Sunday Morning! “Othello” by William Shakespeare

Is Iago a psychopath?

Recently, me and my girlfriend attended the actor Patrick Page’s one-man show: “All the Devils are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain” which did a great deal to humanize and flesh out some of Shakespeare’s greatest evil-doers, from Malvolio to Richard III, through the living medium of an accomplished performer who has dedicated himself to these texts throughout his life. (And, as an aside, what a grand life that would be!)

One of the things Page recalls during the show is when he spent a year preparing to play Iago in a production of Othello, and the director advised him to read up about psychopathy. The notion that Iago, the trusted military subordinate whose deceit brings down his commander, is at root a psychopath is not a completely new interpretation of the character, but before that, I think the inclination would have been to see him as a “Machiavel”. The play is directed entirely by the machinations of the schemer, and its central tragedy is a great warrior trusts someone he shouldn’t and distrusts someone he should.

What makes “honest Iago” so compelling is he doesn’t follow any of the ordinary rules of decent behavior or even mean anything he says. At one point, he mouths pretty nonsense about one’s name and reputation, and later calls reputation “an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving.” Iago just wants what he wants: to destroy his superior, the great Moorish warrior Othello.

Oh, he has his reasons; they’re just not very convincing. The play actually starts with Iago telling us that he hates Othello for passing him over for a promotion in favor of the handsome aristocrat Cassio, who hasn’t got the seniority. Fair enough. But it doesn’t really seem that Iago would have been any more loyal with the higher rank. He’ll later say he thinks that Othello has seduced his wife, Emilia- Cassio he accuses too- but it’s almost an afterthought- I hate him and he cuckolded me, which likely isn’t true either. At another point, Iago suggests his problem is with Moors in general- and then quickly forgets this as well. None of his explanations hold any more weight than all of his incessant talk about his supposedly strong character.

The only convincing reasoning for why Iago hates, and deceives and destroys, Othello- and Cassio and Rodrigo- is because it’s in his nature to do so. Psychopath or snake, haters will hate.

Othello has plenty of haters. As the play begins, he has seduced and married the beautiful Desdemona, enraging her father, a Venetian Senator. The wealthy Rodrigo hates the great warrior for the same reason- he got the girl. Meanwhile, he’s a Moor, a Muslim from North Africa, which puts him at a distinct social disadvantage- there’s a bit of the “upstart” here. He has risen to the top because Othello is a great military commander and Venice needs those at the moment to keep the Turks from taking Cyprus. And so, as the play begins, things are good for Othello- much better than his haters would have it.

Nevertheless, he will be utterly ruined within a few days of his marriage.

Iago’s elaborate scheme is designed to convince his supposed friend and commander that his new wife has cheated on him with the handsome Cassio, which drives him completely out of his wits. Partly, this is because Othello is a fighter, not a lover. The skills that have made him a great military leader- snap decisions and quick aggression- are what make him a terrible husband.

It’s also an old story in patriarchal cultures- the warrior can rise to the highest ranks of society and still be brought to ruin by his wife’s wayward behavior, or even the suggestion that she was untrue. In an age before paternity tests and the Maury Povich show, this focus on female chastity might have made sense for parentage and lineage. As the American soul singer Swamp Dogg put it, “Mamma’s baby” is “Daddy’s maybe.”

But it’s also a neurotic sort of culture that constructs social and familial structures around the obsessive fear that a wife might cuckold her husband. It’s nonetheless a theme that returns again and again in literature of the Christian west. Masculinity is apparently fragile enough to be completely deflated, destroyed and totally discredited by a stray kiss. The first epic of our literature is about an empire brought low by a promiscuous wife, after all, and it’s a fear that persists in drama, not to mention quite a bit of erotica.

Shakespeare understands the absurdity of all this and pokes fun when Emilia chides Desdemona for thinking no wife would ever stray. But the farce returns as tragedy- it’s his own insane jealousy that destroys Othello and the innocent Desdemona; Iago simply lit the match. Taking account of all he’s destroyed, Othello famously says he loved “not wisely, but too well.” This is, of course, self-deception to equal all the other deception in the play. If it wasn’t for the schemer, it likely would have been something else. Jealous men are a persistent threat to the survival of the species. And a real drag. Ultimately, patriarchy was the psychopath in this story.

And so, it’s been a while! What are YOU reading, playing, pondering, creating, watching, or loving too much this weekend?