What Iago Knew

This paper defines Iago as a master of time. He knows the future, or, even better put, he is able to foresee it quite brilliantly. Such an ability is typical of a Melancholy character, which, as known, can be a veritable villain. Iago instinctively knows that Desdemona will come to grow weary of the Blackamoor, and he detects her attraction to the young, handsome, and white Cassio. As head and meta-theatrical director, Iago sets out to compress time, and so exert pressure on the other characters. As a result, what would normally take place over a longer stretch of time, becomes quickly contracted in the space of a play. Moreover, considering how the ‘future’ is brought forward, the present appears more ambivalent. From Iago’s point of view, is Desdemona a potential or an inevitable adulteress? To think the worst is, for the villain, to think realistically. Seeing time as following the rules of trivial consistency and verisimilitude (rendering the future predictable), makes it perfectly natural for Iago to consider Desdemona as an unfaithful woman, and Cassio, a coxcomb who plays around with other men’s wives. Furthermore, the Moor is Black, and despite his “fairness”, he will soon become a bad Negro again. Time will prove me right, Iago meditates. Thus, he zips time to triumph further and faster. The last section of the essay is dedicated to the occurrences of the word time in the play, with specific commentaries under the shadow of the secular exegesis, and in line with the critical assumptions made. Finally, in the discussion, the darker side of Iago is also explored, with careful assessment of the extensive bibliography on the subject.


Introduction
On the 'glorious' stage of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, the figures of the male lovers often become avengers, very often due to the women appearing to be loose or fornicators. 'Tis pity she's a whore is one of the most famous titles among the plays of John Ford (printed in 1633), requiring no further comment. Perhaps the most well-known example of such a scenario has been seen in Othello by Shakespeare (1603Shakespeare ( -1604, (Note 1) a paradigmatic case of foolish jealousy. Indeed, the common interpretation (Note 2) of this tragedy has been crystallised into seeing first, Desdemona as the unhappy, honest wife of the Moor, whom she loves with her life, then, the noble Othello as a passionate lover, (Note 3) but, believing her unfaithful through his own weakness, falls into the darkest of jealousies, and, finally, Iago, as an infamous villain, who sins just for sin's sake: the other characters are scarcely smart or definitely stupid, except for Emilia, Iago's spouse, who, in any case, comes to a bad end.
Lay thy finger thus, and let thy soul be instructed. Mark me with what violence she first loved the Moor, but for bragging and telling her fantastical lies. (Note 7) To love him still for prating? let not thy discreet heart think it. Her eye must be fed. And what delight shall she have to look on the devil? When the blood is made dull with the act of sport, (Note 8) there should be a game (Note 9) to inflame it and (to give satiety a fresh appetite) loveliness in favour, sympathy in years, manners and beauties-all which the Moor is defective in. Now, for want of these required conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find itself abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor; very nature will instruct her in it and compel her to some second choice. Now, sir, this granted (as it is a most pregnant (Note 10) and unforced position), who stands so eminent in the degree of this fortune, as Cassio does-a knave very voluble, no further conscionable (Note 11) than in putting on the mere form of civil and humane seeming, for the better compassing of his salt (Note 12) and most hidden loose affection? Why none, why none: -a slipper and subtle knave, a finder of occasions, that has an eye can stamp and counterfeit advantages (though true advantage never present itself), a devilish knave! Besides, the knave is handsome, young, and hath all those requisites in him that folly and green minds look after-a pestilent complete knave-and the woman hath found him already [II,i,our italics].

