wife, Emilia who exposes him. After Othello has strangled Desdemona and the Venetian councilors are trying to understand what has happened Emilia accuses Iago. He tells her to be quiet and go home but she becomes even more vociferous. Iago takes out his sword and kills her.

Does Iago die, and who kills Iago?

Iago does not die in the play. While his main victims die he survives. He is taken back to Venice and imprisoned.

Top Iago Quotes

“For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart”

( act 1, scene 1 )

“In complement extern ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at I am not what I am.”

“Put money in thy purse.”

( act 1, scene 3 )

“Virtue? A fig! ‘Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.”

“I hate the Moor, And it is thought abroad, that ‘twixt my sheets ‘Has done my office. I know not if ‘t be true, But I, for mere suspicion in that kind, Will do as if for surety.”

“When devils will the blackest sins put on They do suggest at first with heavenly shows”

( act 2, scene 3 )

“And what’s he then that says I play the villain?”

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i hate you Lago!!!!!!1111!!!!!1!1

What a truly sensational character

An Analysis of Iago's Manipulation of Each of the Characters in Othello

The essay describes in detail Iago's manipulation of Cassio, Desdemona, Emilia, Roderigo, and Othello.

From beginning to end Iago moves the characters of Othello as if they were chessmen. He uses their individual aspirations and passions to motivate them to whatever devious plan he desires. His adroit manipulation of those characters range from convincing Roderigo to serve Cassio another glass of wine, to leading Othello to the conclusion that only by killing Desdemona could he save himself and mankind from her treacherous acts of infidelity. However, in each case Iago doesn?t have to push very hard because his suggested actions either seem harmless resolutions to each character?s woes or take advantage of character flaws. In each case, because he does not have to push very hard, he is able to maintain an air of apathy while promoting his ultimate malevolent goals: ?I am not what I am?(I, i, 71). In this manner, Iago manipulates Cassio, Desdemona, Emilia, Roderigo, and Othello to play their separate pieces in the puzzle that will ultimately mean Desdemona?s death. Iago takes advantage of both Cassio?s yearning for his old position of lieutenant as well as Desdemona?s good-hearted nature in order create the image that Desdemona is being unfaithful with him. Cassio loses his lieutenancy do to his drunkenness and brawl with Roderigo and Montano: ?I love thee, but nevermore be lieutenant of mine? (II,iii,264-265). Dejected, Iago turns to Iago, a self-proclaimed, ?honest man?(II,iii,285), who happens to be nearby. Iago has succeeded in reducing Cassio to a pitiful state; a state in which he will be highly suggestible due to his desperation. Iago first comforts Cassio asserting that, ?Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving?(II, iii, 287-9), which is ironic since Iago has a reputation as an honest man when he deceives routinely, while Cassio is now considered a wild drunk when in reality he is Othello?s dearest ally. Iago states that, ?Our general?s wife is now the general?(II, iii, 333-4), and that with her as his petitioner his relationship with Othello, ?shall grow stronger than it was before?(II, iii, 344-5). In this scene, Iago masterfully utilizes Cassio?s low tolerance for alcohol, to rob him of his position. He then plants the idea of using Desdemona as his supplicant, on the newly impressionable Cassio. And therein lies Iago?s mastery; he reduces his chessmen to such a state that a mere seemingly well-meaning whisper on his part coaxes them toward his action. Iago?s manipulation of Desdemona occurs through Cassio. He exploits Desdemona?s natural proclivity to help others, toward his dark purpose; he ?turn[s] her virtue into pitch?(II, iii, 380). Iago is a satanic figure who endeavors to pervert that which is pure and good. Through his suggestion to Cassio, Iago can now be certain that Cassio will entreat Desdemona to petition for him with Othello. Cassio does implore Desdemona for he aid and predictably she responds that, ?Be thou assured, good Cassio, I will do all my abilities in thy behalf.?(III, iii, 1-2), and thus Iago?s plan succeeds. Iago will use their interaction to further extend his evil plot. Iago?s suggestions to Othello will cause him to construe Desdemona?s pleas for Cassio, as pleas for her paramour. Each time she suggests, ?[Cassio?s] present reconciliation take?(III, iii, 51), ?she shall undo her credit with [Othello]?(II, iii, 379), further. Thus Iago manipulates Desdemona?s wholesome urge into entreaties who fall as proofs of infidelity on Othello?s ear. Iago also manipulates the undeserving devotion that Emilia shows him. We learn from Emilia at the end of the play that Iago, ?begged [her] to steal?(V, ii, 272), the handkerchief that Othello gave to Desdemona: ?that handkerchief?I found by fortune, and did give me husband?(V, ii, 267-9). Iago?s manipulation of his wife is tragic; she clearly sees his ?wayward?(III, iii, 336) nature, and yet she remains obedient even though she knows that it is her mistress?s, ?first remembrance of the Moor?(III, iii, 335). Like Desdemona?s good nature, Iago exploits Emilia?s devotion toward his malicious goals. He then, ?lose[s] this napkin?in Cassio's lodging?, where it will serve as the ?ocular proof? that Othello demanded before concluding that Desdemona was unfaithful. Thus, as Iago was able to control Desdemona through her character flaw of good will, he is similarly able to bend Emilia to his purpose by exploiting her spousal devotion. In Roderigo?s case, Iago manipulates both his obtuseness, as well as his desperate love for Desdemona. By exploiting Roderigo?s dimwitted nature, Iago is able to attain any monetary resources he wishes. Roderigo?s mental function is also inhibited by his love for Desdemona, which shames him in its strength: ?I confess it is my shame to be so fond, but it is no in my virtue to amend it?. Thus, with the promise that Desdemona might be swayed to divorce Othello and marry Roderigo, Iago procures whatever funds he wishes: ?Thus do I ever make my fool my purse?(I, iii, 426). Roderigo desperately desires Desdemona and is unable to reason that no amount of money will help the situation. Iago seizes upon Roderigo?s inability to draw this conclusion, and slowly bleeds Roderigo?s purse. By simply stating to Roderigo that, ?[Desdemona?s] eye must be fed?(II, i, 246), and that ?Desdemona is directly in love with [Cassio] ?(II, i, 240), he convinces his impressionable cretin. Thus Roderigo simply accepts Iago?s unlikely theory, given Desdemona?s exceedingly chaste nature, without a shred of proof. Iago is a puppeteer that knows just how to play on Roderigo?s weaknesses to produce the desired affect. Iago. Iago?s recognition of Roderigo?s weakness in his love for Desdemona is clear: ?my sick fool Roderigo, whom love hath turn'd almost the wrong side out?(II, iii, 52-54). Iago?s manipulation of Roderigo is indeed perfect; the more he fails in securing Desdemona?s love for Roderigo, the more desperate for it Roderigo becomes. Given that Roderigo threatened to, ?incontinently drown [him]self?(I, iii, 347), his desperation for Desdemona?s love at this point in the play has reached a feverish pitch. In this incapacitated mental state Roderigo accepts Iago?s suggestion that he kill Cassio: ?I have no great devotion to the deed; and yet he hath given me satisfying reasons?(V, i, . Yet in the audience we wonder, what ?satisfying reasons?? Iago has offered only wild conjecture and no proof. Yet, Iago successfully manipulates Roderigo to his purposes, as he and Cassio fight, leaving only Cassio for Iago to deal with. Finally, Iago?s most destructive manipulation of the characters of Othello, is his manipulation of Othello himself. Othello?s insecurities about his race are what Iago uses to bend him to his will. In his discourse to the Duke, Othello?s love seems elevated and pure. It is filled with religious words such as ?pilgrimage? and ?prayer? which demonstrate both the strength and sanctity of their love. Yet, by the end of the play Iago has so poisoned Othello?s soul that he is convinced that, ?[Desdemona] must die, else she'll betray more men?(V, ii, 6). How did this radical change occur? It is Iago?s gentle prodding and toying with Othello. First, Iago uses Othello?s blackness to create doubt in his mind: ?Whereto we see in all things nature tends. Foh! One may smell in such a will most rank, Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural?(III, iii, 271-273). Also, Iago takes advantage of Othello?s alienation from Venice to create further doubt mentioning that for the women of Venice, ?their best conscience is not to leave undone, but keep unknown?. Othello?s insecurities, Iago knows, will bolster his argument. Desdemona?s very choosing of Othello indicates that there is something wrong with her. Knowing these insecurities reside in the Othello?s mind, Iago begins dropping subtle hints such as, ?I like not that?(III, iii, 37), that he knows will plaque Othello?s mind. Iago immediately repents saying, ?I cannot think it that he would steal away so guiltylike?(III, iii, 41-42), yet he is masterfully planted a seed of doubt in Othello?s mind. As this seed takes root in Othello?s mind Iago need only supply, ?trifles light as air?, which Othello demands from Iago: ?Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore?(III, iii, 411). Iago, then supplies him with the ?ocular proof? that he demands, ?I know not that: but such a handkerchief,-- I am sure it was your wife's,--did I today see Cassio wipe his beard with?(III, iii, 496-8). And thus, with this sole shred of proof, that Othello does not even see himself, Iago has completely bent Othello to his purpose: ?O, blood, blood, blood!?(III, iii, 512). Thus, because Iago is able to exploit Othello?s insecurities about being black in Venice, he is able to easily manipulate him using only hints and thin proofs. Put out the light, and then put out the light In conclusion, Iago harnesses individual character flaws and situations throughout the play, to serve his own demonic purpose. Indeed, Iago is a satanic character whose manipulations often involve perverting that which is good and moral into a pitifully depraved heap. This theme reverberates throughout the play. Only as the setting moves from Venice to Cyprus, order to chaos, is Iago able to blacken each character?s soul or appearance. In this manner, Shakespeare warns of the corruptibility of society when it veers from the order of a dominant patriarchy.

