A to Z Blogging Challenge 2024 - Villains! - I Is For Iago

 

Edwin Booth as Iago. Public Domain.

Iago is the villain of Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello. Othello is a Moor, a general leading the Venetian army, who is also pretty gullible. He marries a white woman, Desdemona, whom he adores, but eventually kills because Iago persuades him that she is unfaithful. 

Iago is not someone with whom you can sympathise at all. He doesn’t have a sad back story. The very first time we see him, he is announcing to Desdemona’s father  that, “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe.” The first scene! 

He decides to wreck the marriage and even better if it goes further. 

Why is this? He missed out on a job he wanted. All this tragedy  because of a job! Othello gave it to his best friend Cassio. Okay, maybe not fair, Cassio is not too bright, but a reason for what Iago does? Definitely not. And it’s not as if Othello has anything against him, he actually likes Iago and trusts him, silly man. “Honest, honest Iago” is what Othello calls him. Yeah, sure… But he isn’t the only one who thinks that; in one scene he cheerfully leads a bunch of mates in a drinking song, “Let Me The Canikins Clink!”

So, Iago sets to work at destroying the lives of Othello and Desdemona. Some of it involves a handkerchief with strawberry embroidery Othello had given his bride and Iago had made sure Othello found it where it shouldn’t be. He makes Othello believe that Desdemona has been unfaithful with Cassio. 

Interestingly, Iago has a likable, decent wife, Emilia, who is Desdemona’s attendant. In the last scene he kills her to shut her up when she protests Desdemona’s innocence. His own wife.

When it’s finally revealed that Iago is the villain who did all the things that led to the dramatic ending, where Othello has killed his wife, then himself, Iago is arrested.

I’ve seen this play a number of times, but my favourite production was in Hebrew, at the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv. My Hebrew isn’t brilliant, but I had seen and read the play enough times to know what was being said. In the last scene, as Iago is being led away to his execution, he turns and laughs, in a spinechilling way.

Shakespeare is very, very good at villains, and gives actors a chance to play them well.

I went to the Cameri quite a lot and the week before, it had been a production of The Merchant Of Venice, in which the actor playing Iago was Antonio and the other man was playing the Prince of Morocco, and very funny he was, too. I thought at the time, “Ooh, he’s playing it like Othello!” and the next week he did play Othello! 

The TV series Upstart Crow, a sitcom about Shakespeare, had episodes based on his plays. In the episode based on Othello Christopher Marlowe brings his friend Prince Othello to a special dinner to help persuade Robert Greene, who is in charge of approving coats of arms, to let Shakespeare’s nagging father have one, as he has had a “posh” guest. Othello and Shakespeare’s landlord’s daughter, Kate, fall in love and plan to get married, till she suddenly realises that all those amazing stories he told her about his life were in a book by Walter Raleigh, which she has read recently. 

He admits to making a living out of this - and he comes, not from Africa, but from Bristol.

Tomorrow we will meet C.S. Lewis’s villain Jadis the White Witch.