Iago and Cassio
The hatred for Cassio is beyond doubt an acerb feeling nurtured by Iago. Yet, the insults (particularly knave, that unveils the social resentments of the Ensign) shift toward a rancorous admission of the Lieutenant's constant pulchritude and charm, which appear in stark contrast to Iago's unprepossessing qualities: If Cassio do remain, (Note 13) he hath a daily beauty in his life, that makes me ugly [V, I, 18-20).
Some suspect of latent homosexual impulses in Iago have often been proposed (Note 14), with the whole tale of the erotic dream of the bed mate Cassio ("And then, Sir, would he gripe and wring my hand, / cry 'O, sweet creature!', and then kiss me hard, / as if he plucked up kisses by the roots / that grew upon my lips, then laid his leg / over my thigh", II, III, 422-426) being certainly an image of grotesque homoerotism, something which induces feelings of horror in the Moor. Also, the particular of the handkerchief Iago confesses to have seen "Cassio wipe his beard with" (ibid. p. 440) appears risible, but Othello at this point is no longer fair (Note 15) and pure, but radically black, and sees everything black: "Arise, black Vengeance!" (ibid., p. 447), that is to say, enough about candour, purity and past glory, for I am black (ibid., p. 266). The racial and racist issue in Othello, has tormented many interpreters in the over the years. However, though this aspect cannot be ignored, it may not be a determining factor in fully understanding the tragedy. (Note 16) We suggest that the unlikely (but documented) possibility of a blackamoor becoming a noble condottiero in Venice, despite the racial prejudices and coeval commonplaces, is presented as an actual event at the beginning of the play. Only later on, the bias against Negroes (Note 17) is re-established by the realistic Iago, as confirmed by Othello's brutality. We may dream of a better and more candid world, but we know-Iago knows-how the world effectively works. Something similar appears in the dark comedy Winter's Tale, (Note 18) and in other problem plays by Shakespeare. "Iago invites his audience to take religious virtue as a part of the deluded official vision of human nature. Renaissance audiences must have been open to such materialist arguments and even atheistic opinions", (Note 19) writes Pechter. Underneath the mask of a malignant melancholy evildoer, Iago hides-though not from coeval public-an anti-idealizing acknowledgment of the true nature of human behaviour and the causal deterministic unfolding of events. Truth is pitiless, fiction merely offsetting and destined to vanish. As Ariosto saw Penelope as a whore, rather than the chaste wife poets had been glorifying (Orl. fur. XXXV,27,8), so too, following the pragmatic Weltanschauung by Iago, even sweet Desdemona can be suspected of being a potential harlot...
Coming back to the homoerotic shadow that might exist in Iago, we should first underline the fact that, despite his apparent self confidence, he actually despises himself, harbouring a deep desire to be someone different from himself: "were I the Moor, I would not be Iago" (I, I, 57). We could substitute Moor with Cassio, and it would be the same. The celebre conclusion "I am not what I am" (ibid. p. 65) (Note 20) is not only a declaration of programmatic deceitfulness. It means: I am not what I should be, I do not deserve the tawdriness and ugliness nature has condemned me to wear. In his disdain for the Moor and Cassio, Iago shows an intimate yearning to be like them. Moreover, the ardent desire to be like someone else is on the edge of carnal desire, as we learn from reading Freud or Mishima. (Note 21) In Giraldi Cinthio, the Alfiere was described as both extraordinarily beautiful and weak and perverse. (Note 22) Shakespeare shifts the attribute of beauty from the character of Iago to that of Cassio, and thus transforms even further the figure of the original Cinthian Alfiere into one of the most problematic of his theatrical personages. Even at the beginning of the play, Iago conceals his envy/desire through a virile and soldierly mockery of Cassio's inexperience and delicacy, debauchery and perhaps effeminacy. (Note 23) The tormented line 20 of the first scene of the first act, "a fellow almost damned in a fair wife" (depiction of Cassio by Iago), suggests perhaps a hint of 'womanliness' in the fop Cassio, and if we emended wife in wise the sense would become clearer. (Note 24) 'Effeminating' Cassio, Iago makes him not only a ladies' man but, deep down, a female object tout court, to be humiliated with sharp misogyny and to be lastly penetrated with a sword (V, I). Thus, Iago tries to manage his own grudge and discontent.

