‘Black Ram’
Iago uses cunning and trickery to make peoples impression of him, as he would like. He seems to know people very well and is an excellent judge of the other characters. He knows that Roderigo for example is in love with Desdemona who is married to Othello. Iago uses the quote
‘Thus do I ever fool my purse’
By playing around with Roderigo’s hopes Iago is aiming to take money and jewels from him. Roderigo gives Iago gives to pass on to Desdemona as signs of Roderigo’s affection, but Iago keeps the gifts for himself. It is Roderigo however that first smells a rat in what Iago is doing –
‘I think it is getting a bit Scurvy and begin to find myself
fopped in it’
Iago responds to this allegation by offering to kill Cassio and Rodergio blindly falls for it, but ironically in the end Roderigo is lead to his death by ‘Honest Iago’.
Iago’s deception of Othello is another way in which the smart mind of Iago controls the play. Iago uses a handkerchief, which is one of Othello’s most treasured possessions as it was passed down through the family, then tells Othello that Desdemona has given it away to her ‘lover’, Cassio, and even says that Cassio was seen with the handkerchief.
‘I am sure it was your wife’s – Did I today see Cassio wipe his
Beard with it’
Another lie that Iago conjures up to try and give Othello proof of Cassio’s affair with Desdemona when Othello asks for a ‘living reason’ why she is disloyal to him is: -
“In sleep I heard him say. “Sweet Desdemona let us be wary, let us hide our loves”. And then sir he would gripe and wring my hand, Cry “O Sweet Creature!” and then kiss me hard, As if he plucked up kisses by roots That grew upon my lips; then laid his leg Over my thigh, and sighed, and kissed, and then Cried “O cursed fate that gave thee to the Moor”
This seems to be the final piece of evidence for Othello to believe that Desdemona was being unfaithful to him.
Another way that Iago tricks other characters is Iago’s effectiveness at noticing innocent situations and making them look dodgy or suspect. He uses this technique when he is trying to convince Othello that Desdemona is being unfaithful. In Act 3 Scene 3 Cassio leaves the room hurriedly after speaking with Desdemona because he does not want to annoy Othello even more, he feels disgraced and fears that Othello will send him away. Iago twists the situation –
‘That he would steel away so guilty like – seeing you coming’
Cassio has good reason to move away quickly as he does not want to see eye-to-eye with somebody who is angry with him. Iago turns Othello’s minds towards the idea that Cassio has been having an affair with Desdemona. Othello would have then got more suspicious when Desdemona starts to defend Cassio.
Iago is well regarded among the other characters, which means they do not suspect any trickery. He is known as ‘Honest Iago’ and at one point in the play he describes himself as an ‘honest man’.
The main Way Iago fools Othello is pure luck. A lot of the things that Cassio and Desdemona say and do always seem to call into Iago’s well thought out trap and further enhances Othello’s feelings that there might be something going on between them. For example when Iago controls the circumstances of a conversation between himself and Cassio in which Cassio talks passionately about Bianca, Cassio does not mention Bianca’s name, so the listening Othello believes it to be about Desdemona.
‘I am not what I am’ is a good assessment of Othello as he seems to have different attitudes with different characters and the trouble of keeping up these different personalities with different people has lead Iago to forget who he is himself. He shows that he has become so obsessed with his little web of hatred that he had created that he could kill people without thinking twice. He did this with his wife when he killed her once she had found him out. Iago achieved his original aims and had got even with Othello and Cassio yet the hatred he felt still continued. He exploited them further and this resulted in Othello’s Death. Iago is so different in reality to what the other characters see him as, as he is playing tricks on most of them behind their backs that their portrayal of him is basically not him, the way he acts in the play is like a costume preventing the other characters from seeing him for what he really is. Iago tricks each of the other characters into believing that Iago was ‘one their side’ and in the things he was saying to them and the actions he was taking, he was taking for their own good and they would profit from them, where as he was taking these actions to trick the other characters as ‘pay-back’ for the hatred he feels towards them. Iago gets so sucked into his lies that he even tricks and convinces himself that Othello is sleeping with his own wife Emila, this is another reason for hating both Othello and Emilia. It is almost as if there is so much betrayal and lying that he stops trusting even himself.
