Iago Flashcards
(6 cards)
How is Iago presented in Othello?
- he is the play’s antagonist
- his motivations are ambiguous, but jealousy/hatred are key
- he is brilliantly deceitful
- he is skilled at manipulation because he understands others
- he is misogynistic
Quotes to describe how Iago is the play’s antagonist
- He is evil “Hell and night/ must bring this monstrous birth to light” soliloquy in I,iii. (grotesque imagery - Christian audience)
- He exploits Roderigo without mercy “Thus do I make my fool my purse” soliloquy in I,iii. (the psychopathic way he sees people as objects). Kills him once he has done with him.
Quotes to describe how his motivations are ambiguous, but jealousy/hatred are key
His monologue I.i, 20 + Cassio was chosen over him for Othello’s lieutenant “mere prattle without practice is all his soldiership” - he derides civility and courtly manners - alliteration emphasizes his ridicule.
“I follow him to serve my turn on him” about Othello - wants revenge. Follow/turn - play on words
“I hate the Moor;/ that twixt my sheets/ He’s done my office” soliloquy in I,iii. (thinks in terms of sex not love)
So revenge will be served on both Othello & Cassio: “to plume up my will/ in double knavery” also in soliloquy I,iii. (double suggests killing two birds with one stone but also duplicity)
Quotes to describe he is brilliantly deceitful
Virtually all characters know him as “Honest Iago”
He says he will not “wear my heart on my sleeve/ For daws to peck at” grotesque, visceral imagery
“I am not what I am” (ironic as he is the flag bearer).
Quotes to describe how he is skilled at manipulation because he understands others
Look how he works on characters when he has got them to a point where they are emotionally vulnerable (Roderigo is in despair: “Put money in thy purse”/ he tells Othello that Desdemona’s “better judgment,/May fall to match you with her country forms” and therefore works on his feelings of racial inadequacy).
“so free, so kind, so apt/ she holds it as a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested”
His schemes give the play its plot.
Quotes to describe he is misogynistic
Contempt for women in his conversation with Emilia and Desdemona on arrival in Cyprus Act II claiming women “rise to play and go to bed to work” (they are lazy and promiscuous. Thinks in terms of sex not love)
Emilia desperate to please him (“Alas she has no speech” also in II,i) & gives him the handkerchief, which he snatches and calls her a “foolish wife” (III, iii. 301). He kills her to shut her up. Symbolic of his desire to silence all women?
“Do it not with poison: strangle her in her bed, even the bed she has contaminated” IV, i (401) his views of sex are themselves poisoned.