An Enduring Problem: Who Is Iago?
Despite being frustrated and secretly a sociopath, Iago is still far brighter than everyone else, and in the speech to Roderigo, he cleverly foresees future events, leaving no doubt as to his keen insight. He has quicky realized that Desdemona has a penchant for the handsome Cassio. Nothing serious, so far, but... frailty, thy name is woman, and every woman is potentially a prostitute, in the Elizabethan Stage. This vitriolic pragmatism of Iago is a rough but true-to-life realism, fruit of an experienced watchfulness of human existence. The fact that Iago himself may be motivated by jealousy, suspecting his own wife of having lied about both the Moor and Cassio (cf. I, III, 375-379; II, I, 286-290, and 298) is barely touched upon in two monologues given by the Ensign, an eye-for-an-eye sort of thing, but this can be overlooked. (Note 25) In the monologue of II, I there is also a hint of desire on Iago's part for Desdemona, "not out of absolute lust" (283), but "revenge". This has no link with the rest of the events, so it may be a sort of relic of the Cinthian plot: in the tale of Hecatommithi, in fact, the Alfiere falls in love with the Moor's wife and, as his love is unrequited, plans his vengeance.
The grudge against Cassio may be more influent, due to his promotion to Lieutenant and, above all, his beauty and charm, in contrast to Iago's ugliness and repugnancy (see above). His fool's paradoxes are evident, for instance, in the scene II, I with Desdemona and Emilia, when he displays misogynist double-entendres and profanities. Here, Iago is such an inexplicable and unfocused character that we may recognize a lustrous paradigm of the incoming Baroque complexity in him. He is a comedic clown, a natural born actor, (Note 26) a dark unblessed kin to Richard III (cheated of feature by dissembling nature), for some-such as Coleridge-a motiveless demon, for others a cool avenger; a Vice or even a Devil; (Note 27) a "self-made devil", or a "practical atheist"; (Note 28) he is the motor of the most tormented Shakespearian tragedy, he is intelligent and audacious, he is an underdog and a "Spartan dog" (Note 29) (5, II, 360), "inhuman dog" (V, I, 62), he is the alter ego of the tragedian, he is a creator, an artist, (Note 30) the shadow of Shakespeare himself, (Note 31) a story-maker, the father of a "monstrous birth" (I, III, 393, wonderful ending of the first act), the metteur en scène of a bloody farce, as Rymer sarcastically wrote, (Note 32) or even better, the director of a terrible domestic play of pitiful players who fret and fro, sliding towards death.

Aristotelian Character
Nevertheless, the real matter resides in Iago's brilliant plan concerning time. He connives to compress events, which should normally have entailed years to occur, into a couple of days, at the very most. (Note 33) He can be seen as an Aristotelian (dark!) character. To obtain this compression (Note 34) (fuelled by hatred, resentment and so on), Iago must work feigning, and bluffing everybody into doing exactly what he wants. Operating this way, he does not distort the nature and the destinies of his marionettes, but just speeds up a story that would have in any case unfolded in the same way. He is the puppeteer director, he is the motor, but he does not invent anything. Because he knows.
The total love of Othello for Desdemona is pure but fragile. Iago cultivates Othello's obsession, while contaminating Desdemona's chastity, (Note 35) allowing him to get Othello to shift his view of his wife from an angelical creature to that of a "lewd minx" (III, III, 475). The term honesty suffers many reversals during the play The repugnance of Othello for the new shape of his consort arises in a series of revolting images, (Note 37) the quote above being only one example. It is not easy to explain those verses: Desdemona's honesty is sarcastically compared to the flies that invade a slaughterhouse in a sweltering summer. With respect to the hard line 66, we can attempt a paraphrase: the flies get fatter, or become pregnant, even laying their eggs in the flesh. (Note 38) However, there is no hermeneutical certainty. (Note 39) Surely, Othello sees contortedly, as he sinks into an abyss of desperate revulsion. Iago has brought out the real obsessions of the Moor, merely hastening their coming to the surface. The wisdom of Emilia, Desdemona's maidservant, is shown at IV, III, 79-98, when she explains that women betray their husbands because of them, the husbands being violent, crazily jealous, unfaithful and so on; "Then, let them use us well: else let them know, / the ills we do, their ills instruct us so" (IV, III, 97-98). If the time of the play had not been quickened by the manoeuvres of Iago, would Desdemona have listened to the advice of Emilia? Yes, maybe she would have been persuaded to love another-Cassio of course-such as the "uncompromising" Lucrezia (nomen omen) in the Mandragola by Machiavelli. But time is pressing, and the tragic end is approaching. The disastrous folly of love is not caused by chance circumstances, as in Romeo and Juliet, but is provoked by the deterministic sequence of natural events that Iago has cynically compressed in a shorter time on stage.

