In Defence of Iago
Alright. 8 pm and time to type.
I figured for the first proper blog away from my introduction, I’d get pretentious. Really pretentious.
Let’s talk Shakespeare.
A thought occurred to me the other day while preparing for a class. I was teaching Othello to a class of uninterested Year 11s (16 year olds). Boy it’s a struggle.
These were the top non-Lit kiddies. Unit 2B. (Course of Study – look it up and weep.) So I thought it wouldn’t be a bad choice of text. Sure there’s none of the blood or violence of Romeo and Juliet, or MacBeth, or Titus Andronicus, but at least there was manipulation, betrayal, duplicity and sex. It was basically high school life with blank verse. (And yes, I know there is O. We watch it tomorrow.)
They just don’t get it though. It’s as if the kids place up a barrier the moment they hear “Shakespeare” and think that it’s much too hard – even when Shakespeare’s using words they know. These are Catholic kids dammit! At least once a week they say The Lord’s Prayer in Early Modern English with the thys and thees, but they still don’t get it.
But that’s a side issue, in here to chew up time before my hour is up.
What I realised was (and if you haven’t read Othello you may as well tune out now): Iago isn’t the villain. Othello is the tragedy of Iago. Iago is Macbeth without the opening Act to construct him as the good bloke he so obviously was.
How?
1. Everybody claims Iago to be an honest fellow. Yes, he is manipulative, but his reputation is known far and wide by everyone. They all comment on it. How could not one person have suspicions of Iago before the play opens, unless Iago either: was planning this his entire life (unlikely); or he truly was honest at some stage?
2. Iago fought beside Othello for years. Othello trusted him enough to be his ancient and fight beside him. Yet he overlooks him as the lieutenant for some mathematician who’d never fought a battle before. You’d be a little pissed off wouldn’t you? What would the reaction be in the 17th Century when honour was all people lived for? (Yes a broad generalisation, but it was pretty important.)
3. At one stage, it can be reasoned, Iago truly loved and trusted Othello. At the end of the first Act he says to the audience (or himself): “it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets/He has done my office: I know not if't be true;” How can a guy dismiss these rumours so off-handedly if he didn’t hold Othello in such a high regard that he couldn’t possibly dream that his boss would cuckold him? He obviously ignored it and only recalled it (and used it later as motivation) when Othello proved to be such a treacherous bastard himself.
4. The hanky. A colleague argued that I couldn’t just ignore the hanky, the MacGuffin that finally pushes Othello into madness. Iago (according to Emelia) had always been begging for it. She (my colleague, that is) says this proves that Iago had been planning this for years. Au contraire. (Geez. As if talking about Shakespeare isn’t pretentious enough, I’m now throwing in French.) In that same soliloquy I quoted earlier, Iago is wondering about how to really get to Othello and decides then that he should make Othello believe Desdemona’s cheating on him. Iago says later that he’s always wanted the hanky so he can copy the pattern on it for Emelia. What’s to say that wasn’t true?
5. Even Aaron in Titus Andronicus had more than two dimensions. Shakespeare did not write villains who were villains for the sake of being villains. Iago appears to be a complete bastard. Is it not out of the realm of reason that he could be played in a sympathetic manner, insofar as MacBeth can be sympathetic? Iago was a loyal soldier, who waits and waits and waits for some recognition, and when the opportunity of a promotion comes up, it goes to a politician who has never risked his life. He snaps, and attacks Othello – not directly – but by trying to get him in trouble for doing something – if not illegal, at the very least immoral: eloping with a senator’s daughter. When this doesn’t work he then tries to get him to feel what Iago himself feels – the betrayal of someone who he thought he trusted. Of course, like all Shakespeare’s protagonists, he oversteps his bounds and goes nuts, but for a moment there, Iago could be a person to cheer.
It’s a thought that at least interested me for a while.