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"Othello": Iago's Audience

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Modern theatrical technology has brought live theatre to a point at which it can often attempt to duplicate the lighting, acoustics, and location-resources of the cinema. Thus we may lose sight of the crucial distinction between stage and screen: a live performance is the unique result of the interaction of a particular audience and a single group of performers, in which the audience is an active determinant of the outcome through its sustained communication with the actors. This interaction is the primary consideration for experienced playwrights, as Lope de Vega stresses in his verse treatise on the art of writing plays for public theatres in the Renaissance. His audiences simply will not tolerate scripts that merely conform to neoclassical rules at the expense of lively and suspenseful action, variety of pace and tone, and a range of characters from the sublimely tragic to the farcical. The uncertainty of each outcome of a live performance, particularly one as diversified as Lope specifies, is what gives live theatre its excitement, perhaps verging on the uncertainty, even apprehension with which we watch the acrobatics of trapeze artists. Indeed, sometimes such skills are required of actors, for I recall a performance of Othello that I saw in Moscow in 2000 in which Iago's manipulative dexterity was matched by his skill in playfully balancing on a high parapet. This feat certainly added to the audience's sense of suspense. The divergences between successive performances of the same production of a play confirm the decisive role of the audience in successful outcomes, often to the discomfiture of reviewers and critics, not to mention actors and directors. Othello has always been one of Shakespeare's most popular and often-performed plays (as its frequent seventeenth-century reprintings as a single-play quarto indirectly confirm). This success suggests an exceptional impact in the play's effect on audiences, making it a plausible example of the intersection of the roles of actors and audiences.

From early performances of drama, this defining status of the audience was implicitly recognized by the terms used in Aristotle's Poetics to identify the emotional impact of ancient Greek tragedy. His term "catharsis" was applied to the consequences of audience identification with a positive hero-figure on the stage, whose mistakes and resulting misfortunes supposedly excited sympathy and anxiety, traditionally translated as "pity" and "fear." Aristotle's observations, largely based on the Oedipus of Sophocles, have found sympathetic modern echoes quite different from the neoclassical "rules" which were distilled from his empiricism. Freud's description of "identification", as abstracted by Norman Holland in Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare , is "based upon the possibility or desire of putting oneself in the same situation as another" because "one ego has perceived a significant analogy with another" which "may arise with any new perception of a common quality shared with some other person" (Holland, 278). One example of this kind of audience affinity is identified in the dramatic form of comedy by Bertrand Evans in Shakespeare's Comedies , where he has shown in detail how Shakespearean audiences empathize with the best-informed character on stage and relish the feeling of mastery resulting from awareness of the dramatic irony involving the actions of less well-informed characters. In the mixed dramatic forms which Shakespeare shares with Lope de Vega, various feelings about characters may co-exist in the audience, as with our initial involvement with Richard of Gloucester's manipulation of his unwitting yet somewhat dishonorable victims in Richard III , which ultimately leads to our rueful detachment from the later role of Richard as king, when we see its high cost to innocents such as the princes in the Tower. This distinctive progression gives that play its unique and powerful "affect", which has secured its continued stage success, and I believe it will prove helpful in clarifying that of Othello .

I would argue that every successful performance of a play has such a distinctive emotional interaction between actors and audience, though not necessarily exactly in the ratios specified by Aristotle, Freud, and Evans. The determination of just what this interaction might be in some broadly representative performance of a specific play defines the distinctive operation of drama criticism, and indeed the professional motivation for the performers and playwrights themselves. A dramatic script is focused primarily not on its purely literary character as a printed document but on its recurrent emotional "affect" in performance, to which Lope de Vega asserts he is obliged to give priority in writing it over all other considerations. This interaction is far more instinctive than the analytic silent reading of non-dramatic literature that concerns "reader-response" critics such as Stanley Fish, who are far closer to use of the intensive scrutiny of New Criticism dealing with a static, printed text, such as a novel or narrative poem. The reader is normally an isolated individual dealing at leisure with a passive object, while a theatre audience is a dynamic group focused on interacting immediately with another live team sensitive to their reactions. The publication of Shakespearean quartos like those of Othello proves that Elizabethans did consider a private literary reading of a script to be rewarding (though probably only after the more dynamic experience of seeing the play performed), thus transcending the literary censure implicit in the inaccessibility of most modern television and film scripts. Nevertheless, in so far as Elizabethan drama has its own unique aesthetic, that aesthetic can only plausibly apply to recurrent audience experience of each script in live performance. Even modern reading of any published script is normally still a consequence of its successful performance, despite exceptions such as Shelley's The Cenci . In conformation of this divergence of mode, we perceive instantly the gains and losses of attending the staging of a dramatized novel, which is no less distinct from a film or a television version. The shared theatrical experience evokes an immediacy of empathy for which there is scarcely any equivalence outside the live theatre.

Thus, for me, the formative experience defining the uniqueness of Othello 's impact came from the 1949 production at Stratford-upon-Avon in which Godfrey Tearle (1884-1953) played Othello to Antony Quayle's Iago. Like his actor father, "a man of natural elegance and dignity" (Grebanier, 336), Tearle was a grandiloquent and monumental actor in the old, mellifluous tradition surviving in John Gielgud's Shakespearean vein, against which Quayle mustered a believably jaded military authenticity founded on his own front-line service in World War II. The stylistic tension between the archaic Edwardian romanticism of Tearle's Othello and the wry expertise of Quayle's war-weary Iago had an immediacy and pathos which still resonates with my own experience of military service at the time of the Korean War, set against simultaneous exposure to the last vestiges of the pre-lapsarian world shattered by World War I, as recalled by great aunts and octogenarian imperial officers. As it progressed, the production rang the changes in mourning for Othello's heroic image, fading like that of mythic England, as modern political expediency wore it down, with Winston Churchill in forced retirement. The audience responded instinctively to this cumulative loss of legendary status by the hero from moment to moment in a way I have rarely experienced. As reviewers noted: "Othello may be at a height of self-torment; the actor is unstrained; and works on our sympathy as he will" (London Times , June 20, 1949). This archetype of heroic decline provided a performance with an audience impact "not equaled by any other actor of our time" as reaffirmed by Marvin Rosenberg's The Masks of "Othello" (Rosenberg, 149). The experience was particularly powerful because the contrasting temperaments evoked by the script correlated well with the real-life identities of the performers and was validated by the audience's own experience. That a good script achieves this synchronicity was confirmed for me in 1989 when a very similar distinctive tension occurred in a New York performance of The Merchant of Venice , in which Dustin Hoffman played Shylock in an intuitive Method style for Peter Hall's production, against the grain of more formal British acting by the rest of the cast, before a largely Jewish audience recruited for that performance by Sam Wanamaker in support of his rebuilding of the original Globe Theatre in Southwark. There was great tension and involvement in the action. It is not accidental that Shakespeare so often chooses challenging themes persisting in human consciousness, like race, religion, and gender.

In his Poetics , Aristotle hypothesized in rather more general terms than these that dramatic structure requires analysis of a script's progressive interaction with an audience's experience. While such broad terms as exposition, complication, climax, reversal, and resolution still have relevance to the evolution of any audience's experience in the theatre, they are not precise enough to define the exact emotional affects of the audience from moment to moment in the staging of Othello . Take the issue of exposition. This opening phase of any drama establishes a situation, context, characterization and ideology, but such terms do not in themselves differ absolutely from the requirements of most genres from lyric to novel. What is distinctive is how the visible and auditory sensations impact on the reflexes of the audience as designed by the playwright. In Fiction and the Shape of Belief , Sheldon Sacks has plausibly argued that the opening of any literary text involves the negotiation of an aesthetic contract with its audience about the conventions and texture of the communication: for example, whether it is to be laboriously documentary, allegorically stylized, flippant, or intense, or both, and so on. This negotiation is accomplished by "signals which influence our attitudes toward character, acts, and thoughts represented" (230). Sacks goes so far as to assert that writers' "ethical beliefs, opinions, and prejudices are expressed as the formal signals which control our response to the characters, acts and thoughts represented" (231). This alertness to the likely emotional responses of a live audience is what Lope de Vega considers the unique concern of the playwright, in his treatise on the popular drama of his time.

For we can more properly begin to appreciate the opening procedures of Othello by comparing them with those of similar plays, not novels, and most accurately by contrasting them to analogous plays of Shakespeare. Sometimes he goes so far as to establish preliminary attitudes in a prologue laying out expectations for the subsequent performance like the sonnet opening Romeo and Juliet , which violates Lope de Vega's requirement of maintaining suspense by glumly predicting the conclusion of which "Doth with their death bury their parents' strife." This type of prediction matches the contrary anticipations for the mocking of fated love, established by Quince's misphrased Prologue before we are exposed to the merry tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe . Though primitive, these sign-postings establish the audience's role and point of view: "the kinds of critical discriminations we can make are rigidly controlled by our initial preconceptions" (Sacks, 3). In the prologue to Henry VIII we are overtly instructed that we are to concentrate empathically on such feminine misfortunes as the repudiation of Katherine of Aragon. In complete contrast, the macho opening of Richard III establishes the audience's initial relationship to the action as that of an involuntary confidant of the omniscient and masterful Richard of Gloucester, from which "insider" role we are progressively detached, and ultimately alienated by the brutal killing of the children in the Tower. By contrast, the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew establishes the artifice both of the frame story about the deception of the drunken Sly and of the plots of the play within this frame concerning Katherina and Bianca. We certainly do not see the performance from the point of view of Sly, and we see that Katherina will be played by a boy, so that if the audience shares any character's perspective it is that of the controlling intelligence of the Lord and his company, later transferred to a considerable degree to the dramatist's manipulative surrogate in the play-within-the-play, the puppet-master Petruchio.