Is Desdemona an Adulteress?
The relative time-paradox orchestrated by Iago provokes some curious and stunning superpositions, which become apparently illogic amalgamations. That is to say, future and present temporal overlapping affects identities, though not explicitly. For instance, Desdemona is a true, but also an unfaithful wife: she will undoubtedly be an adulteress in time, according to Iago, but for the active theatrical compression, she is a strumpet now. In the tale of Cinthio, we are told with moral accuracy that Desdemona fell in love with the Moor "tratta non da appetito donnesco, ma dalla virtù del Moro" (Note 40) ("impelled not by female appetite but by the Moor's virtue"). In the great scene of the Senate (I, III As in Cinthio, here we learn that the ardour of Brabantio's daughter for the Black warlord is not out of lust, but admiration for his innate qualities. However, reading the lectio of the Folio; the first Quarto had "utmost pleasure" in the place of "very quality" (Note 41) (v. 249). While taking into consideration philologists' choices and debates, we believe the different reading of F is one of its many corrections due to censure. To say publically "My heart's subdued / even to the utmost pleasure of my lord" is more problematical for Desdemona than in F's speech. To consider the utmost pleasure as something different from the total desire of the Moor, including his sexual satisfaction till the culmination of that pleasure, is ignoring the nuances of coeval theatrical expressions. Then, apart from the spiritual love for Othello, Desdemona feels a-yet not guilty-physical desire for the black man, (Note 42) despite the presumed age gap of 20 years or more: she sees him as powerful and charming, due to his past adventures, and his dark body of negro as an archetypal image of sexual prowess, if not alluring animality. This would explain Iago's acrid answer in the above quoted dialogue to Roderigo's depiction of the maiden "full of most blest conditions": RODERIGO Yes, that I did-but that was but courtesy.

IAGO
Lechery, by this hand-an index and obscure prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts. They met so near with their lips that their breaths embraced together. Villainous thoughts, Roderigo! when these mutualities so marshal the way, hard at hand comes the master and main exercise, th'incorporate conclusion, ( girl's innate penchant for male beauty. Iago himself will cunningly depict Desdemona to Cassio as a generous person who "holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested" (II, III, 308 f.). Desdemona is then almost likened to the Holy Virgin who, according to Dante Alighieri, anticipates the supplication with her immense kindness (see Commedia,Par. XXXIII,[16][17][18][19][20][21]. Iago's hidden sarcasm could not be more evident, though his spiritual portrayal of Othello's wife is quite veracious. Iago seldom says untruths. He plays with reality (like with fire), foreseeing and contracting the events, and not fabricating falsehoods.

Master of Time
How the Ensign adopts the term "prologue" is quite theatrical, and marks just the start of his foreseeing of events, whose enactment he so hastens. Iago can be seen as the life of theatre. His theatre is not innocent, as time is not innocent-time spares no one. The ceremony of innocence is dead. "Innocence may be comfortable, but it is a comfort we [readers and spectators] are never allowed". (Note 46) We could perhaps recover a glimmer of innocence, living a normal time, or even stretching out time, to have more chances for avoiding mistakes. However, in a dimension of condensed time, evil is condensed as well, and with it, brutal effectiveness, that is beyond good and bad, constituting the background/habitat/humus of the transpiring evil. As Hazlitt exquisitely wrote, "Our ancient" [Iago] is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His gaiety, such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has inflicted on others. He is an amateur of tragedy in real life; (Note 47) and instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters or long-forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more desperate course of getting up his plot at home, casts the principal parts among his nearest friends and connections, and rehearses it in downright earnest with steady nerves and unabated resolution. (Note 48) Histrio and capocomico, thus master of time, Iago ensnares actors (acting/living persons) in the trap of a black hole into which he himself eventually falls. A black hole or place of perfect total darkness, where everything collapses, consumed by quickened time-mutism, silence, the final curtain. Iago is the theatre, an art of time which fades into obscurity: a condensed time, a theatrical time, a perfect, albeit narrowed, speculum mundi.

