Английская Википедия:Iago's manipulativeness and character

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Iago is a major character in William Shakespeare's 1603 play Othello. His role is one of Othello's outwardly loyal courtier and friend, who in fact hates him and schemes his downfall. He also manipulates his friends and master into doing his bidding, eventually persuading Othello to believe that his wife, Desdemona, has been having an affair, resulting in Othello killing her in a jealous rage.

Iago's character and his techniques of illicit manipulation have fascinated scholars since the character's inception, as has his refusal to say why he seeks to destroy Othello.

Background

Othello, a General in the Venetian army, promotes a young officer, Michael Cassio, enraging Iago—the General's ensign—who expected the post himself. Outwardly loyal to Othello and his recently married wife, Desdemona, Iago proceeds to cause dissension within Othello's camp (for instance, tuning Othello's new father-in-law against him, and causing Cassio to fight another officer). Iago causes Othello to be increasingly suspicious of Desdemona and subtly encourages him to believe that Cassio and she are having an illicit affair.

"Honest" Iago

Shakespeare uses variations on the word "honest" 51 times through the play. The word is used both as a noun and adjectivally, 26 times describing Iago.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Refn Its first outing is at the close of Act I, when Othello places Desdemona under the ensign's care, saying "Honest Iago, / My Desdemona I leave to thee".Шаблон:Sfn Its repetition, argues J. W. Abernethy, emphasizes the quality that Iago can be least said to possess, and as such "constitutes a strain of irony running throughout the play".Шаблон:Sfn Analyzing critics approaches to Iago's motives, Jane Adamson suggests that is often assumed the skills of a detective are required.Шаблон:Sfn Towards the end of the play Othello says of Iago, "an honest man he is, who hates the slime that sticks on filthy deeds" (V. ii. 147-149), even though by this point in the play the audience are well aware of Iago's malign influence.Шаблон:Sfn

Character

The image that Iago projects to his peers is that of the common soldier, a man of the world: "unimpressed by fine emotions and super-subtle manners, a 'man's man', who cuts through to the nub of a matter, and preserves a firm self-sufficiency".Шаблон:Sfn Professor Felix Emanuel Schelling suggests that Iago is a "shameless egoist who proudly avows his villainy and bawls it to the gallery",Шаблон:Sfn his manipulation made possible with expressions of mock-sympathy.Шаблон:Sfn His description, early in the play, of the class of servant to which he does not belong, is that of the "knee crooking" subservients who wallow in their subserviency. Rather, he says, he is one of those who "shows of service on their lords / Do well thrive by them".Шаблон:Sfn Iago's approach is two-pronged. On the one hand, he is ever aware of when an opportunity presents itself—as he puts it, "the necessity of present life"—with watching his back and guarding against the future: what Adamson has called "opportunism and self-preservation". Шаблон:Sfn Seeing the world as "wholly manipulable",Шаблон:Sfn the keenness with which he protects his own exists is contrasts with his disregard for others;Шаблон:Sfn similarly he shows no introspection or remorse.Шаблон:Sfn

Adamson notes that Shakespeare presents Iago to the audience as he is at that point in time, with no indication as to how he came to be who he is with the character traits he possesses, and likewise, Iago never gives any indication of anything in the past that has led him to his position.Шаблон:Sfn From the beginning, argues Adamson, Iago is a clear combination of self-righteousness and vindictiveness, illustrated with "casual brutality" in his speech with others.Шаблон:Sfn His one consistent quality, she suggests, is imperviousness: to morality, nuance and empathy particularly.Шаблон:Sfn She sums his outlook up as that of "an essentially simple mind, for whom life is correspondingly simple": the rules that others must live and abide by do not apply to him, and, likewise, the treatment he metes out to others he never has to face.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Refn His view of the world is fundamentally a simple one, epitomized by complacency; he comments to Roderigo that to survive in the world, all a man needs is to "know how to love himself";Шаблон:Sfn to others he is both unloving and unforgiving.Шаблон:Sfn These contradictions, argues Adamson, are the basis of his dramatic character and therefore his significance.Шаблон:Sfn

Manipulative behaviour

Шаблон:QuoteboxIt is easy for Iago to, as he puts it, toy with people "for sport and profit",Шаблон:Sfn and to which end he uses words as a slow poison. He explains to the audience in Act II scene iii that he plans on "pour[ing] this pestilence" into Othello's ear.Шаблон:Sfn Having laid the ground earlier in the play by suggesting to Cassio that Desdemona was prone to sexual flirtation,Шаблон:Sfn Iago's manipulative character is most visible in Act III scene iii where he persuades Othello that Desdemona may be being unfaithful to him, and which the General comes to believe was his own idea in the first place.Шаблон:Sfn Abernethy argues that even Othello's jealousy, from which the rest of the play's action stems, is not his own, but has been instilled in him by Iago.Шаблон:Sfn Iago sums up his philosophy as "play[ing] the god with [Othello's] weak function".Шаблон:Sfn Iago is also responsible, earlier in the play, for Cassio "psychologically losing his life"—by way of being dismissed from the military position he loves—and his self-respect. Iago achieves this through getting him drunk, and provoking a fight between him and Iago's henchman Roderigo; when Othello stops the fight and demands to know who started it, Iago puts the blame for the brawl on Cassio, who is too drunk to defend himself.Шаблон:Sfn Iago has a talent for persuading people of all classes and outlooks to listen to him, from lower class fools such as Roderigo, to the educated and upper-class Cassio and Othello.Шаблон:Sfn This is in part due to his moral simplicity, which, argues Adamson, "is always seductive to those whose lives are complicated and anguished ".Шаблон:Sfn His are so obvious statements, she suggests, that they distract from and disguise his intentions and purpose.Шаблон:Sfn Iago's manipulative character is central to the play because of his Шаблон:Quote

