SOURCE: Scragg, Leah. “Iago—Vice or Devil?” Shakespeare Survey 21 (1968): 53-65.

[In the following essay, Scragg contends that Iago, who exhibits distinct affinities with the allegorical figure of Vice found in medieval mystery and morality plays, should more properly be said to derive from stage representations of the Devil.]

For a considerable time critics have traced the characteristics displayed by Iago back to the Vice, the artful seducer of the Morality plays. Alois Brandl in 1898 included Iago among the descendants of the Vice, although apparently associating that figure with the Devil:

If we follow the role of Vice in the other English tragedies of this period and the following decades, we still find Haphazard in ‘Appius and Virginia’ as well as Ambidexter in ‘Cambyses’ as representatives of the old Morality-type, i.e. as seducer and hypocrite. In Marlowe's Mephistopheles the original diabolic character of this figure once more reaches full expression; in Marlowe's black Ithimor, Shakespeare's Aaron and Iago it is still strongly to be felt;¹

and Cushman in 1900, while showing the utter disparity between the nature of Vice and Devil, explicitly endorses Brandl's derivation of Iago from the former and would add other Shakespearean villains to the list:

Why not also add to these Edmund in Lear, Richard III, Don John in Much Ado About Nothing and Antonio in The Tempest?²

The most recent and convincing exponent of this view is Bernard Spivack (Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, New York, 1958), who examined the typical characteristics of the Vice, proved that figures displaying similar characteristics were found in a number of Elizabethan plays and having shown Iago possessed the same attributes, concluded that he was, in fact, a descendant of the Vice playing his traditionally motiveless role beneath a mask of motivated hostility. In this way, the difficulties encountered in the play, particularly the ambiguous nature of Iago's motivation, are seen as the result of an attempt to ‘translate’ the popular, but amoral, seducer of the Morality stage into realistic Elizabethan-Jacobean drama.

However, if the characteristics which are thought to be typical of the Vice, and which are used by these critics as a kind of hallmark to detect his literary progeny, were found before, during and after the period of the popularity of the Morality play in the figure of the Devil, it would be equally arguable that it is to the Devil, not the Vice, that Iago is indebted. In this case he would revert once more from the unmotivated seducer to the motivated antagonist—from the amoral to the immoral. In the first part of this article I shall therefore attempt to show that Vice-like characteristics are not restricted to amoral beings, and in the second to suggest that the evidence within Othello points to an association between Iago and the powers of darkness which at least confirms his moral nature, if not proving his derivation from a traditional stage presentation of the Devil.

I

The attributes which typify ‘The Vice’, the figure which emerged after 1500 from the group of vices engaged in the psychomachia of the early Morality plays, and which are said to characterize his descendants, are as follows.³ He was a gay, light-hearted intriguer, existing on intimate terms with his audience, whom he invited to witness a display of his ability to reduce a man from a state of grace to utter ruin. He invariably posed as the friend of his victim, often disguising himself for the purpose, and always appearing to devote himself to his friend's welfare. He treated his seduction as ‘sport’ combining mischief with merriment, triumphing over his fallen adversary and glorying in his skill in deceit. So far the analogy with Iago is obvious. He provided for his audience both humour and homiletic instruction. Above all, he was an amoral being whose behaviour was completely unmotivated—he simply demonstrated the nature of the abstraction he represented. In this respect, as Spivack points out, the Devil and the Vice are completely distinct:

The purposes of the Devil are those of a complex moral being. The whole purpose of the Vice is to illustrate his name and nature and to reflect upon the audience the single moral idea he personifies. The former acts to achieve his desires, the latter only to show what he is. Between the two no ethical continuity is possible because in the nature of a personification there is nothing that is subject to ethical definition.⁴

But although entirely disparate ethically, in their dramatic presentation the Vice and the Devil have much in common, those characteristics which I have outlined as typical of the Vice being found in the Devil of the Mystery plays over a hundred years before the emergence of the allegorical figure—as the motivated antagonist who leaped on to the stage at York, pushing the audience aside, reveals:

Make rome be-lyve, and late me gang,
Who makis here all þis þrang?
High you hense! high myght ȝou hang
                                                                                                    right with a roppe.
I drede me þat I dwelle to lang
                                                                                                              to do a jape.

