Othello Why Othello Is but

Othello Why Othello is but Iago is not a Tragic Character within Shakespeare's Othello Within Shakespeare's tragedy Othello the Moor of Venice the character whose words, actions, and jealous personal and professional obsession most drives this tragedy's plot, action, and resolution is not in fact Shakespeare's title character, but instead, Othello's conniving antagonist: the villain of the play and Othello's evil nemesis, Iago.

For a dramatic character not at all the main one, and as, clearly, this play's antagonist rather its protagonist, Iago nevertheless speaks not only the first lines of the play, but has far more in general to say, even, than does the tragic hero Othello himself. Iago, however, still does not rise to the level of importance within the play, or to an enough significance on his own as a character of stature (see Aristotle, Poetics, Part II, paragraph 1) to be considered tragic, at least in the Aristotlean sense, himself.

Another key reason Iago cannot be considered as an Aristotlean tragic hero, as Othello may, is that Iago's frequent asides to the audience break, formalistically, the rules of time; place, and action Aristotle sets forth in his Poetics. For example, according to Aristotle: Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude;.. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be... A well constructed plot,.. must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles [emphasis added]. (Part VII, paragraph 2).

Iago's opening aside, and the various others that occur throughout the play, though, continually keeps the plot from unfolding based purely on "causal necessity." This lack of structural unity of Othello, in fact, casts doubt on the play as being a tragedy at all, at least in the ancient Aristotlean sense (that is, compared to the greatest of Greek tragedies, by Aeschylus; Sophocles; and Euripedes in particular) even if not in the later Shakespearean one.

A talks and talks, to everyone he possibly can who might help him achieve his goal of destroying Othello from within, intentionally or unintentionally. So maniacally ruthless is Iago, in fact, that he even uses his own wife to help him secure Desdemona's handkerchief (which is supposed to symbolize everlasting fidelity according to Othello's mother, who gave it to him for his future wife) to plant on Cassio. So without all Iago's evil subterfuges, the play Othello would have no plot.

Still, Shakespeare's tragedy is named for Othello; since Othello, rather than Iago, especially according to Aristotle's view, is tragic, while Iago, despite his own greater presence in the play, is not According to Aristotle in Poetics, a tragic character (i.e., as Aristotle puts it, is "either a higher or a lower type [emphasis added]" (Poetics, Part II, paragraph 1). Oedipus is in fact both: someone of great stature at the beginning but reduced to being a much-unwanted exile at the end.

Othello shares that destiny of reversal of fortune, i.e., "a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad" (Aristotle, Poetics, Part VII, paragraph III). For example, Othello starts out as the Venetian Senate's choice to lead the Venetian Army at Cyprus, but in the end he is stripped of his position of military leadership (Cassio replaces him in Cyprus) and is then deposed (or would have been) from Cyprus, had he not first killed himself.

Iago, on the other hand, suffers no reversal of fortune from a high place to a low one. The only change for him is that he starts out jealous and despicable and ends up dead. That, however, is not the stuff of tragedy, Aristotlean or otherwise. Othello, as opposed to Iago, is also more tragic in the sense that he is both larger than life (he has a certain "magnificence" of personality and bearing, as well as a military status far superior to Iago's.

And Othello is also, as a multi-faceted character of many moods; emotions; understandings (or not), and changes leading to a reversal of fortune, is far more imitative of a real-life imaginable person of similar circumstances than is Iago, who is essentially flat, one-dimensional, and abnormally obsessed with achieving.