Technique

In a world that the audience may perceive as highly trusting, as well as dignified and courteous,Шаблон:Sfn Iago demonstrates a "malign opportunism", argues Adamson, throughout the play responding to circumstance rather than a preconceived blueprint.Шаблон:Sfn However, he does have a technique, and in the cases of Roderigo, Brabantio and Cassio they are effectively the same attack. First, he offers hypocritical condolences for the men's unfortunate circumstance (Brabantio, whose daughter has eloped on Iago's urging, for example), and in doing so he highlights his own keenness to help. He then advises his target to "mend it for your own good", all the while playing individuals off against each other:Шаблон:Sfn other losses are calculable in the benefit they potentially have for him.Шаблон:Sfn By this, he enjoys a vicarious pleasure from the distresses of others.Шаблон:Sfn Following Iago' eventual discovery, Roderigo explains how Iago "set him on".Шаблон:Sfn

Iago as hero

While Othello himself is strictly the main protagonist, if an anti-hero, Abernethy suggests that the real hero of the play is Iago himself. This is due to the fact that without him, there would be no story:Шаблон:Sfn

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It is also the case, says Abernethy, that as a result of this his character is never advanced, being the same at his death from his first appearance. Unlike other Shakespearian protagonists—Macbeth and his wife, Brutus or Hamlet, for example—his behaviour advances the action rather than his character.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Refn W. H. Auden later echoed Abernethy's assessment, commenting how "any consideration of [the play] must be primarily occupied, not with its official hero, but with its villain".Шаблон:Sfn Justifying Iago's behaviour is not new, and goes back at least to 1796 when an anonymous essay—itself a "genuine oddity" in Shakespearian criticism—looked at the various possible causes: jealousy of Cassio, suspicion of his wife, for example, and ultimately argued that ""if vengeance can be vindicated by an accumulation of injuries, Iago's though exorbitant, was just".Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Refn Scholars William Baker and Brian Vickers have, however, suggested that since the essay appears to have been an "ironic apology for Iago, one wonders whether it was meant seriously".Шаблон:Sfn In 1955, Marvin Rosenberg charged that Iago's "wickedness" had been "libelled" by attempts to show that he was the victim of external forces, such as his earlier experiences or the influence of others; likewise, in arguing that Iago was personally, deliberately responsible for everything he did, he also disputes the suggestion that Iago was the victim of demonic possession.Шаблон:Sfn

Iago as evil incarnate

Samuel Taylor Coleridge believed Iago to be "motiveless Malignity".Шаблон:Sfn

Iago as psychopath

Some critics have characterized Iago as an example of someone with antisocial personality disorder; essayist Fred West wrote that Iago, who is "devoid of conscience, with no remorse", is "an accurate portrayal of a psychopath".Шаблон:Sfn English scholar Bella McGill wrote that Iago's willingness to harm others and exploit their weaknesses for his own gain – the chief example being his use of the innocent Desdemona to bait Othello's jealousy and provoke him into killing her – highlights Iago's psychopathy.Шаблон:Sfn

Alternative arguments

Scholars do not universally applaud Iago as a nuanced character. F. R. Leavis, for example, questions whether he is not a "rather clumsy mechanism".Шаблон:Sfn Likewise, suggests Adamson, Iago's enemies in the play—Cassio and Othello—are both such open characters to him that Iago "hardly needs diabolical skill" to influence them. The former, for instance, willingly drinks with Iago, despite acknowledging at the start that alcohol affects him badly, as he has "poor and unhappy brains for drinking".Шаблон:Sfn Hence, she suggests, it is as likely that they fell, on account of their susceptibility, as much as they were pushed by Iago.Шаблон:Sfn He is not, argue both Bradley and Adamson, a symbol, or a two-dimensional representation of the notion of "inexplicable evil or Evil".Шаблон:Sfn

Cultural influence

Iago was an influential character on the detective fiction writer Agatha Christie, who, says her biographer, was "obsessed" with him. In The Rose and the Yew Tree—written under Christie's pen name Mary Westmacott, her protagonist understands how Iago suffered, "hat[ing] the human being who's up amongst the stars".Шаблон:Sfn In her Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, Christie describes him as "the perfect murderer" because, like her own killer in that novel—himself based upon Iago—he manipulated others into killing at his behest.Шаблон:Sfn

Notes

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References

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Bibliography

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