(XXII, 1-6)⁵

This is the introduction to Satan's temptation of Christ in the wilderness, but the tones in which the Devil speaks are exactly those of the Vice, with his direct, familiar relationship with the audience, his vivacity and emphasis on what is to take place as a ‘jape’. He too confides in the audience, relating the way in which he delights to bring men to eternal pain (XXII, 7-12), why he intends to tempt Christ—i.e. his motivation (XXII, 19-22), what he intends towards his victim (XXII, 39-42) and how he is going to attempt it (XXII, 43-8). In other words he invites us to witness a display of his boasted ability to bring men to sin. When he actually approaches Christ, he poses as his friend:

Þou hast fasted longe, I wene,
I wolde now som mete wer sene
For olde acqueyntaunce vs by-twene,
                                                                                          Thy-selue wote howe.
Ther sall noman witte what I mene
                                                                                          but I and þou.

(XXII, 61-6)

The Devil is naturally unsuccessful and his actions are limited by the necessity of following the Biblical narrative, but nevertheless, in this earliest surviving dramatic presentation of a tempter on the English stage, the attitudes of the later Vice figure are already evinced. The intimacy with the audience, the self-explanatory, demonstrative role for homiletic effect, the attitude to the attack on the spiritual welfare of the victim as ‘sport’, the device of posing as the friend of the person to be betrayed, are all present. The only, and very significant, difference lies in the fact that the Devil is implicitly and explicitly motivated. Since the York cycle was first presented between 1362 and 1376 and was played until 1568⁶ this kind of antagonist was seen on the English stage long before the emergence of the Vice after 1500 and continued to be seen throughout the period of the popularity of the Morality play.

The Chester cycle, which probably originated between 1377 and 1382 and which was played until 1575, does not present such a vivacious Devil as the York plays but elements which are to be typical of the Vice may be seen—notably the emphasis on disguise:

A manner of an Adder is in this place,
that wynges like a byrd she hase,
feete as an Adder, a maydens face;
her kinde I will take;

(II, 193-6)⁷

and the pose as the friend of the victim:

Take of this fruite and assaie:
It is good meate, I dare laye,
and, but thou fynde yt to thy paye,
say that I am false.

(II, 233-6)

Similarly the attitude to the temptation of Christ as a game is still present:

a gammon I will assay.

(XII, 4)

The play of the Last Judgement in the Wakefield cycle (originated 1390-1410) also presents vivacious Devils eager to destroy their human victims. Their chief, Tutivillus, introduces himself on his first entrance, priding himself on his dexterity in entrapping the unwary (XXX, 211-21),⁸ and commenting with cynical glee on the lasciviousness and general corruption of the times which give him his opportunity to win souls (XXX, 273-304). Although a Devil, Tutivillus does not comment in any way on the motive for his antagonism. He shows no cause for his hostility towards mankind—his whole being is involved in an attitude of merriment, almost glee, not hatred and resentment. His joyful, triumphant, imaginary welcoming of the sinners to hell is typical:

ye lurdans and lyars / mychers and thefes,
fflytars and flyars / that all men reprefes,
Spolars, extorcyonars / Welcom, my lefes!
ffals Iurars and vsurars / to symony that clevys,
          To tell;
hasardars and dysars,
ffals dedys forgars,
Slanderars, bakbytars,
          All vnto hell.

(XXX, 359-67)

He has the energy, life and homiletic function which are claimed to be typical of the Vice, together with his professional pride in his work:

I am oone of youre ordir / and oone of youre sons;
I stande at my tristur / when othere men shones.

(XXX, 207-8)

And like the Vice these Devils blend comedy and homiletics as they triumph over their fallen victims:

SECUNDUS Demon:
Where is the gold and the good / that ye gederd togedir?
The mery menee that yode / hider and thedir?
TUTIUILLUS:
Gay gyrdyls, iaggid hode / prankyd gownes, whedir?
Haue ye wit or ye wode / ye broght not hider
Bot sorowe,
And youre synnes in youre nekkys.
PRIMUS Demon:
I beshrew thaym that rekkys! He comes to late that bekkys youre bodyes to borow.