That’s why so many stories suck, but Shakespeare’s holds up. A villain being villainous “just ‘coz” isn’t interesting. This is why Magneto being in charge of the “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” or “The Masters of Evil” never worked as villain names for me. Who thinks of themselves as evil? Does Saddam Hussein or George W really sit there cackling in their palaces about how delightfully eeeevil they are? Of course they don’t because everybody is the hero in their own lives. They like to think they’re doing what is right. And there’s nothing scarier or interesting than a villain who thinks they’re the good guys. (Read I Am Legend for a great take on this.)
A good writer knows this and always takes this into account.
12 minutes to go.
I was sure this one would last longer. It was stewing away in my head for a while so I was sure I’d have at least an hour’s worth of stuff to do. But I’m tired and still have stuff to do, so I figure I may have forgotten stuff.
I guess I should have called this blog ‘the hour challenge’ but I didn’t consider the fact that, hey an hour of writing shit is harder than you’d think? I’ve actually gotten up twice for a minute or two already – once to sort out my girls, and once to double-check what ‘ancient’ was (it’s the rank one below lieutenant).
But I couldn’t resist the chance to name it after my favourite Shakespeare quote. (It will be a tattoo very soon.) Have you figured it out yet? Quick, look at it again and think. It’s from Hamlet, does that help? It was quoted in A Nightmare in Elm Street. Nope?
“I could be bound within a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I had bad dreams.”
4 minutes to go.
I have to start typing now so my wife stops talking to me. (It’s not as bad as it sounds, she’s telling me off about some ex-girlfriend stuff. Okay that did sound bad.)
3 minutes to go.
And yes it did take a minute typing that last block. I’m a shocking typist. So bad that in uni, when I had to go over a mate’s place to write essays, they came up with a joke: what goes ‘tap, tap, tap, fuck, tap tap tap shit, tap tap tap fuck? Me, typing an essay.
And that might not transfer well to the computer screen. But at least, if I type this last sentence really, really, really slowly…
That is the hour.
I figured for the first proper blog away from my introduction, I’d get pretentious. Really pretentious.
Let’s talk Shakespeare.
A thought occurred to me the other day while preparing for a class. I was teaching Othello to a class of uninterested Year 11s (16 year olds). Boy it’s a struggle.
These were the top non-Lit kiddies. Unit 2B. (Course of Study – look it up and weep.) So I thought it wouldn’t be a bad choice of text. Sure there’s none of the blood or violence of Romeo and Juliet, or MacBeth, or Titus Andronicus, but at least there was manipulation, betrayal, duplicity and sex. It was basically high school life with blank verse. (And yes, I know there is O. We watch it tomorrow.)
They just don’t get it though. It’s as if the kids place up a barrier the moment they hear “Shakespeare” and think that it’s much too hard – even when Shakespeare’s using words they know. These are Catholic kids dammit! At least once a week they say The Lord’s Prayer in Early Modern English with the thys and thees, but they still don’t get it.
But that’s a side issue, in here to chew up time before my hour is up.
What I realised was (and if you haven’t read Othello you may as well tune out now): Iago isn’t the villain. Othello is the tragedy of Iago. Iago is Macbeth without the opening Act to construct him as the good bloke he so obviously was.
How?
1. Everybody claims Iago to be an honest fellow. Yes, he is manipulative, but his reputation is known far and wide by everyone. They all comment on it. How could not one person have suspicions of Iago before the play opens, unless Iago either: was planning this his entire life (unlikely); or he truly was honest at some stage?
2. Iago fought beside Othello for years. Othello trusted him enough to be his ancient and fight beside him. Yet he overlooks him as the lieutenant for some mathematician who’d never fought a battle before. You’d be a little pissed off wouldn’t you? What would the reaction be in the 17th Century when honour was all people lived for? (Yes a broad generalisation, but it was pretty important.)
