Motivation In Othello's Jealousy

HYPOTHESIS: Iago created for Othello, a ruinous destruction, because he was jealous of him.

William Shakespeare’s literary masterpiece, ‘Othello’, has been analysed and thought over since its conception in 1603. Critics from our modern day to over four centuries ago, have varying, and starkly contrasting theses about most aspects of the play. One of these well-debated aspects is the motivation behind malicious antagonist Iago’s malevolent actions, what exactly it was that drove him to cause the misfortunes that resulted in the deaths of almost every main character. I believe that Iago’s motivation lay in his hamartia, which he shared with the play’s titular character – jealousy.

Othello, who, due to his colour and social background, was already a lesser man in Iago’s bigoted mind, was not only a more successful militant than Iago, but he had won himself arguably the most beautiful wife in Venice, whilst

Iago was bound with a ring to a woman he detested. To only further fan the flames of an unhinged psyche, Othello appointed the younger, less experienced Michael Cassio as his lieutenant in place of Iago, a position the latter desperately wanted—and these seemingly forgivable acts on Othello’s part, later prove to be fatal. Shakespeare lived in a time when patriarchy was the norm, women were treated terribly, and men ravaged as the superior sex. In a bout of man pain commonly seen in pieces written around this time period, Iago takes a jealous tantrum, and turns it into reasoning to destroy not only Othello’s career, or his happiness, but his marriage, and his very vitality.

However, mine is nowhere close to being the only idea to exist on this topic. In this report I aim to research opinions from respected critics, and analyse their varying views to come to a conclusion around my own hypothesis.

In her 2014 paper, ‘Iago and Psychopathy: A Textual and Performance Analysis’, Gemma Miller writes that the general symptoms of psychopathy are not a foreign concept when talking of Iago, one of Shakespeare’s most successful villains. Based on the research of Dr. Robert Hale, the University of British Columbia’s premier Psychology Professor and FBI advisor, she claims that one of the main personality traits of psychopathy, “is that of the predator.” When talking of “trapping, stalking and animalistic cunning,” she writes that one cannot help but be reminded of the way Iago “preys on both Roderigo and Brabantio – the one for money, the other for mischief.” Iago talks with an abundance of bestial imagery. Such as the ever-famous quote, “there is an old

