Iago I Shall Never Speak Again
Past Rod Beecham
From the product of Othello, at Pop-up Globe, Melbourne, October 2017. Photograph by Jennifer Mitchell
[The secondary literature on Shakespeare is unmanageably vast, and what follows does not pretend to be informed by information technology. I am simply recording some thoughts I've had from didactics Othello in 2017.]
Othello, different Shakespeare's other major tragedies, is a play in which the title character does non have the most lines. That distinction belongs to the villain, Iago. As those familiar with the play know, voice communication is the medium of Iago's villainy: he furthers his designs through dialogue rather than action. I take ever been struck, therefore, by his last speech: 'Need me nothing; what you know, you know. / From this time forth I never will speak give-and-take.' (Five.i.300-01).
What is the significance of Iago's silence? He tells his outraged listeners: 'what you know, you know.' What do they know? I take Iago to mean that what he has done has been discovered and, that being the example, there is null more than to be said. Gratiano responds that, 'Torments will ope your lips' (V.i.303), suggesting that Iago will reveal the reasons for his behaviour under torture, but we in the audience who have followed the action cannot believe that, for what more is in that location for Iago to reveal? He made 'the internet / That shall enmesh them all' (II.iii.339-40) out of his own green-eyed and spite, and these are not feelings that can exist assigned to specific causes: they are the essence of his nature. Iago did what he did considering he was Iago.
His silence, therefore, points to something profound and unsettling: that nosotros cannot attribute explicable motivations to human behaviour, that destructive, anti-social behaviour simply is and cannot exist traced to identifiable causes which, if discovered, would allow the possibility of remedy. Is this what Shakespeare meant?
One might argue that Iago provides the audience with reasons for his behaviour. He resents Cassio'due south promotion and he thinks that Othello may take slept with his wife. Only his references to these motives are brief and sporadic, and they do not explain the misery his schemes inflict on Desdemona, towards whom he does not display any personal antagonism at all. Iago'southward lack of passion has often been remarked upon, and it is a significant point to bear in mind when we first looking for explanations of his behaviour. A character driven by resentment or by sexual jealousy would be consumed with passion, but the impression Iago leaves on the audience is one of calculating manipulation. If he exhibits any genuine emotion at all, it is enjoyment of his own cunning. Torments, we feel, will not open up his lips because he has nothing further to reveal.
Which brings us to the significance of speech. Iago'due south terminal lines imply that speech, in his view, has become futile. Everything that happened was driven by speech, then he appears to feel that, at present he has been unmasked, there is naught more worth maxim.
The significance of speech is introduced at the very beginning of Othello. The play opens in the middle of an statement between Roderigo and Iago, in which Iago exclaims, 'you volition not hear me' (I.i.4), while Roderigo complains, 'Chiliad told'st me' (I.i.vii). As the audience rapidly learns, 'I said-yous said' is the central dynamic of the activity. Iago expresses contempt for Cassio, newly appointed as Othello's lieutenant (a position Iago feels should have been his), labelling Cassio'southward soldiership, 'Mere prattle without practice' (I.i.26). Nosotros learn that Iago regards his own experience on active service every bit far more than valuable than Cassio'south theoretical study of war, and that he attributes Cassio's elevation to the ability of 'letter and affection' (I.i.36); that is, personal recommendation and influence. Iago, thereby, is established equally a character who considers deeds to count for much less than words.
The consequences of this belief for Iago'southward behaviour, and signs that his belief is non unreasonable, become quickly apparent. The adjacent scene presents Iago giving his own version of his conversation with Roderigo to Othello: 'he prated / And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms / Against your honour' (I.ii.vi-8). Ironically, Othello considers that his services to the country – his deeds, in other words – will protect him from ill-fortune (I.ii.18-24, 31-2), but, equally the activity proceeds, nosotros realize that non deeds but words are Othello'due south best protection. It is his speech to the Senate that saves him from Brabantio's wrath, not the memory of his prior service, and, as Othello himself explains, it was speech that drew Desdemona to him, the dilation of his pilgrimage, his 'story' (I.iii.153, 157).
Iago'due south sensation of the effectiveness of speech communication as an instrument is evident in his 2d conversation with Roderigo towards the end of Act I. 'I have professed me thy friend', he says (I.iii.332), and, 'I accept told thee / oft, and I retell thee again and again, I hate the Moor.' (I.iii.357-58). Embedded in his spoken communication, we come across, are references to the act of speech. He does not say, 'I am your friend': he says, 'I have alleged myself your friend.' He does non say, 'I hate Othello': he says, 'I have told you that I hate Othello.' In the soliloquy that concludes the starting time Deed, Iago says that he will 'abuse Othello's ear' (I.iii.386); that is, he will exploit the power of voice communication to influence Othello'due south perception. In Iago'due south view, speech does not mediate the truth, information technology constructs the truth.
There is an obvious connection with this view and the notion of personal reputation, a theme with which all readers of the play will be familiar. When Cassio is cashiered in Act II he is distraught over his loss of reputation, 'the immortal part' of himself (Two.iii.246). Iago himself tells Othello that, 'Good name in man and woman, love my lord, / Is the firsthand jewel of their souls.' (III.three.156-57). Iago, of course, does not really believe this – he expressed a contemptuous view of reputation to Cassio in Act Ii (II.ii.251-54) – but he knows that it is a valuable commodity in the globe and can to a large extent be created or destroyed by speech (we recall that he attributed Cassio's original promotion to reputation rather than to inherent ability). He therefore deploys speech communication to destroy the reputations of Cassio, Othello and Desdemona, trading cynically on his ain reputation for honesty, which he knows is undeserved—a knowledge that adds to his contempt for his victims.
Lest this announced speculative, consider Iago's cursory soliloquy in the heart of the temptation scene, immediately prior to the reappearance of Othello.
The Moor already changes with my poison:
Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste
But, with a little human action upon the blood,
Burn similar the mines of sulphur. I did say and so.
(III.iii.326-xxx)
Iago conceives, not merely here but elsewhere in the play, of his words equally 'poisonous substance', capable of distorting perception, generating thoughts that grow over time until they have taken complete possession of a person. 'I did say so', he concludes, a remark capable of several interpretations but which, in all, reduces to the essential point that spoken communication of and in itself is capable of constructing a person's sense of reality.
Iago's ultimate silence represents the defeat of this view, simply the incomprehension of his accusers – 'Torments will ope your lips' – suggests that they take completely missed the significance of that silence, and that by looking for motives for Iago's behaviour they are unwittingly allowing scope for hereafter Iagos to replicate the successes of the main. The world of the play is ane in which, on the footing of spoken communication alone, a character can say, 'Now do I run into 'tis true.' (III.three.445). In this sense, Othello may exist regarded as the bleakest of all Shakespeare's tragedies—and, in our electric current historic period of spin, the most prophetic.
Rod Beecham was educated at Monash and Oxford and took his doctorate from the Academy of Melbourne. He is currently preparing a biography of the poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe. Rod is a Literature Lecturer in the Trinity College Foundation Studies Programme.
Source: https://steepstairs.wordpress.com/2017/11/29/iagos-silence/
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