Will the Real Iago Please Stand Up?

Read through the list below of possible interpretations of Iagos character and role which have been
suggested over the years.
Tick the ones you find plausible. Add any you think are missing.
For the rejected ones, say why you do not consider them convincing.
Write notes for the ticked choices to support the interpretation, referring to events or giving short
quotations.
Group the ticked choices under headings. Are your groups compatible with each other or mutually
exclusive?
Write a half-page summary of your composite view of Iago, explaining any apparent
contradictions.

1. Nature' s number two, he is, like Satan, deeply resentful of his subordinate position and his pride
prevents him from accepting second place to anyone in any context.
2. An anti-Romantic agent and force for realism whose mission is to expose fictionality and its
delusions, which include love.
3. The critic unable to refrain from finding fault with everything and everyone and without a good word
to say.
4. The arch-villain, a consummate professional who takes pleasure and pride in his efficient destructive
skills, his quick-thinking, manipulation, and organization.
5. Sick with self-love, an egotist who thinks that the world revolves around him and that he is the best
thing in it.
6. The bored soldier who after 9 months in the city among those he does not consider real men is
looking for a challenge and some action.
7. Vice figure of medieval morality play whose plan is to lure everyman onto the wrong path, which is
the road to damnation.
8. A personification of envy, one of the seven deadly sins.
9. The malcontent, unable to enjoy anything or to experience happiness, and determined others won't
either; he is particularly provoked by the joy of lovers.
10. The working-class hero fighting against elitism and privileges from which people of his background
are excluded: money, literature, education, social graces.
11. Epitome of the hypocrite, humble and pleasant in public, diabolically scheming in private, and unable
to be detected by anyone.
12. Victim of his own monstrous plan; he starts something which grows beyond his control and devours
him too.
13. Having suffered from jealousy himself, he spreads the poison so that he does not suffer alone, passing
on his paranoid fear of his wifes imagined infidelity.
14. Cool, controlled and cunning, the unfeeling intellectual determined to prove that everyone is a fool
but him, and who must pursue his experiments and theories to their logical conclusion.
15. The child who can never grow up, immaturely wanting what he can't have and destroying what he has
in a temper, unable to understand the complex and subtle behavior of adults.
16. Formerly an admirer of Othello but devastated by being rejected and therefore turning his love to
hate.
17. Confused to the point of insanity so that he cannot give coherent reasons or consistent arguments or
even remember previous allegations.
18. A psychotic driven to kill, escalating from strangers on a battlefield to his wife in a bedroom.
19. The cynic: everything is worthless fake and corrupt, so morals or standards are pointless.
20. An honest man who believes it is his job to expose hypocrisy in others. He believes he is the only
 person able to see humans for the low creatures they really are.
21. A committed misogynist who sees women as the enemy to men's peace of mind and the cause of all
problems.
22. A misanthropic hater of all things human because he has been let down.
23. The Turk, the barbarian, the infidel, who has no remorse about committing atrocities and is an enemy
of the Venetian state.
24. The director of the play, controlling the staging, the performance of actions, and the delivery of
speeches.
25. The playwrighta Shakespearewho creates the script out of his own mind and decides on the plot,
the characters, the themes, and the language of the play.
26. Just an ordinary man, a representative of human nature: complex, contradictory, and unfathomable.
27. A player of games, a chess master for whom games and winning are more important than reality.
28. A hardened soldier, with no capacity for pity, having spent his life in the killing trade.
29. Possessed by an evil spirit and therefore not in control of his thoughts, actions, or speech.
30. The devil incarnate, committed to evil and at war with goodness, whose self-appointed role is to
outwit Christian heroes and win souls to send to hell.
31. A loser and failure who suffers from an inferiority complex and feels compelled to try to prove
himself.
32. A sadist who enjoys inflicting pain and who delights in destruction.
33. The epitome of arrogance, the hubristic over-reacher who aims too high too confidently, and is
eventually brought down.
34. The traitor within the gates, who abuses a position of trust to destroy the holy citadel from within.
35. The Machiavelli, a cunning pursuer of political advantage through ruthless and amoral self-interest.
36. The personification of opposition, being against everything: learning, beauty, marriage, nobility,
religion, reputation, and human values in general.
37. An egomaniac in love with power for its own sake.
38. A disintegrating force seeking to create division and cause the breakdown of social and cosmic order
and a return to chaos.
39. A materialist and pragmatist: only what can be seen and used has reality and value.
40. The un-maker who destroys in two days what was created in seven, declaring let there be darkness.
41. A too clever, trickster figure of classical comedy, who works against and outwits his master, while
deceiving him with a show of loyalty and receiving praise for it.
42. An outsider and second-class citizen in patrician Venice, who is not treated as an equal for reasons of
occupation, social background, and lack of wealth.
43. The Italian stage villain stereotype, devious, false and with hidden daggers, but with a veneer of
openness and charm, and a line of suggestive banter.
44. The opportunist, a finder of occasions, who cannot resist a chance presented to him on a silver
plate to advance himself.
45. A catalyst for turning good into evil and bringing to the surface the hidden faults and vices of others.