In this Shakespearean context of audience-manipulation, the opening scene of Othello proves far more sophisticated than any of these alternatives, as it blends many of their options. It establishes the artifice of the subsequent plot through Iago's avowals which (like those of Richard of Gloucester) invite us, along with Roderigo, to share an involuntary association with his manipulative intelligence as the manager of the pending action. Like the Lord in the Induction of The Taming of the Shrew , in Othello 's opening scene Iago also emerges as the definer of the states of mind of the other characters, both Roderigo and Brabantio, not unlike the result of the controlling intelligence of the playwright himself. As the play progresses the synchronization of audience's awareness with the cynical manipulator is largely attributable to the stage effect of his soliloquies, in which he explains his motives to them at length. (2.1.286-312). At this point, like Richard of Gloucester, he also accurately identifies the limitations of character and injudicious behavior of the rest of the cast. The other characters never recognize the artifice of Iago's performance and this leaves them with less awareness of their own contrived identity and situation. Later Shakespeare even endows Iago with a unique status when he verges on direct acknowledgement of the audience's existence in the theatre, through the repeated queries he poses about his malicious advice to the cashiered Cassio:

How am I then a villain, To council Cassio to this parallel course, Directly to his good? (2.3.48-50)

As the scene ends he repeats the question:

And what's he that says I play the villain, When this advice is free I give, and honest, Probal to thinking, and indeed the course To win the Moor again? (2.3.336-9)

As Antony Sher says, "Iago uses truth as a weapon" (Dobson, 63). Lope identifies the fascination of this virtuosity when he writes: "To trick with the truth is a device which has seemed good, . . . Equivocal speech and the uncertainty arising from the ambiguous has always held a great place with the crowd, for it thinks that it alone understands what the other man is saying" (Gilbert, 547). It is probable that this kind of seductive appeal to audiences' egotism was initiated by the Devils and Vice figures of medieval drama, to which such confessional characters in Shakespeare as Richard of Gloucester, Falstaff, and Iago continually compare themselves (as Bernard Spivack has shown in Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil). Like the witches in Macbeth , diabolic forces traditionally can accurately recognize the nature of evil in themselves and in others, thereby achieving more conscious control of their own actions and skill in penetrating the minds and swaying the behavior of others. This skill in self-analysis persists in Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained , recurring later in The Brothers Karamazov (Book 9, Chapter 9) where Dostoevsky allows the Devil to defend himself candidly as the catalyst of self-knowledge, "the indispensable minus."

By Bertrand Evans' criteria, if the Devil is traditionally self-aware, we risk seeing everything from his perspective and appreciating his seeming mastery over the doomed awareness of his naïve victims. Such is probably the basis for many Romantics identifying with Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost . As Lope de Vega points out, the resulting pattern of discrepant awareness (as Evans calls it) or dramatic irony (in more traditional terminology) invites an audience to feel a complacent sense of superiority to the ignorance of victims of a self-aware villain such as Iago, or even those manipulated by a well-meaning sage such as Prospero. Entrapment by this sense of superior alertness is a crucial source of audience involvement in the action of a play like Othello and may explain its popularity, for Evans observes that the play is among those with the highest "proportion of scenes during which we hold a significant advantage over participants, and the number of participants over whom we hold advantage" (Evans, 115). As a result Iago's "position is a sort of mediator between audience and action and his oft-commented upon role as producer of the play within the play is crucial" (Anita Loomba; cited in Kolin, 6). This audience perspective is what Shakespeare maintains throughout Othello , so that we continually refract our views of Roderigo, Brabantio, Cassio, Othello, and even Desdemona through Iago's eyes, as Kent Cartwright confirms in Shakespeare's Tragedy and Its Double : "Through fourteen of the fifteen scenes of Othello, the audience shares its discrepant awareness with Iago" (142). This point of view is established immediately, as Evans notes of the play's opening: "It tells us unmistakably that Iago is not what he seems to others in his world. During the course of subsequent action, and always as a result of specific practices contrived by Iago, numerous incidental discrepancies arise between the participants' awareness and ours" (116). The victims are innocent in several senses: naively idealistic, unaware of evil, inexperienced emotionally. This displacement of audience perspective from the victims' point of view may somewhat justify Aristotle's idea of pity as a classic emotional response to tragedy: we are sorry to see well-meaning characters destroyed by their own credulity. But instinctively we cannot identify with either their ignorance or their moral obtuseness. This assertion is amply confirmed in practice by Antony Sher's observations of his audiences while performing Iago in Gregory Doran's Othello at the RSC in 2004. He comments on "Iago's use of the audience":

They are complicit with him—he forces them to be, by confiding in them. He is the torturer who takes you by the hand and invites you to sit in the corner while he works. And, surprisingly, the audience becomes strangely attracted to the process. When I spoke the soliloquies, I was intrigued by a distinctive expression I saw on the faces in the front few rows: a peculiar smile, a peculiar kind of excitement. In listening to me, in sharing my dangerous secrets, they were doing something very immoral, very naughty, and they liked it. (Dobson, 64)

There is not much pity in this reaction, but it matches the specifications of Lope de Vega about an audience's fascination with incorrect behavior.

In Othello , Aristotle's other asserted audience "affect" of fear might perhaps be derived from anxiety that one could be as deceived as the hero, as Sher says: "we could all be Othellos. We could all be deceived by the right lies. And after all, Othello is not the fall guy of some third-rate con-man. Iago is a master of his craft" (Dobson, 63). Nevertheless, this self-projection has never been a normal response to Othello by critics or audiences, who tend to censure the victims' credulity in the play rather than empathize with it. Shakespeare systematically reinforces this detachment from the victims' perspective by the repeated passages assigned to Iago which ridicule their gullibility and confirm the audience's sharing of his feelings of superiority. One outcome of this audience approach to the script is to enhance the role of Iago greatly. It is already the longest role in the play: 1,094 lines to Othello's 879, according to Stanley Wells' Dictionary of Shakespeare (228-9), and the third longest in all of Shakespeare (after Hamlet and Richard III). Sher finally confesses, "I think Iago is one of the most mesmeric and original characters in all of drama" (Dobson, 69). In view of such reactions perhaps a more accurate title for the play might be " Iago ," acknowledging that, because of our superior knowledge of the plot, we can never identify fully with Othello's consistent misreading of characters and circumstances. Such detachment permits us to elucidate A. C. Bradley's fascination with Iago, which Tucker Brooke sought to rationalize by marginalizing Othello and Desdemona and thus allowing our identification with Iago's sophisticated egotism:

Our perception of Iago is blurred by the glow of sympathy we feel for Othello and for Desdemona. But in so far as we can eliminate these two luminous figures from our view, we can see the outlines of what I fancy was the poet's original idea, The Tragedy of Iago , the tragedy of the honest, charming soldier, who swallowed the devil's bait of self-indulgence, grew blind to ideal beauty, and in his blindness overthrew more than his enemies.

Like the somewhat rigid virtue of Brutus, Isabella, or Timon, the "goodness" of Desdemona is also the object of dispassionate psychological investigation: these Shakespearean characters are all as ruthlessly tested to destruction by the dramatist as Webster's Bosola is made to destroy the Duchess of Malfi, in an almost clinical investigation of her resilience. Iago is the dominant toreador, Othello the simpler, albeit heroic creature in a sacrificial rite celebrating fallen humanity's mastery of natural virtue. Antony Sher observes, "some black commentators say that the play is racist because Othello, once roused, reverts to being a violent savage. But this is to deny one of Shakespeare's most searing observations about human behaviour—when we're under extreme pressure, the animal in us takes over. Call it savage, call it primal. Call it what you will, but it manifests itself in Lear, Titus, Shylock, Leontes, . . the list is long, and they're not black" (Dobson, 61). The stupefied paralysis of the toreador's baffled victim matches the momentary catatonic fit of Othello (4.3.35-59). This strictly pathological episode is distanced by Iago's cold diagnosis of Othello's sickness. It is like Caesar's comparable deafness and epilepsy, which we perceive similarly as a fatal sign through Casca's critical eyes, as physical symptoms of the mental decline and loss of initiative which invite his assassination ( Julius Caesar , 2.2.32-6). We are not required to share the mental anguish of the sacrificed at any point because it is always seen as misplaced. In Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double , Kent Cartwright asserts of Othello that "audiences will feel this thrill of passion at a distance. We seldom surrender wholly to a character's point of view"; indeed, he calls this attitude "clinical" and "observational" (141).