The Word Time
As master of time, Iago actually pronounces this word, time, many times (apologies for the pun), precisely in 14 occurrences (ten in the verses, four in the prose), with regards to the 33 (26 "time", 7 "times") of the whole play.
(Note 49) The word time passes his lips far more than it does for other characters, marking a relative frequency of 0.166 (deem that thy has 0.260, and though 0.154, so the word time is quite well placed). Let us quote and consider only a few passages where Iago pronounces the crucial word: I, I, 31 "He, in good time, must his lieutenant be": naturally referred to Cassio; the form in good time could mean 'indeed' (ironical, expressing amazement, incredulity), (Note 50) but also 'soon, quickly'. I, I, 47 "wears out his time", said about a servant who lives obeying his lord as an ass; the expression is encompassed in the complex Iago's speech that ends with the celebrated "I am not what I am".
I, III, 362-363 "There are many events in the womb of Time / which will be delivered": a fundamental passage, that anticipates the last words of the following monologue (and of the whole first act): "I have't, it is engendered! Hell and night / must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light". In both phrases, we grasp the metaphor of coming into being. Thus, the possible allusion to the motto veritas filia temporis seems less obvious, even though, according to Iago, the truth will actually be (and naturally is) monstrous.
I, III, 384 "after some time to abuse Othello's ears": we see the just above quoted ending of the monologue again "I have't! [...] to the world's light"; here "Iago gives a diabolical twist to the proverb he alluded to at ll. 362-363. Cf. also the related "Time brings the truth to light"". (Note 51) "Some time" indicates the gradualness of Iago's acting; (Note 52) though the stages of his actions are a miniature of the naturally slower flow of time.
II, I, 260-261 "the time shall more favourably minister", with indirect object: "some occasion to anger Cassio". The Machiavellian theme of "occasion" becomes a main theme when Iago trains Roderigo.
II, III, 118 "on some odd time of his infirmity", said malignantly about Cassio; odd means 'casual', 'unexpected', but perhaps 'unavoidable' before or after... The "vice" or "infirmity" of drinking abuse, blamed by Iago on Cassio, will come to the fore in the future, till the whole of Cyprus shakes. In the scene of the fracas, Iago stages IV, I, 88 "But yet keep time in all", addressed now to a "most bloody" Othello; a warning to 'maintain his self control', with a nuance of musical metaphor, but also 'all in good time', spoken in irony since Othello is now overhasty.
V, II, 301-302 "Demand me nothing: what you know you know; / from this time forth I never will speak word", last words of Iago, as everybody knows. Time has ended, the particular time manipulated by Iago. In a way, all the revels end tragically, in darkness and nothingness, as with every final curtain. The last syllable of recorded time stands still.
The meaningful use of time also occurs in the lines of other characters: Here we witness a juncture where it is Desdemona who now yearns to contract time, to exhaust her husband, as she has promised to Cassio: "My lord shall never rest, / I'll watch him tame and talk him out of patience" (III, III, 22-23). We may add that this very promise, and the fulfilment of same represent Desdemona's death sentence. Iago will be concerned as to how to quicken the execution.
III, III, 445 [OTHELLO] "Now do I see 'tis time": "time" Q1; "true" F, Q2. The reading time could appear a little less consistent than true, but what is appealing for us is that time and true come across as adiaphora ('it is time for revenge', or/and 'it is true that Desdemona is a traitress'). In this way, we see Othello has absorbed the poison of Iago and embraced his timeframe, in which the truth is not actually absent, only compressed.
IV, II, 53-55 [OTHELLO] "but alas, to make me / the fixed figure for the scorn of time / to point his slow and moving finger at!". F Q have "time of scorn", Neill emends. (Note 58) Furthermore, instead of "moving", Q1 has "unmoving finger" ("fingers" Q2). Here, the verses are not entirely clear. Othello may be saying 'time mocks me, as he points his slow, and imperceptibly moving finger in my direction'. It may also be possible that "time of scorn" means 'the age of scorn': "We take 'the time of scorn' to be an impersonation of the scornful spirit of the epoch, and alluding to the image of Time which many ancient clocks bore. To our minds the combination 'slow, unmoving' serves exactly to describe the hand of a dial, with its onward-stealing yet apparently still finger; so that, in every way, the idea of the clock is presented to the imagination by this passage". (Note 59) What is interesting is how Othello feels the pressure of time, time which Iago has under his absolute control.

Provisional Conclusion
We have seen that the role of the villain Iago in Othello is characterized by an active intervention on time. Time is a kind of accordion, which may be expanded and contracted by he who masters it. A master of time is a master of narration as well: to know the rules and necessities of the unfolding of events, in a segment of time, entails a rare form of skilfulness, but not at all 'magical'. Iago is a satiric realistic thinker, and his shrewdness is a very insightful vision of things, persons, and event, both past and future. He recognizes the unavoidability of some sorry loci communes of contemporary merciless society; he is an impassive anthropologist. We may add that Iago is aware of the relativity of time, an elastic rather than stiff entity. Thus, such a plastic relativity allows many a manipulation for one's own interests. However, this requires alertness of mind. Alternatively, you must just be the supreme playwright of all time. (Note 60)