the Moor’s “joy” to “vexation” meets substantial resistance, realizing his worst
fears that the Moor “in a fertile climate dwell[s]” ( 1. 1. 70 – 72 ). For starters, Iago
must actively convince Roderigo that he really does “hold” the Moor in “hate,”
that he is not “in any just term” “assigned / To love the Moor” ( 1. 1. 38 – 39 ).
While Roderigo does dismiss Othello as the “thick-lips,” he does not dismiss
the possibility that Iago’s loyalty lies with the Moor, as, in “terms” of service, of
servant to master, it should.^38 Iago must go to great lengths—must even insist
that he is not who he is—to prove that his “outward action” is not what it
seems and that his apparent, obsequious service to the Moor is instead a calcu-
lated subversion ( 1. 1. 61 ). Even then, Roderigo has reason to doubt: one of the
great ironies of the play is that Iago’s destruction of the Moor is at least partly
driven by a desire to serve as his lieutenant in Cassio’s stead.^39
Notably too, although Iago’s attacks against the Moor end in stereotype,
they do not start there. Neither an automatic nor an assured recourse, the lan-
guage of what we might call high racism emerges within a cacophony of im-
promptu activity, improvised in the face of uncertain success and having only
questionable effect. At first Iago targets only Othello’s military demeanor, not
his Moorish features: he faults the Moor for “loving his own pride and pur-
poses,” being “horribly stuffed with epithets of war,” and using “a bombast
circumstance” to evade and “non-suit” the mediators speaking for Iago’s promo-
tion to lieutenant ( 1. 1. 11 – 13 , 15 ). These slights do little to satisfy, incite, or even
interest Roderigo, who barely engages with Iago’s claims and who remains skep-
tical of Iago’s intentions.^40 Taking his cue from Brabantio’s house (which the
two seem to approach as much by chance as by design), Iago abandons his po-
litical argument entirely and locates transgression in the domestic space, which
is more pertinent to Roderigo’s libidinous cause. At this point, he involves a new
player, the betrayed father Brabantio, who is more influential and more legiti-
mately aggrieved than either Iago or Roderigo can claim to be and who can both
absorb and promote Roderigo’s animosities better than Iago can or, it seems,
would. Appropriating the new setting, Iago directs Roderigo to
Call up her father:
Rouse him, make after him, poison hisdelight,
Proclaim himin the street. Incense her kinsmen,
And, though hein a fertile climate dwell,
Plague himwith flies: though that hisjoy be joy,
Yet throw such chances of vexation on’t
As it may lose some colour. ( 1. 1. 67 – 73 ; emphasis added)164 chapter seven