This Brechtian response is reinforced not only by conservative critics such as Thomas Rymer and T. S. Eliot but also by many radical feminists and African-Americans. Such distancing even occurs in many critics' views of other characters in the play, not just Roderigo, but even the women: far from identifying Desdemona as a victim of machismo, both reactionary and progressive thinkers despise her, from Thomas Rymer's sarcasm about her poor housekeeping skills in losing her handkerchief in his Short View of Tragedy (1693), through James Baldwin's contempt for her dependency (in the Shakespeare anniversary edition of Le Figaro Littéraire in 1964), down to modern feminist attacks on her self-sacrifice: "Desdemona's moral development is arrested at the level of altruistic self-denial" (Diane Dreher, Domination and Defiance , 90).

This detached state of mind of the audience during the most disturbed scenes of Othello resembles that which I believe is intended during the storm scenes of King Lear . We may be clinically fascinated by Lear's extravagant emotion but cannot share it, since its initiation occurs with Lear's monstrous, not to say pathological curse against Goneril, which I have seen most modern audiences shudder at. Granted this, one must reject the idea that such entropy constitutes the climax of either play, even though the misguided rages of Othello and Lear are all too often seen as the optimum opportunity for strenuous "acting." In describing one classic effect of tragicomedy, Castelvetro makes some excellent points about the audience "affect" of such a drastic reversal of attitude as Othello's sudden arousal to murderous intentions towards both Cassio and Desdemona. Castelvetro agrees that a switch in a major character from love to hatred has a powerful impact on audiences, but denies that it can induce sympathy:

It is a great wonder among men that one should kill his friend or one not his enemy than that he should kill his enemy. . . .For we wonder not at all or but little if one kills an enemy, but we marvel greatly if he kills a non-enemy or friend. And however marvelous his act may be, it does not produce compassion for him but a great deal for the sufferer, who has not merited death. (Gilbert, 338-9)

The characters' emotional breakthrough to a new level of understanding comes only after these high points of the heroes' megalomaniac resentment, in the infinitely subtler sequels in which they finally begin to escape from this "mad" condition (in the sense of rage not insanity, surely): in Lear's new humility and concern for others and in Othello's increasing doubts of the appropriateness of puritanical "justice." Only at these crucial points of discovery can some audience empathy with the hero develop. Our modern identification with such madness, as seen in Ginsberg's Howl , is rejected as anachronistic by Lily B. Campbell in Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes, Slaves of Passion , where she has stressed that Shakespeare approaches intense feeling as a dispassionate psychiatrist, in such scenes as the gravediggers' discussion of the theological implications of Ophelia's suicidal mania. At that point, in contrast to her obsession, one perceives the increasingly skeptical views of Hamlet about such fatal preoccupations. Similarly, after the reinforcement of Emilia's final denunciations of Othello's folly in murdering Desdemona, we are never wholly released from the truth of Castelvetro's diagnosis that we do not feel much compassion for him. A good modern example of such audience resistance to empathy with Othello is displayed in T. S. Eliot's essay on the play with its notorious hostility to the rhetoric of Othello's final attempts at self-judgment, followed by his self-exculpatory execution of an appropriate death sentence on himself. This further violent action only seems to reinforce a sense of excessively negative feeling.

However, we might possibly see it as a positive conclusion if we accept Castelvetro's idea of "tragedy with a happy ending" in which "often for greater satisfaction and better instruction of those who listen, they who are the cause of disturbing events, by which the persons of ordinary goodness have been afflicted, are made to die or suffer great ills" (Gilbert, 257). If this interpretation proves valid about how the audience may feel when it leaves a performance of Othello , then perhaps it is not a tragedy in Aristotle's pessimistic vein, after all, but of the secondary kind in which the committers of evil are properly punished and society gains the potentially wiser leadership of a well-meaning Cassio, who is resilient enough to survive his own humiliations.

Othello's own self-punitive verdict against the effects of destructive entropy overlaps with the modern theatre's concern with type-casting in which paradoxes of judgment have evolved. One is the supposed preferability of race- and gender-neutral casting. A version of the latter deliberately reverses the involuntary "boy playing a girl" which convention imposed on Elizabethan players. So that we voluntarily exploit its opposite: a female Falstaff, Richard II, Hamlet, Lear, or Prospero. This reversed impersonation of men by women from Sarah Bernhardt to Fiona Shaw has often proved physically and vocally far less plausible and successful, according to some reviewers, than what we hear of boys' impersonation of young women, from Pepys' praise of Kynaston down to Edith Evans' enthusiasm for the Katherina Minola of Lawrence Olivier. Modern, politically correct, feminist-reinforced casting contrasts bizarrely with the other modern tendency to cast Shylock and Othello from actors with the same ethnic character as the roles (as in Peter Hall's use of Dustin Hoffman in The Merchant of Venice , mentioned earlier), presumably because other races' mimicry of ethnic traits might seem too condescending. After Nonso Anozie had played Othello in Cheek by Jowl's Othello of 2004, he wrote "I am black, so I have, for free, all of those things that white actors had to spend time working on before getting to grips with the story of the play and Othello's relationships with the other characters, and I suspect that this made me a less apparently narcissistic or self-regarding Othello than the anxiously make-up-covered creature offered by some of my white predecessors" (Dobson, 89).

However, Anozie also accepts that Elizabethan society diverges radically from ours (88). The irony is that such race-consistent casting invites non-aesthetic identification with the actors as true representatives of historical victims in our modern world, which is potentially at odds with an earlier author's possibly more objective intent, as with Shylock, perhaps, to display the tragic fact that racism may distort any victim's own behavior into viciousness, or alternatively (as in Othello's case) to display in a character's outward race what is a more universal failing. Just as we might be less troubled by Petruchio's treatment of Katherina if we have just seen in the Induction how she is acted by a lively boy, so we might identify less with the emotional extravagance of Othello if we know he is not acted by an actual victim of racism against persons of African descent such as Ira Aldridge or Paul Robeson. Similarly, Kozintsev's fragile Lear to the contrary, King Lear should not be played (indeed cannot be, if he is to carry the dead weight of Cordelia) by anyone close to being an octogenarian, thus avoiding the involuntary sympathy for age which might compromise our detachment from Lear's hysteria. We need to defer our sympathy until when he transcends such ageism. Entropy is never admirable, even in the spectacular but wasteful energies of Victorian steam engines, which Turner and the Impressionists so vividly illustrated in their paintings. Those memorable clouds of steam and smoke merely indicate misuse of power, and pollution of the landscape.

Another issue about the original casting of Othello arises from the divergence between Elizabethan and modern audience reactions to a female role such as Desdemona's. One basic concern is the discovery of the Elizabethan audiences' attitude to having boys play women's roles, something explored in the rebuilt Globe Theatre. Seventeenth-century Londoners were probably completely at ease with the convention, as Samuel Pepys revealed in describing a Cockpit Theatre performance of The Loyal Subject (by John Fletcher, Shakespeare's colleague), in which "one Kynaston, a boy, acted the Duke's sister, but made the loveliest lady I ever saw" (Halliday, 269). Such evidence is confirmed by our most recent discoveries at the rebuilt Globe Theatre. Reviewing the implications of stage experience at the third Globe Pauline Kiernan in Staging Shakespeare at the New Globe has noted how recently "studies have focused on what is perceived to have been the homoeroticism of the boy actor in the original staging of the plays when women were forbidden from acting on a public stage in England" (55). Putting on one side the more specialized minority reaction that sees boys in themselves as objects of sexual excitement on or off stage, it appears that most Elizabethans did not see boys in female costume on stage as primarily exciting on homosexual grounds, or even as disturbing challenges to sexual identity (despite the claims of militant Puritans). Such responses reflect primarily on late-twentieth-century anxiety about gender, in contrast to earlier treatments of the cross-gender youth of Achilles, or Hercules with Omphale, or the female costume of the heroes in Sidney's Arcadia , etc.

Fortunately, as Kiernan notes, the normal heterosexual response has been effectively validated by Toby Cockerell in the role of Princess Katherine in the Henry V at the rebuilt Globe (1997), in which the pathos of the Princess's situation as a prize of war was not deflected through homosexual responses but heightened by the male actor's obvious sympathies with his role's feminine anxieties. His awareness helped us to perceive the persona's tension between political constraint, social propriety, and the historical original's compulsive sexual attraction to King Henry. The latter circumstance is often ignored as a subtext of the script, despite Shakespeare's explicit recognition of it (3.5.27-31) just after the princess has eagerly set about appreciating the sexual overtones of English (3.4). Like his Renaissance predecessors, Toby Cockerell demonstrated his understanding so well that, like Kynaston, he was courted offstage, not by gay men but by nubile women, in a triumph for the sensitive heterosexual. Kiernan concludes "from the experience of seeing a young man in the part of Katherine in Henry V , it would seem that some recent scholarship's evidence on the homoerotic effects on the original audience (apparently taking its cue from certain anti-theatrical pamphleteers of the period, who railed against the provocative effects on male playgoers of boys dressed up as women on the public stage) may have to be reassessed" (55). In this matter there seems to be a considerable divide in responses between modern theorists on one hand and both Elizabethan and modern popular audiences on the other. Lope de Vega would argue that drama critics should recognize the authority of the latter more than that of the former.