(XXX, 550-8)

The Devil is beginning to appear on the stage with the motive for his antagonism taken for granted, while he simply exhibits his delight in evil and his dexterity in entrapping souls.

The Devil of the single pageant extant from the Newcastle plays, which originated before 1462 and were played until 1567-8, has similar characteristics. He exists on intimate terms with his audience, confiding to them his plans to corrupt Noah's wife (lines 109-13).⁹ He too exhibits a light-hearted approach to his deception and insinuates himself into the confidence of his dupe. His bland greeting to Mrs Noah, whom he hopes to destroy, ‘Rest well, rest well, my own dere dame’ (line 115), might well have been spoken by innumerable later Vice figures.

Quires N, P, Q, R, of the Ludus Coventriae¹⁰ (originated c. 1400-c. 1450) probably had a separate existence before their inclusion in the cycle and the Devil of these sections is of a very different kind from the demon filled with overt hatred found in other parts. He shares the characteristics noted in earlier Devils, particularly the intimacy with the audience to whom he introduces himself (26, 1-2), recounts with pride his aim in the world:

I am Norsshere of synne · to þe confusyon of man
To bryng hym to my dongeon · þer in fyre to dwelle

(26, 5-6)

and recites his past triumphs and his skill in entrapping souls (26, 23-4). He also confides to them his plans for the destruction of Christ (26, 50-3), invites them to become his friends (26, 61-3) and finally departs with a declaration of alliance (with obvious homiletic significance) between himself and his listeners:

I am with ȝow at all tymes · whan ȝe to councel me call
But for A short tyme · my-self I devoyde.

(26, 123-4)

The Devil here has much in common with the Vice and clearly shows that Vice-like characteristics are not solely the province of amoral beings. The Devil, as Satan, also has a speech addressed directly to the audience at the opening of Play 31, in which, having introduced himself, he confides to the audience his fears about Christ, and outlines his plans for revenging the rebuff given to him by Christ when he tempted him in the wilderness:

Þat rebuke þat he gaf me · xal not be vn-qwyt
Som what I haue be-gonne · & more xal be do
Ffor All his barfot goying · fro me xal he not skyp
but my derk dongeon I xal bryngyn hym to.

(31, 486-9)

The Devil, the original motivated revenger of English drama addresses his audience here in tones very like those of innumerable self-explanatory villains of the Elizabethan stage. When the other Devils are appalled at the prospect of Christ coming to hell and Satan realizes that he has over-stepped himself, it is in terms of his ‘sport’ that he laments:

A · A · than haue I go to ferre
but som wyle help I haue a shrewde torne
My game is wers þan I wend here
I may seyn · my game is lorne.

(31, 507-10)

Once more the Devil anticipates the Vice.

All that remains of the Norwich Mystery cycle are two versions of the pageant of Adam and Eve where the Devil appears simply as the Serpent. However in the version composed after 1565 he shows his kinship with the traditional tempter—taking his audience into his confidence and revealing to them his intention to disguise himself to further the temptation (lines 38-41).¹¹ The motive for the antagonism displayed by the Serpent is not commented upon; like Iago he simply ‘can yt nott abyde, in theis joyes they shulde be’. Antagonism from the Devil, in whatever form he appears, is understood.

Thus in three out of the four major Mystery cycles extant (if the Chester cycle is regarded as a partial exception), as well as in those pageants surviving from the Newcastle and Norwich plays, the Devil shows many of the characteristics which typify the Vice, and which have been identified by Brandl, Cushman and Spivack as vestigial traces of the Vice in the self-explanatory villains of the Elizabethan-Jacobean stage with their curious combination of malice and merriment. It seems fairly safe to assume that these Devils were typical of those in the Mystery plays as a whole, which originated before the emergence of the allegorical drama, were performed throughout the period when the Morality play enjoyed its popularity, and, judging from the number of copies made at the close of the sixteenth century, would still have been familiar after they had actually disappeared from the stage.