black ram tupping your white ewe,” demonstrates. Miller states that Iago’s language is “rich with the imagery of predation”, and that he is a close friend of the hunting vernacular, using phrases such as ‘tracing’, ‘putting on’, and ‘quick hunting’. He also speaks of his lies and schemes as “a ‘web’ to ‘ensnare… a fly’”, and as a “’net’ to enmesh them all.’” Miller writes that while the play’s audience is presented with a plethora of motivations for Iago’s disastrous actions, of which one could never read all, “Iago returns again and again to the shallow and callous motive of ‘sport’, of which he finds stimulation.” Miller states that this is a classic symptom of psychopathy that Iago displays from the first word of the play, to his last. Miller brings to our attention a quote from actor Antony Sher; “there’s not financial, professional or sexual advantage to be won; Iago just seems to be on some nihilistic joy-ride.” And of course, this described hedonism is rampant in articles from experienced psychologists, when describing symptoms of your classic psychopath. To support her hypothesis, Miller brings to light Sher’s description of how, near the end of the play “[Iago] suddenly looked up, confronting the audience with his eyes, and silently asking ‘why didn’t you stop it?’” The final silence of Iago, is not only contrasting to the status of language connoisseur that he seems to hold proudly throughout the play, but establishing of the fact that he cannot explain what happened, “any more than a psychopath can say, ‘I did it because of that.’” The question though, isn’t whether or not Iago was evil, for he surely was—the question is, can his malevolence be written away as ‘psychopathy’? Can one dismiss the intelligence of one of literature’s greatest villains on the basis of psychological imbalance?
Whilst I can agree that Iago indeed displayed psychopathic traits, I cannot agree with Miller on the grounds that he was, as the majority of established psychopaths are, completely without a solid motivation. This piece, however, has given me great insight towards Iago’s psyche. Recently written, it gives a new view into this argument, compared to pieces such as Brooke’s, which was written almost a century earlier. It is the differences in time periods which make researching critical responses to Shakespeare’s works so interesting, but also what can make it so difficult to adequately compare one to another.
‘The Apologetics of Evil: The Case of Iago,’ written by Richard Raatzsch in 2009, and reviewed by Colin McGinn, argues that Iago is a villain, yes, but one who is not human. A “demi-devil” who above all, is a vicious schemer, who “schemes so as to be scheming”. Agreeing somewhat with Miller in that Iago is driven by little more than the fact that “his passion is to control others […] and bend[ing] reality to his will.” McGinn states that for Iago, scheming is a “kind of sport.,” and that he participates for the sake of the game. In an unsettling quote from McGinn about the state of our villain’s mind-set, he writes “[Iago] didn’t deceive Othello in order to destroy him; he destroyed Othello in order to deceive him.” The two both argue that Iago’s motivations lay not in any kind of hatred or jealousy, nor a repressed homosexual desire, nor anything else—that the ‘hate’ that Iago so plainly described to Roderigo in Act 1, Scene 3; “I hate the Moor, and it is thought abroad, that ‘twixt my sheets ‘has done my office,” is nothing more than a “front to excuse undertaking the scheme.” As opposed to a psychopath, McGinn concludes that Iago’s psychology is “like that of an addictive gambler,” stating that he gambles to keep gambling in his life, rather than to purposefully cause misery or achieve wealth. Raatzsch believes that Iago feels a “kind of stinging inferiority—that of the ‘ugly’ for the ‘beautiful’” when Othello and Cassio are concerned. This inferiority, Raatzsch explains, is not of physical beauty or intelligence, but of “the aesthetics of the soul.” He writes that Iago is aware of his lack of moral virtue and interest in the matters of the soul, and that Iago’s scheming is a way for him to destroy those who remind him of this lack of spiritual beauty. This theory in itself supports my own hypothesis, in that “he schemes so as to assuage his envy.” McGinn agrees, writing that Iago cannot gain the thrill of the hunt by scheming against just anybody, and that a part of the essence of Iago’s plan is “that wholly innocent people will perish in utmost despair”, and that the outcome of a virtuous person’s miserable death is what allows Iago to truly relish in his own actions. He “relishes the evil scheme, the one without justice or sense.” It is the true malevolence of the innocent’s destruction, that both fulfils his craving for the game, and stops the likes of Othello and Desdemonda from reminding him of everything he is not; these traits including decent, for one. The “perverse destructiveness” is the heart of it. The evil of the scheme is what makes it worth scheming, McGinn and Raatzsch both conclude.