In this context we must question the current feminist hostility to Desdemona's "servile" devotion to Othello as necessarily invited by a possible exaggerated feminization of the role by a boy actor. Just as a non-Jew playing Shylock with exaggerated "Jewishness" might be considered offensive by a modern audience, so a boy playing a woman contemptibly would surely offend the substantial female element in Shakespeare's audience, of which we know he was intensely aware because of his epilogues to As You Like It and All Is True , both of which address women in the audience directly as decisive influences on its response to a performance. A similar recognition of them comes in Celia's bitter denunciation of just such misconduct by the boy playing Rosalind in her misogynistic exposition of female wiles to Orlando: "You have simply misus'd our sex in your love-prate. We must have your doublet and hose pluck'd over your heads, and show what the bird has done to her own sex" (4.1.200-3). The reference to stripping indicates that the audience is being reminded that it is a boy actor who has spoken lines against women and is thus a tainted authority.

In his development of Desdemona's presentation, Shakespeare ultimately requires the boy actor to express her boldness, courage, and independence, but only through the veil of her initial conventional femininity. Lope de Vega is very firm about establishing decorum in initiating women's roles: "Let ladies be in keeping with their character" (246). As with so many other Shakespearean women, Desdemona's role requires this creation of a plausible female posture, which is then modified by a heroic but modestly expressed autonomy of judgment. Whether we talk of Rosalind, Cordelia, Imogen or Hermione, we must observe in the staging of each a deliberate progression from propriety to enforced and highly reluctant rebellion. It is this paradox which makes Shakespeare's female roles so vital and attractive to women in seventeenth-century audiences (as reflected throughout the pages of The Shakespeare Allusion–Book ): there is a continuous tension between a boy actor's efforts to evoke a conventional feminine manner, while allowing for an unexpected bold autonomy to subvert it. Desdemona's behavior illustrates this fascinating paradox throughout: she carries her commitments beyond the bounds of plausibility, as her father Brabantio establishes for us:

A maiden never bold, Of a spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blush'd at herself: and she, in spite of nature, Of years, of country, credit, every thing, To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on! It is a judgment maim'd, and most imperfect, That will confess perfection so could err Against all rules of nature, and must be driven To find out practices of cunning hell Why this should be. I therefore vouch again That with some mixtures pow'rful o'er the blood, Or with some dram (conjur'd to this effect) He wrought upon her. (1.3.94-106)

These lines amount to authorial directions for the boy actor: that he should perfect his attractively feminine presentation (as illustrated by Pepys' view of Kynaston) as a foil to a subsequent and surprising negation of it. Shakespeare continues to ensure audience attention to his female characters from moment to moment by doing precisely as Lope de Vega specified: defying audience expectations by such abrupt divergences from a successful impersonation of traditional femininity to something more akin to a masculine manner instinctive to the boy actor. This switch is often corroborated by adoption of masculine attire, which Lope also considers a provocative device for female roles. From such a desire to subvert expectations we owe Desdemona's temporary recovery from asphyxiation only to proclaim herself guilty of her own death, before dying definitively. The boy actor has simply to enunciate the concise statement to astound the audience, just as does Cordelia's abrupt refusal to flatter Lear, or Lady Macbeth's assertion that she could dash out her child's brains. Such unpredictable statements can only have their intended shock-effect on the audience in a contrasting context of absolutely plausible femininity. "Camping" of the roles by modern males cast as Shakespeare's women may amuse some critics, but it falsifies the planned impact of the scripts.

Like Lope de Vega, Shakespeare keeps his audiences in suspense by this kind of reverse psychology. There may even be re-reversals, with consequent further subversive effects, as in Kate's final speech in The Taming of the Shrew (5.2.136-79). After outwitting Petruchio at his own game of mock-dogmatism on the road to Padua (4.5), she now effortlessly and irresistibly dominates the wedding party while modestly professing submissiveness, a delicious irony not always recognized by feminists. Reversing the customary progression, Katherina evolves from being violently unfeminine to the decorum prescribed by Lope, but even this reversal is covered by another of his prescriptions: as Lope asserts, "sometimes what is contrary to correctness for that very reason pleases the taste" (548). The repentance of Edmund in King Lear is another provocative case in point, which so offends modern expectations that it is often cut by directors, such as Peter Brook in his film, as just too shocking for modern sensibilities to bear. Such reversals of expectation are essential to theatrical effect of Lope's new art of writing plays and provide a challenge to academic critics sharing Sidney's preference for boring consistency of tone and situation in The Defence of Poetry . Lope and Cinthio justify Shakespeare's calculated inconsistencies in their defense of the melodramatic reversals characteristic of their preferred mode of tragicomedy, or Aristotle's "tragedy with a happy ending." In Othello this "happy conclusion" may hardly seem to be the case to those who empathize more deeply with Othello than the "new art" of drama might propose, but at the play's end the various characters' misapprehensions have been disentangled and not only is the evil genius of the play identified and secured, but the relatively innocent Cassio recovers his status, if only after a sobering experience which may plausibly make him likely to succeed better than Othello as the new governor of Cyprus. His limitations have been driven home to him so painfully, but he has survived them in a way characteristic of double-ending tragedy, but less so of Aristotle's preferred mode which normally leaves us simply with a sense of "waste" as A. C. Bradley has described it. This survival of a chastened new leader is a recurring feature of Shakespearean tragedy which is usually ignored or undervalued by critics. Cassio is a figure matching Fortinbras, Malcolm, Edgar, and above all Octavius, as figures encouraging the audience to look hopefully beyond the end of each play, with a sharpened awareness of what might or historically did occur after events in the play's ending. This positive factor is generally recognized in the endings of Lope's drama, and a deeper investigation of their affinities may serve to modify our responses to Shakespeare's drama. At least it offers an option not to send the audience home in quite so depressed a state of mind.

Obviously, an exhaustive examination of the audience affect in every scene of Othello is scarcely needed once the broad pattern of calculated discontinuity is recognized. The driving force behind the action and characterization in Shakespearean dramas is not psychological consistency but audience reaction: this principle of pure expediency creates a nexus of seeming complexity for which critics are duly grateful as an opportunity to create elaborate rationalizations: religious, Freudian, existentialist, or whatever. The best one can say in this line of rationalization of expedient effects may be merely that human nature itself is not consistent and that, by ignoring Aristotelian probability, writers like Lope de Vega and Shakespeare accidentally come closer to our uncertainty about personal identity in "real" life. This is certainly why it was with Shakespeare that Erving Goffman began his studies culminating in his seminal work The Presentation of Personality in Everyday Life , in which he stresses the discontinuities in every person's social behavior. That behavior is largely dictated by anticipated audience response in terms of each group one finds oneself addressing, a fact which even teachers like myself find it essential to recognize. All such performances, whether within or outside the theatre, depend on accurate anticipation of audience response, but this may be so unpredictable that it can only be determined in the event, as Antony Sher discovered in his first performance in a Shakespearean production, of Richard III , a play which he only began to understand after he could observe live audience reactions. He found that, in terms of preparation and rehearsal, "previews are almost the most valuable in the whole process. The audience teaching us what does and doesn't work" ( The Year of the King , 240). By this criterion the modern fashion of excessive rehearsal is self-defeating. Over-direction may result in locking in a rigid conditioning of actors that may well defy the audience's interactive role, in contrast to the near-improvisation typical of Elizabethan production of scripts, which ensures responsiveness to audience input.

An overall interpretation of Othello in terms of audience reactions may well conclude that Iago should be seen as the dominant role, with Othello seen as always responsive to Iago's initiatives, of which the audience shares the knowledge. This awareness probably invites audience identification with Iago rather than with Othello, whose knowledge we always exceed, and whose misguided reactions prove too predictable for sympathy. His death as a murderer falls into place in Aristotle's lesser form of tragedy, in which a deserved penalty is imposed, as Othello himself decides in his own case after his excessively puritanical reactions. In this he is unlike Lear, who comes to the point of ridiculing the idea that one should "Die for adultery? No" (4.6.111). In similar contrast to Othello, Desdemona is consistently challenging to our impression of a conventional woman, because she transcends prediction from the moment she gives precedence to Othello in her life. She flirts with Iago and Cassio in a way which has permitted some directors to suggest she is merely promiscuous, interferes with Othello's professional concerns as if she were his equal, identifies his failings without manipulating them to her advantage, and acquiesces in the unfair penalties inflicted by her own choices. Like Juliet, her tragedy lies in her generous acceptance of an impressively idealistic lover, without the skill to temper him with which Shakespeare endows comic heroines such as Rosalind, Portia, and Helena. If this view of Othello seems cavalier, I will venture only to recall that the hero's limitations have been just as severely censured by T. S. Eliot in his essay on the play. My difference with him is that he says nothing of the black humor of Iago which enlivens this play as much as Richard of Gloucester does Richard III, and that sardonic element balances the self-destructive entropy which attracts many bravura actors to the title role. The play's ending liberates its society of both negative factors, leaving at least the plausible option of an imaginative world properly purged of emotional excess.

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Kolin, Philip C., ed. 2002. "Othello": New Critical Essays . New York and London: Routledge.

Rosenberg, Marvin. 1961. The Masks of Othello . Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

Sacks, Sheldon. 1964. Fiction and the Shape of Belief . Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

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Tragic Villain

Iago is the tragic villain of the play. His actions throughout cause destruction and tragedy. He manipulates Othello into believing that Desdemona is unfaithful and through this action it leads to the death of Othello, Desdemona, Roderigo and even his wife Emilia. Part of Iago’s skill lies in the way that he can recognise the weaknesses in the other characters in order to manipulate them for his own purpose. He says of Othello that he is of a “free and open nature” so that he will be “led by the nose”. In Cassio, he recognises his friendliness in his relationship with women and realises that he can utilise that in his plans. Iago is so successful in his deception that other characters refer to him as “honest Iago”. While very skilful at being the puppet master it can be argued that his plans are opportunist, often seeming to decide on his actions as he goes. Coleridge argued that Iago lacks any clear motive, although Iago does state that he feels he has been overlooked for promotion and he also believes that Othello and Cassio have had relationships with his wife. While his plans are eventually uncovered Iago never confesses and is still living at the end of the play.

