Malignant Iago: Bigotry
as Contagion in Shakespeare’s Othello
Shakespeare’s
Othello is a story of intense
prejudice and violence rooted in both misogyny and xenophobia. Certainly, these
prejudices are latent in the society surrounding Othello and his compatriots
already. However, when tracing the roots of the actual expression of these misogynist and xenophobic attitudes, all roads
appear to lead back to one specific character: Iago. Hatred and suspicion act
like contagion in this play, and so it is vital to understand from whence that
contagion comes and how it spreads, if we are to understand just how Othello
falls. It is Iago who sews the seeds of violence through inflammatory and
infectious language, playing on the latent fears of both the villainous and
noble, weaponizing bigotry to bring down the hero and those close to him.
One of the
central questions in this play is just why Iago undertakes to destroy Othello.
“I hate the Moor,” he says at the end of Act One, but his explanations for that
hatred are distinctly lacking (1.3.429). He tells Roderigo in the first scene
that he resents being passed over for promotion, lamenting that “preferment
goes by letter and affection/And not by old gradation,” (1.1.38-39). This seems
a reasonable explanation at first, and yet Iago does not stick to this story.
In the same soliloquy at the end of Act One quoted above, he insists, “I hate
the Moor,/And it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets/’Has done my office,”
(1.3.429-431). This too would seem just cause for hatred, were it not for the
fact that we see no indication anywhere in the play that Othello is guilty of
the act, nor even that anyone suspects him of it. Other characters repeatedly
remark on Othello’s virtue and honor. He is repeatedly called “valiant” or
“noble” by other characters, both those close to him like Desdemona and those
who know him only professionally, such as the Duke and Montano (1.3.288)
(1.3.56) (2.3.144). Even Iago admits in the scene immediately after accusing
Othello that he “is of a constant, loving, noble nature,” (2.1.311). Why, then,
all the hatred and accusations?
The answer
to that question likely lies in the same place as the explanation for why he
chooses these particular excuses for it: prejudice. Iago tells Roderigo he
resents being passed over because Roderigo himself has been passed over, not
for promotion but for Desdemona’s hand. It is not Iago who resents Othello for
denying him what he sees as his due, but Roderigo. Iago plays on this
resentment—and particularly the bitterness at being usurped by one he sees as
below his station—by casting Cassio as wholly undeserving of promotion. Iago
rails against Cassio, saying,
“And I, of
whom his eyes had seen the proof
At Rhodes,
at Cyprus, and on other grounds
Christened
and heathen, must be beleed and calmed
By debitor
and creditor. This countercaster,
He, in good
time, must his lieutenant be,
And I, God
bless the mark, his Moorship’s ancient,” (1.1.29-35).
Here, he casts the status difference not in terms of race,
but experience. Thus, the speech not only aligns Iago with Roderigo, it also
subtly casts Roderigo’s case as more legitimate than it is. If Roderigo is Iago
in this analogy, then he is the seasoned and blooded warrior to Othello’s
inexperienced accountant, rather than simply the man who thinks he deserved to
get the girl. It allows Roderigo to pretend that his outrage is based in
genuine injustice, rather than what it is really based in: misogyny and
xenophobia. In refusing to accept Desdemona’s choice of husband, he
demonstrates that he does not respect her, viewing her instead as a prize he
has been denied, thus showing his own misogyny. Similarly, when he speaks of
Othello, his language is violent and often laden with anti-Black language. He
refers to him as “the thick-lips,” a description blatantly aimed at Othello’s
Blackness (1.1.72). Importantly, Roderigo is not alone in this rhetoric.
Othello is called a Moor sixty times throughout the course of the play, over
half of them by Iago. While the term is not typically a pejorative one—for
Othello is, in fact, Moorish—it is significant that Iago chooses this term to distinguish Othello from
other characters, rather than focusing on his military prowess, rank, or any
other signifier. The villain seems fixated on the hero’s race, and this helps
to explain why he levels the accusations against Othello that he does. With
Roderigo, he plays on the hated image of a Moor—a figure who is at once a
foreigner, a Black man, and a Christian convert—risen above his station to
usurp his betters. With the audience, and later with Brabantio, he plays on the
fear of Black men’s sexuality, a fear emergent at the time as European
explorers returned from Africa with narratives of savage men and scantily clad
women. In short, Iago hates the Moor because he is a Moor.