However, the Devil was presented as the seducer of mankind in the Morality plays themselves before ‘The Vice’ as distinct from a number of vices, emerged into dramatic prominence. In the first complete Morality play extant, The Castle of Perseverance (1405-25), it is the Evil Angel, not the subsidiary vices, nor even The World or The Flesh, who is Humanum Genus's chief enemy. His method of seduction is the traditional one. He poses as man's friend supporting him against the ‘bad’ counsels of the Good Angel (IV, 340-8)¹² while instructing the vices on the means to be used to procure Humanum Genus's downfall (V, 547-51). But he is not simply the artful contriver of the hero's ruin—he also displays the irreverent humour and contempt for virtue shown by Spivack to be typical of the Vice, for example:

ȝa! whanne þe fox prechyth, kepe wel ȝore gees!
          he spekyth as it were a holy pope.
goo, felaw, & pyke of þe lys
          þat crepe þer up-on þi cope!

(VI, 804-7)

—a speech addressed to the Good Angel! When Humanum Genus finally dies in sin, he triumphs over him as the Vice is to triumph over his victim and as Iago is to triumph over the fallen Othello.

Similarly, in Mankind¹³ (1465-70), the second complete Morality play extant, it is not the vices—Nought, New-Guise and Now-a-days—who are Mankind's most potent adversaries, for he is easily able to repel them by beating them away; it is their cunning chief, Titivillus, who brings about his downfall. Mr Spivack devotes a long section to Titivillus (op. cit. pp. 123-5) showing, step by step, how his actions and speeches provide a pattern for the behaviour of a Vice,¹⁴ but in fact, as Spivack barely notices, he is not a Vice at all. The playwright makes his nature perfectly clear when he declares, ‘propy[r]lly Titiuilly syngnyfyes the fend of helle’ (III, 879). He is not an unmotivated amoral figure representing an inner moral frailty, he is the motivated antagonist of Mankind, the moral being devoted to his spiritual destruction. It is true that the role he plays is soon to be taken over by the Vice because, as Mr. Spivack rightly observes, the Devil ‘is not a personification but an historical figure out of Christian mythology and folklore, and an illogical intrusion, therefore, into the drama of abstraction’ (op. cit. p. 132), but the dramatic qualities the Vice comes to represent are surely derived from him.

The Devil also acts as seducer in the third of the so-called Macro-morals, Mind, Will and Understanding (1450-1500). Here he enters immediately after Mind, Will and Understanding have been presented and in typical manner quickly takes the audience into his confidence, revealing who he is:

I am he þat syn be-gane

(line 332)¹⁵

and what has motivated his animosity:

My place to restore,
          God hath mad a man.

(lines 327-8)

In Vice-like manner he boasts of his cunning (lines 341-2) and then proceeds to share with the audience his intention to corrupt Mind, Will and Understanding, thus bringing the soul to damnation (lines 365-70). Most significantly, however, he disguises himself before proceeding to the temptation, showing once more that the disguise motif, associated with the pose as the friend of the victim, originated with the Devil:

For, to tempte man in my lyknes,
yt wolde brynge hym to grett feerfullness,
I wyll change me in-to bryghtnes,
                                        & so hym to be-gy[le].

(lines 373-6)

In the role of well-wisher, he then dupes the trio into believing that a life of prayer and contrition is not pleasing to God, brings them from piety to depravity and triumphs to his intimates, the audience, on his good success, while he proceeds, Iago-like, to tell the ultimate goal of his operation:

That soule, God made in-comparable,
To hys lyknes most amyable:
I xall make yt most reprouable,
          Ewyn lyke to a fende of hell.
At hys deth I xall a-pere informable,
Schewynge hym all hys synnys abhomynable,
Prewynge hys soule damnable,
          So with dyspeyer I xall hym qwell.

(lines 536-43)

Similarly in Mary Magdalene (c. 1480-1520), a curious combination of Mystery and Morality, it is the Devil, as Satan, who is once more the cause of the central character's downfall. He enters in the seventh scene to confide to the audience both the motive for his hatred of mankind and his desire for their destruction (lines 366-71).¹⁶ It is he who initiates the attack on Mary Magdalene, inviting the help of The World and The Flesh, and his is the principal triumph and joy at the news of her downfall (‘a! how I tremyl & trott for ȝese tydynges!’). It is he who severely punishes his agents when Mary escapes his clutches and he who, with the Seven Deadly Sins under his command, provides the combination of temptation and comedy associated with the Vice.

