Coleridge's View on Iago's Soliloquies

Coleridge's View on Iago's Soliloquies

The phrase "the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity" occurs in a

note that Coleridge wrote concerning the end of Act 1 Scene 3 of

Othello in which Iago takes leave of Roderigo 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".

When evaluating Coleridge's view, it is important to put the word

"motive" into context. We use it to mean an emotion, desire, a

physiological need - an impulse that acts as an incitement to action.

This definition equates "motive" and " impulse"; Coleridge, however,

thought the two quite different. Here is what he wrote on the

subject:-

Iago is represented as now assigning one, and then another, and again

a third motive for his conduct, alike the mere fictions of his own

restless nature, distempered by a keen sense of his intellectual

superiority, and haunted by the love of exerting power on those

especially who are his superiors in practical and moral excellence.

Thus Coleridge asserts that Iago's impulses are simply to carry out

evil acts - he has an inner malignancy that drives his "keen sense of

his intellectual superiority" and his "love of exerting power". And so

Iago's malignity is "motiveless" because his motives - being passed

over for promotion, his suspicion that Othello and later Cassio are

having affairs with Emelia - are merely rationalisations for his

impulses; his drive to do evil.

There is much evidence in the text to support this theory of Iago.

Shakespeare does much to allude to the fact that Iago loves evil for

his own sake and thus has his own...

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...ent sense of jealousy, all of Iago's

behaviour is backed by an air of egotism and conceit. Perhaps Iago is

Shakespeare's warning against the sin of vanity and envy, that which

Francis Bacon described as "the vilest affection and the most

depraves; for which cause, it is the proper attribute of the Devil".

Since the play was first written, critics have worked to assign

psychological motivation and grounding to the conundrum that is Iago.

Yet perhaps the most satisfying conclusion that can be drawn is in the

ambiguity and elusiveness of the character, and the questions that

these in themselves raise about the nature of evil, of sins, and of

the nature of mankind. For as Coleridge said, "How many among our

modern critics have attributed to the profound Author this, the

appropriate inconsistency of the character itself!"