This hyper
fixation on Othello’s sexuality is a vital thread in unraveling the tragedy of
the play. In the first scene, Iago rouses Brabantio to fury with the jab,
“Even now,
now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping
your white ewe. Arise, arise!
Awake the
snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the
devil will make a grandsire of you,” (1.1.91-100).
The language here is blatantly dehumanizing, to both Othello
and Desdemona. Sheep are particularly unintelligent animals, making the
comparison already less than flattering, but it is also both gendered and racialized.
Ewes are precious largely for their ability to produce more sheep, thus
enriching the shepherd. The implication, then, is that Desdemona is property
about to lose her value by being improperly bred. Othello fares even worse in
this metaphor. Not only is he compared to a ram—known for their voracious
sexual appetites—he is compared to a black ram. This is obviously a reference
to his skin color, but it also casts him as a particularly undesirable kind of
ram. Black sheep’s wool was less valuable, since it was impossible to dye.
Thus, this raises objections to the match between Desdemona and Othello not
only because of Othello’s status, but because of the undesirability of any
potential offspring. The lambs born from a black and a white sheep may themselves
be black. In effect, the blackness of the ram may sully the whiteness of the
ewe. This is then doubled down upon by calling Othello “the devil” and
threatening that he may make Brabantio a grandfather. This is a very real
threat to the nobleman, as Desdemona is his only child, and so her son would be
his heir. He has a vested interest in ensuring that she produces the right kind of heir, and Iago makes it clear
that Othello poses great threat to that. Brabantio later picks up this language
of seduction and particularly of Othello’s demonic power. He accuses the
general of bewitching his daughter—an accusation that also casts doubt on
Othello’s status as a Christian—and of using “practices of cunning hell,”
(1.3.120). This is not the language of a loving father, nor of the man who
Othello himself says once loved him and kept company with him. This is Iago’s
language.
It is
important to note here that Othello himself gives no indication that he falls
into the stereotypes ascribed to him. Though as a Moor he is expected to be
course, uneducated, and rough-mannered, he is in fact eloquent and honorable.
Indeed, his speeches in Act I Scene III are among the longest and most eloquent
in the play. They cast him as a humble man and a wise one, though he claims to
be the opposite. “Little shall I grace my cause/In speaking for myself,” he
says, and yet it is difficult to come out of the scene without admiration for
Othello, not only for his articulate, thoughtful nature, but for the obvious
devotion and deference he shows his young wife. Indeed, the court scene is
peculiar in that nearly all the
characters show a remarkable degree of respect for Desdemona’s agency. Not only
does the Duke allow her to speak openly—something that smacks of impropriety
for a woman in Shakespeare’s day—but he also accepts her account without
question, as do his counselors. While he does so at Othello’s request, and
seemingly for love of the general rather than the lady, it is still significant
that all the men on stage yield so much time and attention to a woman and a
Black man. All save Brabantio, of course, who has already been swayed by Iago’s
influence. It is he who spits venomous and sexist words about his daughter,
whose honor he defended only pages before: “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast
eyes to see./She has deceived her father, and may thee,” (1.3.333-334). He
accuses his daughter of being unscrupulous and dishonest, but Othello will have
none of it. His line, “My life upon her faith,” becomes a tragic moment of
dramatic irony—for it is not Desdemona’s faithlessness
that loses Othello his life—but it is also a clear sign of his trust in her
(1.3.335).