John Bale's anti-catholic Mystery play The Temptation of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Satan (1538) also gives a picture of a Satan who is a fitting heir to the traditional archetypal adversary of the Mystery stage. He enters immediately after Christ's first speech and proceeds to explain his name and function to the audience in the manner typical of the Vice. The only difference lies in the motivated hostility displayed:

I am Satan, the common adversary,
An enemy to man, him seeking to destroy
And to bring to nought, by my assaults most crafty.
I watch everywhere, wanting no policy
To trap him in a snare, and make him the child of Hell.

(p. 155)¹⁷

He then confides his fears of Christ's coming (p. 155) and reveals his purpose towards him. He intends to deceive him by guile and will adopt a disguise frequently used by Vices for the same purpose:

I will not leave him till I know what he is,
And what he intendeth in this same border here:
Subtlety must help; else all will be amiss;
A godly pretence, outwardly, must I bear,
Seeming religious, devout and sad in my gear.
If he be come now for the redemption of man,
As I fear he is, I will stop him if I can.

(pp. 155-6)

He then disguises himself as a hermit, approaches Christ and poses as one well-disposed towards him (p. 156). Having insinuated himself into his company, he begins to flatter him, to seem solicitous for his welfare, while at the same time trying to instil doubts into his mind beneath the cloak of friendship—just as Iago is later to plant seeds of doubt in the mind of his victim:

Now, forsooth and God! it is joy of your life
That ye take such pains; and are in virtue so rife
Where so small joys are to recreate the heart:

(p. 156)

—compare his exclamation on hearing how long Christ has fasted:

So much I judged by your pale countenance.

(p. 156)

In his attempt to persuade Christ to change the stones to bread, he emphasizes that his sole thought is upon the well-being of his friend:

My mind is, in this, ye should your body regard;
And not, indiscreetly, to cast yourself away.

(p. 157)

His attitude throughout the temptation is that of an honest man showing his friend the ‘folly’ of his behaviour. He is the man of the world, offering his knowledge of things to the unrealistic idealist—the analogy with Iago is obvious:

I put case: ye be God's son—what can that further?
Preach ye once the truth the bishops will ye murther.

(p. 157)

Compare:

Alas! it grieveth me that ye are such a believer:

(p. 164)

and

If I bid ye make of stones bread for your body,
Ye say man liveth not in temporal feeding only.
As I bid ye leap down from the pinnacle above,
Ye will not tempt God, otherwise than you behove.
Thus are ye still poor; thus are ye still weak and needy:

(p. 164)

and the supreme counsel of the down-to-earth man of the world, the counsel Iago gives Othello: renounce your faith, it is foolish:

Forsake the belief that ye have in God's word,
That ye are His son, for it is not worth a turd!
Is he a father that see his son thus famish?
If ye believe it, I say ye are too foolish.
Ye see these pleasures—if you be ruled by me,
I shall make ye a man: to my words, therefore, agree.

(p. 164)

Defeated, Satan, the eternal antagonist, like Iago, vows eternal defiance:

I defy thee … and take thy words but as wind.

(p. 166)

This Devil with his pose of friendship, his man of the world attitude and his subtlety, is a direct pointer to the kind of Devil Iago is.

The Devil continued to appear, sporadically, as the antagonist of mankind throughout the history of the Morality play. He was the chief enemy of Youth in Lusty Juventus (1547-53), he had a less important role as Satan in All For Money (1559-77) when the transition from allegorical to literal drama had begun, and, while the Morality play was foundering in the closing decades of the century, he took new life as Mephistophilis in Dr Faustus (1588-92).