While there are some possible motives for Iago’s actions such as Cassio being promoted as lieutenant over him and his belief that Othello has “done my office” suggesting he thinks Othello has slept with his wife Emilia, many believe that his behaviour is a consequence of him being purely evil. The possible motives are never pursued by Iago and they alter as the play progresses, casting doubt on whether they are true. Even when Iago has broken Othello, so attained revenge, he does not stop and tells Othello to “strangle” Desdemona, a completely innocent character. The way he murders his wife at the end of the play adds to the idea of his evil. He has used her to attain the handkerchief but is willing to dispatch with her without thought. Furthermore, it seems that Iago has enjoyed his scheming and seeing the suffering of those he has manipulated and it is this that really reinforces the evilness of his character.

Mahiavelli (1469-1527) was an Italian philosopher who wrote about power and how people attain it. His book discusses the idea that in order to be successful you should do whatever it takes as the end justifies the means. While it is not clear that Machiavelli advocated such behaviour, these ideas do seem to be evident in Shakespeare’s portrayal of Iago. Iago will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He shows no remorse for his actions and indeed, often seems to be enjoying the suffering that he causes. His soliloquies are evidence of his Machiavellian behaviour as they set out his plans and what he wants to achieve with no care of the consequences for others.

Manipulator

Iago is a highly skilful manipulator and this is most clearly seen in Act III scene iii. Othello states that he will not be jealous as “to be once in doubt/ Is once to be resolved” and yet by the end of the scene he swears to “tear her all to pieces” because of her infidelity. Iago has managed to take control of Othello and admired General and to convince him of an untruth. Much of this manipulation is through suggestion. Iago reminds Othello that Desdemona deceived her father thus creating doubts about her reliability. Shakespeare shows Iago’s skill in the way he often does not make statements that are obvious to his victims but are subtle so that the characters themselves create the images and ideas that will destroy them. Iago says to Othello in a seemingly innocent way that he did not know Cassio knew Desdemona. It is this that starts to play on Othello’s mind and from here Iago feeds Othello with ideas that cause him to be consumed by jealousy. Iago not only manipulates Othello but all those around him, including his wife. His manipulation of Roderigo, while often creating humour also illustrates Iago’s power. Roderigo stand no chance of being allied with Desdemona and yet Iago manipulates him so that he given Iago his money, starts a fight and attempts to kill Cassio. What is also clever is the way that Shakespeare has made the audience co-conspirators. Through the asides and the soliloquies we here about the plans so that be the end of the play we too feel some sense of responsibility for the deaths that have ensued.

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Othello: iago critics, othello: critical views, macbeth act i key quotes and explanations.

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Iago In Othello - Critical Analysis.

Iago In Othello – Critical Analysis

Shakespeare's Iago is one of Shakespeare's most complex villains. At first glance Iago's character seems to be pure evil. However, such a villain would distract from the impact of the play and would be trite. Shakespeare to add depth to his villain makes him amoral, as opposed to the typical immoral villain. Iago's entire scheme begins when the "ignorant, ill-suited" Cassio is given the position he desired. Iago is consumed with envy and plots to steal the position he feels he most justly deserves. Iago deceives, steals, and kills to gain that position. However, it is not that Iago pushes aside his conscience to commit these acts, but that he lacks conscience to begin with. Iago's amorality can be seen throughout the play and is demonstrated by his actions.

For someone to constantly lie and deceive one's wife and friends, one must be extremely evil or, in the case of Iago, amoral.

In every scene in which Iago speaks one can point out his deceptive manner. Iago tricks Othello into believing that his own wife is having an affair, without any concrete proof. Othello is so caught up in Iago's lies that he refuses to believe Desdemona when she denies the whole thing. Much credit must be given to Iago's diabolical ability which enables him to bend and twist the supple minds of his friends and spouse. In today's society Iago would be called a psychopath without a conscience not the devil incarnate.

Iago also manages to steal from his own friend without the slightest feeling of guilt. He embezzles the money that Roderigo gives him to win over Desdemona. When Roderigo discovers that Iago has been hoarding his money he screams at Iago and threatens him. However, when Iago tells him some fanciful plot in order to capture Desdemona's heart Roderigo forgets Iago's theft and agrees to kill Cassio. Iago's keen intellect is what intrigues the reader most. His ability to say the right things at the right time is what makes him such a successful villain. However, someone with a conscience would never be able to keep up such a ploy and deceive everyone around him. This is why it is necessary to say that Iago is amoral, because if you don't his character becomes fictional and hard to believe.

At the climactic ending of the play, Iago's plot is given away to Othello by his own wife, Emilia. Iago sees his wife as an obstacle and a nuisance so he kills her. He kills her not as much out of anger but for pragmatic reasons. Emilia is a stumbling block in front of his path. She serves no purpose to him anymore and she can now only hurt his chances of keeping the position he has been given by Othello. Iago's merciless taking of Emilia's and Roderigo's lives is another proof of his amorality.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Iago’s character became a focal point of discussion for many critics as they argued weather Iago was pure evil or just a complex amoral villain. The famous phrase, "The motive-hunting of motiveless Malignity," occurs in a note Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in his copy of Shakespeare, as he was preparing a series of lectures delivered in the winter of 1818-1819. The note concerns the end of Act 1, Scene 3 of Othello, in which Iago takes leave of Rodrigo, saying, "Go to, farewell. Put money enough in your purse," and then delivers the soliloquy beginning "Thus do I ever make my fool my purse." Here is Coleridge's note:

The triumph! again, put money after the effect has been fully produced. -- The last Speech, the motive-hunting of motiveless Malignity -- how awful! In itself fiendish -- while yet he was allowed to bear the divine image, too fiendish for his own steady View. -- A being next to Devil -- only not quite Devil -- & this Shakespeare has attempted -- executed -- without disgust, without Scandal! -- (Lectures 1808-1819 On Literature 2: 315)

Coleridge's phrase is often taken to mean that Iago has no real motive and does evil only because he is evil. This is not far from what Coleridge meant, but he almost certainly wasn't using the word "motive" in the same way as it's now used. We use it to mean "an emotion, desire, physiological need, or similar impulse that acts as an incitement to action" ("Motive"). This definition equates "motive" and "impulse"; Coleridge, however, thought the two quite different. He makes this distinction in an entry he wrote for Omniana, a collection of sayings assembled by his friend Robert Southey and published in 1812. Here is what Coleridge wrote:

It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortunately of comparative indifference, to determine what a man's motive may have been for this or that particular action. Rather seek to learn what his objects in general are! -- What does he habitually wish? habitually pursue? -- and thence deduce his impulses, which are commonly the true efficient causes of men's conduct; and without which the motive itself would not have become a motive.

Thus Coleridge asserts that Iago's motives were spawned from his, keen sense of his intellectual superiority and his love of exerting power. And so Iago's malignity is "motiveless" because his motives (in Coleridge's sense) - being passed over for promotion, his suspicion that Othello is having an affair with his wife, and the suspicion that Cassio is also having an affair with Emilia - are merely rationalizations.

If we take a closer a closer look at Iago’s motives, we might be able to better fathom Coleridge’s assumptions.

One of the underlining issues in Othello is the racist attitude towards coloured people. Although there are lots of things to suggest this is a racist play I don't think that racism actually dominates the play, even though it has a racist theme. There is a romantic union between black and white which gets destroyed because most people think the relationship is wrong. At the time the play was written, 1604, even the Queen of England was racist so there must have been a strong hatred of blacks around that time. Most racist comments in the play are said by people that are angry or upset. For example, when Emilia found out that Othello had killed Desdemona she was extremely mad and she called Othello a Blacker devil, this was the only time in the play that she says anything racist towards Othello. The main characters that have racist attitudes are Iago, Brabantio and Roderigo, with the hatred of Othello as the basis for their racist actions and comments. Iago is the most racist character in the book as his hatred for Othello spans right from the start. What sparks off Iago's hate towards him is the fact that when Othello chose his lieutenant, it was Cassio who was chosen instead of Iago. What made Iago angry was the fact that Cassio had no experience in war when he did and Cassio was chosen instead of him. Iago does not say anything racist to Othello's face but he has a lot to say against him behind his back. He schemes to destroy Othello and anything in his way including Cassio and Desdemona.

Iago has a lot of self esteem and he often conveys this whilst talking to Roderigo. In order to prove to Roderigo that he hates Othello, Iago tells the story of how he got passed over for promotion to lieutenant. He comments, . Later in the same scene, still explaining his hatred of Othello, Iago praises those who serve their masters only for their own purposes. He says that they . We would call such persons embezzlers, but Iago sees them in another light:

When Roderigo tells Iago that he will drown himself because he can't have Desdemona, Iago tells him to have some self-respect, and says of himself, . A "guinea-hen" is a showy bird with fine feathers or in our sense a ‘cunning female’. However, after Roderigo has left, Iago tells us that Roderigo is not entitled to any self-respect, . A snipe is a bird notorious for its flightiness and its tendency to run right into traps. Clearly, Iago considers himself vastly superior to Roderigo.