It is,
perhaps, that very belief in Desdemona’s ability to make her own choices that
lets Iago turn Othello into the man who fulfills Brabantio’s fears of his
baseness and sexual aggression. Othello, as Iago points out several times,
believes the best of people. He also knows first-hand how persuasive and
unwilling to be controlled Desdemona is. After all, few Venetian young ladies
would woo and elope with a Moorish general they know their father would not
approve of. It is these very virtues that Iago turns against him. Though
Othello’s loyalty and trust means it takes a great deal to convince him of
Cassio’s betrayal, it also means that he never suspects Iago of lying, making
him all the more credulous when presented with supposed evidence. Ironically,
Brabantio himself plants the idea in Othello’s head that her willfulness might
lead to his misery as well as his happiness in the lines above. Iago plays on
this fear, using it as a wedge to drive between Othello and Desdemona. He
pretends to believe in her virtue as much as Othello does, all the while
dropping metaphorical breadcrumbs for Othello to follow, making it seem as if
the Moor arrived at the conclusion on his own. In effect, he turns Othello into
his puppet, then makes him act out the very violent urges that are so abhorrent
to him. Even the most horrid part of the murder is Iago’s idea: “Strangle her
in her bed,/even the bed she hath contaminated,” (4.1.228-229). This scene of a
woman murdered by her husband’s bare hands in their bed as punishment for
imagined sexual betrayal has undeniable connotations of rape. Though
Desdemona’s murder appears at first like the ultimate proof that the evil was
in Othello all along, and that he truly is the violent, jealous, and sexually
aggressive man Iago cast him as, these descriptors all apply better to Iago
himself. It is he who begins the play
already sexually jealous and violent. He claims Othello has slept with Emilia
and swears to have him “wife for wife,” a decidedly sexist and even violent
image, as it disregards any say the wives might have in the matter (2.2.321). He
even bears responsibility for the violent nature of the crime, for Othello
would have done it with poison, if not for Iago’s urging. He has manipulated a
good man into killing a good woman in such a way that it appears to validate
Iago’s—and, to a great extent, society’s—prejudice
against him.
This, then, is the play’s ultimate
tragedy. Not that Othello falls, but that he does so in such a way that he
appears to have been less than honorable all along. Even the hero himself falls
victim to this thinking. His final lines beg the onlookers to
“say
besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a
malignant and a turbaned Turk
Beat a
Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by
the throat the circumciséd dog,
and smote
him, thus,” (5.2.413-417).
Here, he puts himself into the role a Turk, the enemy he
came to Cyprus to face. Like Iago has done repeatedly, Othello casts doubt on
his Christianity and on his very humanity, reducing himself to a dog. In
effect, Othello tells both onlookers and audience that he sees his fall not as
the mistake of a good man, but as the victory of some depraved, inner nature
inherently linked to his identity as a foreigner and a Black man over the
civilized, Venetian general he had tried to become. He makes his last act as
Venice’s defender to kill himself and thereby end the threat. Where before the
color prejudice leveled against Othello has been bordering on casual—such as
the Duke’s remark about Othello being “far more fair than black,” still
implicitly linking the general’s skin tone to depravity even while praising the
man himself (1.3.331)—this is overt, violent, and explicitly xenophobic. Just a
few lines before this, Iago falls silent at last. “From this time forth I never
will speak word,” he says, a seemingly lackluster ending for a character with
more lines than even the play’s hero (5.2.356). And yet, the irony is that Iago
does not need to speak further. If
his goal is to incite open bigotry and violence in those around him, to infect
others with his prejudicial language, then Othello’s final speech is his
greatest victory, for Othello here speaks that hatred for him.
Iago’s
prejudice and hatred destroy not only Othello’s life and reputation, but his
own self-image. They make him into the monster Iago wanted him to be, to his
own eyes and those of the world around him. Likewise, his misogyny is the virus
that sends Othello into a fevered rage, killing her and destroying her
marriage. In the end, it does not matter that Iago cedes his voice and is
dragged off for torture and death, for his damage has been done, and the
hateful ideas and language he espoused now live on in others. There is no one
left alive onstage by the end who understands just how deep Iago’s manipulation
went, and so there is no one who can parse the truth from the tainted version
of it he has planted. The pathogen continues, carried back to Venice in
Othello’s final story of a man who could not reconcile the content of his
character with the color of his skin, rather than the story of a man skillfully
manipulated into things previously unthinkable.
Works Cited
Shakespeare,
William. Othello. Edited by Alvin B. Kernan, Signet Classics, 1998.
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