Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self 151
From the point where Othello says farewell to his spirit’s tranquility,
Iago has won. He has won the battle of mind, and all that is left is to
claim the joys of victory, witnessing the complete humiliation and
near madness of the heroic individual.
Who is Iago? He is Shakespeare’s character (and anti- character) to
be sure. He is a brilliant invention of the playwright. But there come
points in the play where we see another dimension. We encounter
moments when playwright and character seem to merge, and Iago’s
voice might almost as well be Shakespeare’s. As Stephen Greenblatt
and Stanley Edgar Hyman have seen, there is something theatrical in
Iago’s temperament. “In Othello,” Greenblatt says, “Shakespeare
seems to acknowledge, represent and explore his affi nity to the mali-
cious improviser” (Re nais sance Self- Fashioning, 252).
At moments, Iago broods on the plot against Othello in terms that
the playwright could easily use brooding on the plot of his play—
at the heart of which is the plot against Othello. Iago can sometimes
sound like the playwright in mid- draft, full of doubts and aspira-
tions. All through the play, we hear Iago plotting aloud, and fre-
quently he is not quite sure how he is going to bait and place his
traps. He’ll go free- form, he tells us, extemporize, take what circum-
stances give him:
Cassio’s a proper man. Let’s see now:
To get his place and to plume up my will
In double knavery— How? how?— Let’s see—
After some time to abuse Othello’s [ear]
That he is too familiar with his wife.
(I.iii.391–395)“Tis here,” Iago says, later on, after he’s been considering the course
of his plot (and Shakespeare’s), “but yet confus’d / Knavery’s plain
face is never seen till us’d” (II.i.311–312).