Enlivened by such other significant topics as contemporary racism, the uses of verbal and psychological poison, the changing roles of women, the lust for revenge, images of foreignness, the tempest on sea and in Othello's mind, the isolation of an island universe, the reversion to brutish behavior, and the ironic importance of the handkerchief, Shakespeare's play takes us on a geographic and psychological journey into the wilderness of the human heart. If we truly give ourselves over to the mystical experience of theatre, we can become one with Othello—navigating through the landscape of the play, alternately seduced by good and evil—and thereby change the world we live in as it inevitably changes us.

Document Details

Word Count 1615
Page Count 4
Subject English

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Critical Analysis of the Characters Othello and Iago in the Play " Othello " by William Shakespeare

The basic purpose of the study is the character analysis of Othello and Iago in the play Othello by William Shakespeare.Although Othello has regularly been praised as William Shakespeare's most cohesive tragedy, many critics have discovered the primary person, Othello, to be the most unheroic of Shakespeare's heroes.More so than in every other Shakespeare's play, one individual, Iago, is the stage supervisor of the entire action of the play. Once he decided to destroy Othello, he proceeds by plotting and through inference to gain his goal. He tells others just what he desires them to understand, sets one character against any other, and develops an elaborate web of circumstantial to target Othello.The researchers have tried their level best to show readers that, either Iago is responsible for this tragedy or Othello himself has some tragic flaws. The methodology used in this research was qualitative. Both the characters, Othello and Iago, are universal characters with some fatal flaw, fate or external forces driving them. This play tried to investigate that how particular choices made by the men lead to their tragic end.

Related Papers

International Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies [IJCLTS]

Bilal Hamamra

This paper follows the critical lines of feminism and psychoanalysis to argue that Othello is a conflict between female characters' moral voices and male figures' treacherous voices. Drawing on the concepts of Jungian and Freudian psychoanalysis, I argue that the association of female speech and silence with sexuality is a projection of misogynist and racist discourses. I read Iago's projection of his evil onto Othello as a verbal intercourse of homosexuality. The cause of tragedy emanates from the fact that Othello weds his shadow, Iago and ignores his anima, Desdemona. While the verbal marriage between Othello and Iago results in Othello's accusation of Desdemona of being a whore, I argue that Desdemona escapes this category because a boy actor impersonates her physically and vocally. I argue that Othello stages for audiences in contemporary Palestine male figures' deafness to feminist views. While Othello's marriage to Desdemona symbolizes his integration into Venetian society, his murder of Desdemona signals the loss of his heroic identity and the dissolution of his link to Venice. In contrast, killing the supposedly aggressive female figures in Palestine marks the public respect of the killer. Furthermore, I use the romance of Antar (525-608) as a Palestinian literary intertext to scrutinize the significance of female figures in constructing male figures' heroic identity and the racial discourse that the Romance of Antar and Othello embodies.

Ketlyn Mara Rosa , Janaina Mirian Rosa

The aim of this article is to compare and contrast the portrayal of the temptation scene in both Orson Welles’s film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello (1952) and Folias d’Arte’s theatrical production of the same play, which premiered in 2003 in São Paulo, in order to identify and analyze the depiction of Iago’s manipulative schemes towards Othello. The temptation scene is considered a crucial moment in the play in which Iago cleverly gathers all his strength as a strategist to influence Othello’s mind with the idea that Desdemona is betraying him with Cassio−and Iago achieves such obstinate goal.

Lisa Hopkins

David Malik

Uri Berliner, NPR editor who criticized the network of liberal bias, says he's resigning

By Aimee Picchi

Edited By Anne Marie Lee

April 17, 2024 / 12:21 PM EDT / CBS News

Uri Berliner, a senior editor at National Public Radio who had been suspended from his job after claiming the network had "lost America's trust" by pushing progressive views while suppressing dissenting opinions, said he is resigning from the broadcaster.

"I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years," Berliner wrote in his resignation letter to NPR CEO Katherine Maher, and which he posted in part on X, the former Twitter. "I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay."

My resignation letter to NPR CEO @krmaher pic.twitter.com/0hafVbcZAK — Uri Berliner (@uberliner) April 17, 2024

Berliner's resignation comes eight days after he published an essay in the Free Press that caused a firestorm of debate with his allegations that NPR was suppressing dissenting voices. In response to his critique, some conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, called on the government to "defund" the organization.

Maher, who became NPR's CEO in March, wrote a staff memo a few days after publication of Berliner's essay addressing his criticisms of the organization's editorial process. Among Berliner's claims are that NPR is failing to consider other viewpoints and that it is fixated on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

"Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful and demeaning," Maher wrote.

Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues also took issue with the essay, with "Morning Edition" host Steve Inskeep writing on his Substack that the article was "filled with errors and omissions."

"The errors do make NPR look bad, because it's embarrassing that an NPR journalist would make so many," Inskeep wrote.

Berliner's suspension, which occurred Friday, was reported by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. NPR declined to comment to CBS News about Berliner's resignation. "NPR does not comment on individual personnel matters," a spokesperson said.

Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.

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Guest Essay

I Thought the Bragg Case Against Trump Was a Legal Embarrassment. Now I Think It’s a Historic Mistake.

A black-and-white photo with a camera in the foreground and mid-ground and a building in the background.

By Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Mr. Shugerman is a law professor at Boston University.

About a year ago, when Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, indicted former President Donald Trump, I was critical of the case and called it an embarrassment. I thought an array of legal problems would and should lead to long delays in federal courts.

After listening to Monday’s opening statement by prosecutors, I still think the district attorney has made a historic mistake. Their vague allegation about “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” has me more concerned than ever about their unprecedented use of state law and their persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud.

To recap: Mr. Trump is accused in the case of falsifying business records. Those are misdemeanor charges. To elevate it to a criminal case, Mr. Bragg and his team have pointed to potential violations of federal election law and state tax fraud. They also cite state election law, but state statutory definitions of “public office” seem to limit those statutes to state and local races.

Both the misdemeanor and felony charges require that the defendant made the false record with “intent to defraud.” A year ago, I wondered how entirely internal business records (the daily ledger, pay stubs and invoices) could be the basis of any fraud if they are not shared with anyone outside the business. I suggested that the real fraud was Mr. Trump’s filing an (allegedly) false report to the Federal Election Commission, and that only federal prosecutors had jurisdiction over that filing.

A recent conversation with Jeffrey Cohen, a friend, Boston College law professor and former prosecutor, made me think that the case could turn out to be more legitimate than I had originally thought. The reason has to do with those allegedly falsified business records: Most of them were entered in early 2017, generally before Mr. Trump filed his Federal Election Commission report that summer. Mr. Trump may have foreseen an investigation into his campaign, leading to its financial records. He may have falsely recorded these internal records before the F.E.C. filing as consciously part of the same fraud: to create a consistent paper trail and to hide intent to violate federal election laws, or defraud the F.E.C.

In short: It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up.

Looking at the case in this way might address concerns about state jurisdiction. In this scenario, Mr. Trump arguably intended to deceive state investigators, too. State investigators could find these inconsistencies and alert federal agencies. Prosecutors could argue that New York State agencies have an interest in detecting conspiracies to defraud federal entities; they might also have a plausible answer to significant questions about whether New York State has jurisdiction or whether this stretch of a state business filing law is pre-empted by federal law.

However, this explanation is a novel interpretation with many significant legal problems. And none of the Manhattan district attorney’s filings or today’s opening statement even hint at this approach.

Instead of a theory of defrauding state regulators, Mr. Bragg has adopted a weak theory of “election interference,” and Justice Juan Merchan described the case , in his summary of it during jury selection, as an allegation of falsifying business records “to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 election.”

As a reality check: It is legal for a candidate to pay for a nondisclosure agreement. Hush money is unseemly, but it is legal. The election law scholar Richard Hasen rightly observed , “Calling it election interference actually cheapens the term and undermines the deadly serious charges in the real election interference cases.”

In Monday’s opening argument, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo still evaded specifics about what was illegal about influencing an election, but then he claimed , “It was election fraud, pure and simple.” None of the relevant state or federal statutes refer to filing violations as fraud. Calling it “election fraud” is a legal and strategic mistake, exaggerating the case and setting up the jury with high expectations that the prosecutors cannot meet.

The most accurate description of this criminal case is a federal campaign finance filing violation. Without a federal violation (which the state election statute is tethered to), Mr. Bragg cannot upgrade the misdemeanor counts into felonies. Moreover, it is unclear how this case would even fulfill the misdemeanor requirement of “intent to defraud” without the federal crime.

In stretching jurisdiction and trying a federal crime in state court, the Manhattan district attorney is now pushing untested legal interpretations and applications. I see three red flags raising concerns about selective prosecution upon appeal.

First, I could find no previous case of any state prosecutor relying on the Federal Election Campaign Act either as a direct crime or a predicate crime. Whether state prosecutors have avoided doing so as a matter of law, norms or lack of expertise, this novel attempt is a sign of overreach.

Second, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the New York statute requires that the predicate (underlying) crime must also be a New York crime, not a crime in another jurisdiction. The district attorney responded with judicial precedents only about other criminal statutes, not the statute in this case. In the end, the prosecutors could not cite a single judicial interpretation of this particular statute supporting their use of the statute (a plea deal and a single jury instruction do not count).