The opinions of Miller, McGinn and Raatzsch are all relatively similar, all stemming from the same strand of thinking in that Iago is not entirely there, on the spectrum of decent human existence. With the former arguing that he was mentally unhinged, and the latter two stating that he was, whilst entirely sane, a truly sadistic human being who could not entirely cope with his own egregious nature. These two articles were written only five years apart from one another, which is an explanation behind their similarities. Nowadays, critics and society alike have a tendency to pull the blame onto the ‘wicked’, the ‘supernatural’, or turn to the science of psychopathy to explain away the fatal flaws of characters from a time when evil was little more than a basic character trait. Whilst I agree with McGinn’s claims to a point, overall I believe that Iago had more of a motivation for his malevolent schemes than a simple desire to destroy or a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Written over 60 years prior to both the previous articles, is ‘The Motivation of Iago’ written by John C. McCloskey in 1941. He believes, similar to myself, that Iago was motivated by a spiteful cocktail of a “wounded pride, a feeling of personal injustice and jealous suspicion.” Iago verbally admits to a hatred of Iago a myriad of times throughout the play, beginning in the very first scene, with “Though I do hate him as I do hell-pains.” As a hardworking soldier with a skilled, honest reputation that almost precedes him, Iago is understandably upset when he is passed over for Othello’s lieutenancy by Michael Cassio, a man who is nothing more than a theoretical solider, having never set foot on the battlefield. McCloskey writes that “[Iago’s] tragic intrigue has its genesis, consequently, in his determination to secure justice for himself,” and that it is Othello’s blatant disregard for Iago’s past service and “proved worth,” that caused Iago’s ticking time bomb of a temper to ignite. Jealous of Cassio, he singles out the Florentine as the center for his lurid schemes. McCloskey implies that had it been another man who had been hired in Cassio’s place, that Othello’s poor friend may have been left completely untouched by Iago’s foul web. However, as McCloskey points out, giving Iago’s well-deserved lieutenancy to Cassio is not the only way Othello spurred Iago’s jealous rage the way he did. “There is a report abroad that Othello has played him false with Emilia,” and as much as Iago is “intellectual, crafty, subtle and efficient”, even he cannot “control his jealous suspicion.” Personally, I agree with McCloskey in his arguments, in that Iago was indeed spurred into fatal action by his own jealous demons, and his article, whilst somewhat dated compared to Miller or Raatzsch, gives me well-written and respected support to my own hypothesis.
Completely contrasting every critic thus far, comes Tucker Brooke, in his 1918 article ‘The Romantic Iago’, he argues that Iago was “a man of warm, sympathetic qualities” who’s “diabolism is an accident, thrust upon him early in the play.” The idea that Iago was not entirely human is not unique to Brooke, but he is the only critic I encountered who attempted to completely defend Iago’s character. Whilst critics such as Raatzsch also argue that there was some truly monstrous aspect to Iago, they have also agreed that he was no kind man beforehand. Brooke is not alike in this regard, describing Iago as an altruistic, honest man who was taken by the supernatural, and morphed to be the evil that we see throughout the play. Brooke believes that Shakespeare was alluding to some form of demoniacal possession, and that it was this that caused Iago to be soiled by malevolence the way he was. Similar to how Lady Macbeth called upon the ‘dark spirits’ and ‘demons’ to aid her lose her kindness and murder King Duncan, Brooke writes that the “honesty and innate kindliness of Iago […] can be no melodramatic villain’s mask,” implying that demonic forces are the only explanation for actions that are downright sociopathic. He explains that in whispering, “I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and Night must bring monstrous birth to the world’s light,” Iago was acknowledging a higher, diabolical influence that he cannot yet understand. He compares Iago to other notable Shakespearean villains such as Don John, and argues that the characters of their respective plays trusted Iago tenfold, yet Don John was widely regarded as an untrustworthy man, and that this proves not that Iago was a horrifyingly capable villain, but instead that he was not a villain at all. He believes one “cannot fool all the people, all the time,” and argues that this is a strong theme within Iago’s chilly, egoistic character. Whilst Brooke’s opinions have enlightened me to the scale on which Iago was trusted by his entire social circle, and showed how uncommon it is for such a fooling to occur, I do not personally agree with his arguments. In my opinion, the larger-than-life lies that Iago throws from corner to corner added to the honest, trustworthy façade he created for himself, only demonstrates for evil a villain he truly was.

From the arguments that Iago was truly of a psychopathic nature, to Raatzsch’s hypothesis that he was simply living the psyche of a gambler, scheming just for the sake of scheming, I can clearly see that there are a range of informed yet entirely varied opinions on this particular Shakespearean topic. However, throughout my research, my own hypothesis: that Iago committed the dastardly acts of evil that he did, out of jealousy and spite, remained true to me. The writings of Brooke and Miller failed to truly convince me otherwise, though they gave me great insight towards the elusive characterization of Iago, and helped me create a more formed version of my previous hypothesis.