Iago - Why?

 

At the very heart of Othello lies the question of Iago’s motive for what he did. Iago stands in a long line of Shakespearean villains who pursue their perverse course with delight. At one level we are horrified by the depth of their villainy but at another level we are fascinated by them. We fascinated by the skill with which he conceals his villainy from the rest of the cast. While being appalled by the purpose of the villain, we, as the audience, are flattered by the knowledge that we alone fully aware of the purpose revealed to us through his soliloquies. In a way, we the audience, have the dubious honour of being the villain’s accomplices – though we have access to the purpose of the villain, we are prevented from revealing it to the victims of the villain’s plot by dramatic conventions. 

Despite our awareness of the truth of the villain, that s/he is “subtle, false and treacherous” (Richard III, I.i. 37), we are attracted by him/her. The reason for this could be that we can indulge ourselves in our fascination of the evil vicariously because we are at a safe distance from the figure of evil so that they could not harm us (?). In a way, the experience could also be cathartic.        

The ideas put forward by Machiavelli in The Prince (1513) seem to have a profound impact on the construction of the Renaissance/Shakespearean villain. In Shakespeare’s days the term Machiavelli was synonymous with hypocrisy and deceit. Villains in the Renaissance theatre often invoke Machiavelli in defining their thinking and actions. However, Iago departs from this tradition probably due to his sense of uniqueness/ egoism – he believes that he is one of a kind. However, Act II.iii. 326-329 he makes an allusion to The Prince:     

And what’s he then, that says I play the villain,

When this advice is free I free, and honest,

Probal to thinking, and indeed the course

To win the Moor again?

Iago take pride in playing the “honest Iago”; therefore, the actor who plays the role Iago, would have to play a part in which the part plays another part. 

 Only the audience and Roderigo are privy to the fact that Iago is a villain. Throughout the play, Iago is associated with the term “honest” – true-hearted, trustworthy, straightforward, forthright and sincere. Iago had acquired a reputation of a plain-speaking practical sort of a person as a soldier. Off the battlefield, he appears the very epitome of dutifulness and dependability. It is a sign of Iago’s genius that not only had he been able to create such an image but also he had been able to sustain that image to the very end in the eyes of all the characters. He takes immense pleasure in savoring the success of his image. In the first of his frequent aides he confides in the audience of the inner-workings of his mind thus:

In following him, I follow but myself.

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty.

But seeming so, for my peculiar end.

For when my outward action does demonstrate

The native act, and figure of my heart,

In complement extern, ‘tis not long after,

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve,

For doves to peck at: I am not what I am. (I.i 58-65)  

True Iago feels only contempt for Roderigo and refers to him using the most unbecoming appelations such as snipe, trash and quod while pretending to be his benefactor whose sole objective is to ensure that Roderigo gets his heart’s desire. When he superflues, and even dangerous to his cause, Iago kills Roderigo without a hesitation. While it may not have taken much to gull Roderigo, fooling Cassio should have offered a greater challenge. Yet, this too Iago manages with aplomb. He masterminds the plot to disgrace Cassio so that he would be removed from his post without drawing a shade of suspicion on him. In fact Othello assumes that Iago is out of his “honesty and love doth mince the matter, Making it light to Cassio” (II.iii 238-239).  He encourages Cassio to appeal to Desdemona to get his position back so that he could find an opportunity to strengthen the suspicion he aimed to plant in Othello’s mind regarding the true nature of their relationship. His tongue-in-the-cheek announcement in II.iii323 that his advice is free and honest “probal to thinking and indeed the course, to win the Moor again” gives us an insight to how Iago operates and the complexity of Iago’s villainous plots.

Similarly, in IV.i, when Ludovico is appalled by Othello slapping Desdemona in front of him Iago plays the loyal friend and says “its not honesty in me to speak What I have seen and known” (275-76) and damns Othello further by his apparent reluctance to discredit his lord. When Othello calls Desdemona a whore Iago pretends to sympathize with her and be shocked by Othello’s suspicions – the suspicions he himself had planted and carefully nurtured. After wounding Cassio subsequent to the failed plot of get him killed by Roderigo he pretend concern for Cassio thereby presenting himself as witness to the crime and turns upon his pawn and injures him fatally – killing two birds with one stone: he does not have to pay back the gifts and his part in the plot would not be revealed.

His reputation as “honest Iago” – in its many shades - is so firmly established in the minds of all the actors, that no one casts any aspirations on his trustworthiness, etc. throughout the play until the very end.   

  

Go and catch a falling star - John Donn

 

The three stanzas of the poem rhymes ababccddd. There is uniformity in the number of lines and even in the shape of the poem. One might see this quality as a male poet privileging order and reason over chaos which usually is associated with women. Women were idealized, or even idolized, in Courtly Love Poems as pure faithful Madonnas. This, of course, is unrealistic. Unlike many Renaissance poems idealizing women, “Song” satirizes women using hyperbole – extreme exaggeration. The poem may sound antifeminist (misogynistic), but it must be viewed in the context of metaphysical poems. Therefore, it should be read not so much as a condemnation of women but as a criticism of CLP. In fact, Donne, far from being a misogynist, had been described by one of his friends as “a great visitor of ladies.” Therefore, it is more prudent to read the “Song” is a perfect example of Donne’s playfulness with metaphysical conceits and female sexuality.

