Show how Shakespeare sets out the contrasting characters of Othello and Iago in Act 1 of Othello

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Show how Shakespeare sets out the contrasting characters of Othello and Iago in Act 1 of Othello.

The characters of Othello and Iago are central to the plot in the play Othello.  They are two of the play’s main characters, but couldn’t be more dissimilar. The ways in which Shakespeare outlines these contrasts in character in Act 1 of the play will be analysed with examples from the text given as evidence of the contrasts.

We know Othello is going to be a key figure in the play as it is named after him. However, we meet Iago first. Shakespeare indicates in Act 1 Scene 1 that Iago will also have a significant part to play in the play and in fact a lot about his character is revealed in his opening exchanges with Roderigo and Brabantio. We learn very quickly that he is two-faced in lines 59-65 when he tells us that he is only putting on an act of obedience to serve his own ends, while concealing his true feelings, which are of contempt and dislike of Othello.

Shortly after this, we get our first glimpse of Iago’s ability to mastermind and engineer plots, while at the same time arousing emotions in others, when he incites Roderigo to wake up Brabantio and destroy his peace. Once Brabantio is awake, he himself interrupts to tell him that Othello is having sex with Brabantio’s daughter – lines 88-89 ‘an old black ram is tupping your white ewe’. Now we as the audience know this is not true, and so we deduce that Iago is deceitful and a meddler. By the end of the scene, Iago has successfully turned Brabantio against Othello.

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Othello, on the other hand, comes across as honest, honourable and respectable when we meet him in Act 1 Scene 2. After Iago informs him that Roderigo, not Iago, has been spreading foul reports of Othello’s behaviour, and that Brabantio could have Othello dismissed (‘the magnifico...will divorce you, or put upon you what restraint and grievance the law...will give him cable’ – lines 12-17), Othello reacts unfazed, relying on his past services to Brabantio as a means of escaping punishment (lines 18-19 ‘My services which I have done the signory, shall out-tongue his complaints.’) Iago says he thinks Brabantio ...

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