Third, no New York precedent has allowed an interpretation of defrauding the general public. Legal experts have noted that such a broad “election interference” theory is unprecedented, and a conviction based on it may not survive a state appeal.

Mr. Trump’s legal team also undercut itself for its decisions in the past year: His lawyers essentially put all of their eggs in the meritless basket of seeking to move the trial to federal court, instead of seeking a federal injunction to stop the trial entirely. If they had raised the issues of selective or vindictive prosecution and a mix of jurisdictional, pre-emption and constitutional claims, they could have delayed the trial past Election Day, even if they lost at each federal stage.

Another reason a federal crime has wound up in state court is that President Biden’s Justice Department bent over backward not to reopen this valid case or appoint a special counsel. Mr. Trump has tried to blame Mr. Biden for this prosecution as the real “election interference.” The Biden administration’s extra restraint belies this allegation and deserves more credit.

Eight years after the alleged crime itself, it is reasonable to ask if this is more about Manhattan politics than New York law. This case should serve as a cautionary tale about broader prosecutorial abuses in America — and promote bipartisan reforms of our partisan prosecutorial system.

Nevertheless, prosecutors should have some latitude to develop their case during trial, and maybe they will be more careful and precise about the underlying crime, fraud and the jurisdictional questions. Mr. Trump has received sufficient notice of the charges, and he can raise his arguments on appeal. One important principle of “ our Federalism ,” in the Supreme Court’s terms, is abstention , that federal courts should generally allow state trials to proceed first and wait to hear challenges later.

This case is still an embarrassment, in terms of prosecutorial ethics and apparent selectivity. Nevertheless, each side should have its day in court. If convicted, Mr. Trump can fight many other days — and perhaps win — in appellate courts. But if Monday’s opening is a preview of exaggerated allegations, imprecise legal theories and persistently unaddressed problems, the prosecutors might not win a conviction at all.

Jed Handelsman Shugerman (@jedshug) is a law professor at Boston University.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

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COMMENTS

Iago's Alter Ego: Race as Projection in Othello
I, I, I: Iago's name unfolds from the Italian io, Latin ego; and the injured "I" is his signature, the ground of his being and the ground, I will argue, of the play. For Iago calls up the action ...
Iago
Iago is a man with an obsession for control and power over others who has let this obsession take over his whole life. Necessity forces his hand, and, in order to destroy Othello, he must also destroy Roderigo, Emilia, Desdemona, and ultimately himself. The one man who survived Iago's attempt to kill him, Cassio, is the only major character ...
Othello The Humiliation of Iago
Othello's reply—"Good, good; the justice of it pleases"—responds to only one dimension of Iago's twisted symbolic logic, by seeing in the proposed site for Desdemona's death the "justice" of a punishment that fits the crime. 14 But in the terms we are pursuing here, the Iago's proposal reveals further resonances.
Iago, Othello: A Character Analysis Of Iago ️
Iago, Othello. Iago is a character in Shakespeare's play, Othello. He is a senior officer in the Venetian army under the command of its general, Othello. Iago is very popular among the characters in the play. He is valued for his loyalty and there is a consensus that he is very honest and straightforward and, in fact, he is repeatedly greeted ...
Critical interpretations Nineteenth- and twentieth-century views
Critical interpretations Nineteenth- and twentieth-century views LanKS/Shutterstock. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Coleridge offered a view of Iago's characterisation that has been influential. He argued that Iago is 'A being next to the devil', driven by 'motiveless malignity'. Coleridge suggests that Iago operates ...
Othello Iago
Critical Essays Sample Essay Outlines Criticism ... Iago is a soldier with a good deal of experience in battle, having been on the field with Othello at both Rhodes and Cyprus. He is also one of ...
Iago Character Analysis in Othello
Iago Character Analysis. Possibly the most heinous villain in Shakespeare, Iago is fascinating for his most terrible characteristic: his utter lack of convincing motivation for his actions. In the first scene, he claims to be angry at Othello for having passed him over for the position of lieutenant (I.i. 7-32 ).
Characterisation Iago Othello: Advanced
Characterisation Iago. Iago is a compelling and sophisticated villain. He is part vice, part Machiavel and like Shakespeare's Richard III, seems to be inherently evil. Iago revels in his ability to dissemble and destroy. But while Iago to some extent enjoys having an audience (Roderigo) and outlines his plots clearly, he is also rather mysterious and unfathomable, especially when he refuses ...
Love and Desire; Power and Control: An Analysis Of Othello's Iago
Note that Sedgwick describes the critical role that women play in the homosocial network among men. Some of her commentary in that regard could help clarify how Iago uses her to get to Othello. This might also help integrate the essay's two parts (on love and on Iago's movements); the relationship between the two is left largely implicit.
Iago Character Introduction
Iago is "an unbeliever in, and denier of, all things spiritual, who only acknowledges God, like Satan, to defy him" (William Robertson Turnbull, Othello: A Critical Study, 269). Iago has no conscience, no ability to perform good deeds. Iago is a psychopath, and is not capable of forming affectionate relationships or feeling guilt and concern ...
An Analysis of Iago's Manipulation of Each of the Characters in Othello
The essay describes in detail Iago's manipulation of Cassio, Desdemona, Emilia, Roderigo, and Othello. From beginning to end Iago moves the characters of Othello as if they were chessmen. He uses their individual aspirations and passions to motivate them to whatever devious plan he desires. His adroit manipulation of those characters range from ...
"Othello": Iago's Audience
This strictly pathological episode is distanced by Iago's cold diagnosis of Othello's sickness. It is like Caesar's comparable deafness and epilepsy, which we perceive similarly as a fatal sign through Casca's critical eyes, as physical symptoms of the mental decline and loss of initiative which invite his assassination (Julius Caesar, 2.2.32-6 ...
Othello: Central Idea Essay
After all, his unfounded suspicion of his wife's adultery is what initially leads him to desire revenge against the men who have allegedly cuckolded him: Cassio and Othello. Iago admits as much in a covertly ironic statement he makes to Emilia in the final act. Referring to the wounding of Cassio and the near slaying of Roderigo, Iago asserts ...
Othello Critical Evaluation
Critical Evaluation. Although Othello has frequently been praised as William Shakespeare's most unified tragedy, many critics have found the central character to be the most unheroic of ...
PDF An Analysis of Power Desire of Iago in Shakespeare's Othello
William Shakespeare's Othello is a play loaded with controversy, deceit, and manipulation, and most of the action that we generated by the play's main manipulator, Iago. Critically, Iago's character interpreted, among many things, as a representation of the devil, motiveless and a cunning manipulator. Othello is the first serious black ...
Iago
Tragic Villain. Iago is the tragic villain of the play. His actions throughout cause destruction and tragedy. He manipulates Othello into believing that Desdemona is unfaithful and through this action it leads to the death of Othello, Desdemona, Roderigo and even his wife Emilia. Part of Iago's skill lies in the way that he can recognise the ...
OTHELLO: Iago critics
OTHELLO: Iago critics. E. Honigmann. [Iago] is anything but straightforward. S. Johnson. The character of Iago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised. C. Lamb. while we are reading any of [Shakespeare's] great criminal characters - we think not so much of the crimes which they commit, as of the ...
Character Analysis Of Iago In Othello English Literature Essay
Iago is the epitome of a conniving and evil character in a play. He is sly and quick witted, untrustworthy, and sexist (which is a counterproductive characteristic). He shows no sympathy after he blackmails people that trust him, and he spends the entirety of the play planning and executing their demise. He plays a crucial role in the play as ...
Iago In Othello
Iago In Othello - Critical Analysis. Shakespeare's Iago is one of Shakespeare's most complex villains. At first glance Iago's character seems to be pure evil. However, such a villain would distract from the impact of the play and would be trite. Shakespeare to add depth to his villain makes him amoral, as opposed to the typical immoral villain.
There Are Many Critical Interpretations of Iago's...
Iago shows great skill in manipulating the characters around him and in my mind is seen as the puppeteer of the rest of the characters. He uses indirect language and never actually. * Juliet McLauchlan 'Shakespeare: Othello' Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd, 1971.p32. Get Access.
Critical Analysis of the Characters Othello and Iago in the Play
The basic purpose of the study is the character analysis of Othello and Iago in the play Othello by William Shakespeare.Although Othello has regularly been praised as William Shakespeare's most cohesive tragedy, many critics have discovered the primary person, Othello, to be the most unheroic of Shakespeare's heroes.More so than in every other Shakespeare's play, one individual, Iago, is the ...
Othello Critical Essays
A. Iago tells Cassio he will keep Othello away as Michael Cassio speaks with Desdemona. B. Iago engages in conversation with Othello regarding his thoughts. C. Iago plants thoughts of jealousy in ...
Uri Berliner, NPR editor who criticized the network of liberal bias
Maher, who became NPR's CEO in March, wrote a staff memo a few days after publication of Berliner's essay addressing his criticisms of the organization's editorial process. Among Berliner's claims ...
Othello: Iago Quotes
Iago encourages Roderigo to believe that by participating in Iago's plot, he might have the chance to have an affair with Desdemona. He's done my office. (1.3.) This quote is one of the few moments where Iago explains his possible motivation for being obsessed with destroying Othello. He claims that there are rumors Othello has had an ...
Opinion
Mr. Shugerman is a law professor at Boston University. About a year ago, when Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, indicted former President Donald Trump, I was critical of the case and ...