Imagine a lover who has fallen hard for that perfect woman once too often – and now has a cynical view on all women. The poem opens with a list of impossible tasks: catching a falling star[1] – a meteorite, becoming pregnant with the aid of a mandrake root[2], and finding out where the time we spent harbour itself, 2. Who cleft the Devil’s foot, 3. How to hear Mermaids[3] singing without losing one’s head 4. How to keep those who are envious from harming others, and 5. What would bring good fortune to honest people – illustrating the impossibility of finding a beautiful woman who also happens to be honest.

The second stanza focuses on feminine virtues. The poet continues his monologue with the imaginary listener and tells him that even if the listener were to go on a quest around the world looking for a woman both beautiful and faithful he would upon his return tell the poet that he had not come across one.

In the third stanza, Donne continues his argument based on the hypothesis that if the listener were to find a woman who was both faithful and beautiful, she would become fickle within the short time it would take the listener to walk next-door and report to the poet of his discovery, not just to one person but two or three.     

Donne uses a startling series of unconventional images. In addition, Donne also uses unusual comparisons, or conceits, and his argumentative style. In this poem, the poet brings in a series of arguments like a consummate lawyer to prove his point. The argumentative style gives the different parts of the poem a sense of interconnectedness while forcing the reader to pay close attention to what is being said.

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[1] A falling star is a bright beautiful thing that is reduced to ashes in the end. People make wishes when they see one. Donne, influenced by the increasing focus on the sciences, is trying to show that trying to catch an honest beautiful woman is like trying to catch a meteorite – both attempts would be disillusioning as well as disastrous.

[2] A plant used in witchcraft. It is also used as an aphrodisiac, a cathartic, a poison, and a narcotic. Making a baby with the aid of a mandrake root is an unnatural act – a beautiful woman who is faithful is also unnatural; beautiful women are by nature fickle – according to the voice. However, in this context, making a baby is impossible as the poet is asking a man to become pregnant by a male plant.   

[3] Singing of the mermaids, or more correctly the sirens, lure unsuspecting sailors to their doom according to Homer in The Odyssey. Similarly, women, according to the voice, lure men to their destruction. 

Sonnet 73 - William Shakespeare

 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

In this sonnet Shakespeare continues his meditation on aging and approaching death. However, one may not be misled and think of Shakespeare as a doddering old man. It is my belief that there is more than a touch of the hyperbole in his agonizing preoccupation with his age.

In the first 12 lines of the sonnet Shakespeare presents his young friend with three images of himself as an aging man: a bleak late autumn scene, twilight, and an image of a dying fire.

The poet in the first four lines presenting the image of the bleak late autumn says, when his young friend looked at him, he would see an image of those times of the year when the leaves were yellow or have fallen, or when the trees had no leaves at all and the bare branches where the sweet birds recently sang shiver in anticipation of the cold winter to come. The term “leaves” stand for the number of years left for the poetic persona to live. The leaves are yellow: old age and sickness. The unusual reversal of “none, or few” highlights quite poignantly the fear the poetic persona feels about the very little time he feels that he has left to live. The reference to the choirs evokes an image of a ruined church. Art that is believed to be divinely inspired by many found its highest forms of expression in churches in Britain during the Renaissance. However, during the reign of Henry VIII many of the great churches that sponsored arts in Britain were ransacked and destroyed. Therefore, it is quite natural for Shakespeare who would have seen many of those ruined great churches where great music had been composed and offered to God in choric performances to see the almost leafless branches vacated by song birds as ruined church choirs. Reading between the lines, this might be an indication of his fear of losing his own ability to produce and perform art with the onset of old age. An artist who cannot produce and perform art would surely look like a leafless branch or a ruined choir vacated by its occupants. The branches vacated by song birds could also be read as a reference to those artists who used to seek the poetic persona out when his sap was green. They have left him in his old age. At the same time, this metaphor pays a complement to the receiver of the poem with the allusion that he unlike the birds that have left the tree has not left the aging poet.          

In lines 5-8, Shakespeare presents himself as twilight. He says that his friend would see in him the twilight that remains after the sunset fades in the west, which by and by is replaced by black night, the twin of death. The poet quite casually slips in a euphemism and signals to his friend that his death might not be too far off when he says that the night that comes after twilight is really “Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.”  

In lines 9-12, Shakespeare compares himself to a dying fire. He invites his friend to see in him the remains of a fire glowing feebly atop the ashes as if it lay on its own deathbed; the ashes produced by the logs would ultimately smother the fire. The term “ashes” recalls to the mind the Christian burial prayer “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …” further cementing the idea that things born must eventually die.

The Renaissance was an age that wholeheartedly encouraged the practice of the late Classical philosophy carpe diam. It is believed that Shakespeare himself died of a fever contracted after a bout of heavy drinking with his friend Ben Jonson. So, being reduced to an old wreckage robbed of his music would be the last thing the poet would have wanted for himself. The heart-breaking reality is that the poet knows that despite his aversion to aging, there is no stopping of it: seasons come and go, day time gives in to night, and once roaring fires die when the fuel runs out.  

In the final couplet, the poet says that the young man would see all these things, and they would make his love stronger, because he loved even more what he knew he’d lose before long. The sonnet is either a declaration of faith in the strength of the relationship between Shakespeare and his young male friend or as a more cynical person would put it a wistful yearning for something to remain unchanged despite change.     

It must be said that the images Shakespeare has selected to illustrate the point that he is aging and his death might not be too far off are all full of colours that are rapidly being overtaken by darkness. Still, the colours are still there. One might say that it is the dying fire that burns brightest.