3. At one stage, it can be reasoned, Iago truly loved and trusted Othello. At the end of the first Act he says to the audience (or himself): “it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets/He has done my office: I know not if't be true;” How can a guy dismiss these rumours so off-handedly if he didn’t hold Othello in such a high regard that he couldn’t possibly dream that his boss would cuckold him? He obviously ignored it and only recalled it (and used it later as motivation) when Othello proved to be such a treacherous bastard himself.
4. The hanky. A colleague argued that I couldn’t just ignore the hanky, the MacGuffin that finally pushes Othello into madness. Iago (according to Emelia) had always been begging for it. She (my colleague, that is) says this proves that Iago had been planning this for years. Au contraire. (Geez. As if talking about Shakespeare isn’t pretentious enough, I’m now throwing in French.) In that same soliloquy I quoted earlier, Iago is wondering about how to really get to Othello and decides then that he should make Othello believe Desdemona’s cheating on him. Iago says later that he’s always wanted the hanky so he can copy the pattern on it for Emelia. What’s to say that wasn’t true?
5. Even Aaron in Titus Andronicus had more than two dimensions. Shakespeare did not write villains who were villains for the sake of being villains. Iago appears to be a complete bastard. Is it not out of the realm of reason that he could be played in a sympathetic manner, insofar as MacBeth can be sympathetic? Iago was a loyal soldier, who waits and waits and waits for some recognition, and when the opportunity of a promotion comes up, it goes to a politician who has never risked his life. He snaps, and attacks Othello – not directly – but by trying to get him in trouble for doing something – if not illegal, at the very least immoral: eloping with a senator’s daughter. When this doesn’t work he then tries to get him to feel what Iago himself feels – the betrayal of someone who he thought he trusted. Of course, like all Shakespeare’s protagonists, he oversteps his bounds and goes nuts, but for a moment there, Iago could be a person to cheer.
It’s a thought that at least interested me for a while.
That’s why so many stories suck, but Shakespeare’s holds up. A villain being villainous “just ‘coz” isn’t interesting. This is why Magneto being in charge of the “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” or “The Masters of Evil” never worked as villain names for me. Who thinks of themselves as evil? Does Saddam Hussein or George W really sit there cackling in their palaces about how delightfully eeeevil they are? Of course they don’t because everybody is the hero in their own lives. They like to think they’re doing what is right. And there’s nothing scarier or interesting than a villain who thinks they’re the good guys. (Read I Am Legend for a great take on this.)
A good writer knows this and always takes this into account.
12 minutes to go.
I was sure this one would last longer. It was stewing away in my head for a while so I was sure I’d have at least an hour’s worth of stuff to do. But I’m tired and still have stuff to do, so I figure I may have forgotten stuff.
I guess I should have called this blog ‘the hour challenge’ but I didn’t consider the fact that, hey an hour of writing shit is harder than you’d think? I’ve actually gotten up twice for a minute or two already – once to sort out my girls, and once to double-check what ‘ancient’ was (it’s the rank one below lieutenant).
But I couldn’t resist the chance to name it after my favourite Shakespeare quote. (It will be a tattoo very soon.) Have you figured it out yet? Quick, look at it again and think. It’s from Hamlet, does that help? It was quoted in A Nightmare in Elm Street. Nope?
“I could be bound within a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I had bad dreams.”
4 minutes to go.
I have to start typing now so my wife stops talking to me. (It’s not as bad as it sounds, she’s telling me off about some ex-girlfriend stuff. Okay that did sound bad.)
3 minutes to go.
And yes it did take a minute typing that last block. I’m a shocking typist. So bad that in uni, when I had to go over a mate’s place to write essays, they came up with a joke: what goes ‘tap, tap, tap, fuck, tap tap tap shit, tap tap tap fuck? Me, typing an essay.
And that might not transfer well to the computer screen. But at least, if I type this last sentence really, really, really slowly…
That is the hour.
posted by Nutshell King at 3:43 AM
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