Thus not only did the Devil possess many of the characteristics of the Vice long before the emergence of the latter figure (such Devils as Titivillus anticipating the Vice in every respect), he continued to appear on the stage as tempter throughout the history of the Morality play. Moreover, a number of plays show that in fact a certain confusion between the respective roles of Vice and Devil existed in the minds of at least some Tudor dramatists. In The World and The Child (1500-22), when Conscience hears that Manhood has been seduced by the Vice, Folly, he exclaims:

Lo, sirs, a great ensample you may see,
The frailness of mankind,
How oft he falleth in folly
Through temptation of the fiend:

(p. 267)¹⁸

which suggests that even if Folly does not partake of the nature of the Devil, he somehow acts under his guidance. Similarly, in Bale's Three Laws of Nature, Moses and Christ (1538), Natural Law exclaims to the Vice, Infidelity,

I defy thee, wicked fiend.

(p. 15)¹⁹

This Vice is called ‘fiend’ more than once in the course of the action and Natural Law declares that he shuns his company as he would ‘the devil of hell’ (p. 16). Confusion of this kind is most apparent in the 1578 edition of All For Money. In addition to the usual stage directions this edition provides elaborate instructions for the costumes of the various characters, including:

Here commeth in Gluttonie and Pride dressed in deuils apparel.

(B iii r)²⁰

Later in the same play we are told that ‘Here all the deuilles departe’ (B iiii r) when it is clear that Satan, Gluttony and Pride have gone out. Ethically disparate as they undoubtedly are, the Vice and the Devil have a similar function and share a fund of common characteristics which makes confusion between their dramatic roles possible.

Finally, the Devil was still seen on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage long after the decline of both Mystery and Morality play—Grim the Collier (1600), The Merry Devil of Edmonton (1599-1604), If it Be Not Good, The Devil is in it (1611-12), The Birth of Merlin (1597-1621), etc., all testifying to the perennial popularity of the figure of the supreme antagonist. For, ultimately, it is the Devil who, in Christian myth, and thus in Christian drama, is the implacable enemy of mankind. The Vice, the allegorical representation of an inner moral frailty, takes over the role of seducer in the Morality play, but he continues to show the traditional attitude to the part—the intimacy with the audience, the self-revelation, glee, irreverence, triumph over the fallen victim, etc. Freed from the confines of the Biblical narrative and the limitations of a narrowly defined moral status, he is able to develop these characteristics to a more marked degree, and by virtue of his amoral demonstrative nature and consequent detachment from the fate of his victims, he is able to pass naturally and easily, as Spivack has shown, into non-allegorical farce. But, fundamentally, the operation of the Vice is the operation of the Devil adapted to fulfil the needs of the dramatized psychomachia, and it is as the Devil that the figure passed into Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. If, therefore, the characteristics Iago displays were derived from an earlier figure, it seems extremely likely that it is to the Devil rather than the Vice that he is indebted, and that far from being a basically motiveless, amoral figure, he is a motivated being, engaged in the pursuit of some kind of revenge.

II

There is much evidence in Othello to confirm the suggestion that Iago is related, in some way, to the powers of darkness, and critics have long commented upon the diabolism that surrounds the figure of the ‘villain’ and invests the imagery of the play. Coleridge called Iago ‘a being next to devil, and only not quite devil’,²¹ Bradley disputed the point²² and modern critics continue to argue the question. Among those who support the view (in one way or another) that Iago partakes of the nature of the Devil, Stoll has pointed to the ambiguity of his motivation:

None of the motives at which Iago glances—the grievance in the matter of the promotion, or his lust for Desdemona, or his fancy that Othello or Cassio may have played him foul with Emilia—is sufficient for the vast villainy of his nature …

and concluded that:

He is a son of Belial, he is a limb of Satan.(23)

Wilson Knight has seen the play as a cosmic battle for the soul of man with Iago as a ‘kind of Mephistopheles’,²⁴ Maud Bodkin sees Iago as an archetype of the Devil, defining ‘Devil’ as ‘our tendency to represent in personal form the forces within and without us that threaten our supreme values’,²⁵ and S. L. Bethell analysing the distribution of the diabolic imagery in the play concludes that:

The play is a solemn game of hunt the devil, with, of course, the audience largely in the know. And it is in this game that the diabolic imagery is bandied about from character to character until the denouement: we know the devil then, but he has summoned another lost soul to his side.²⁶

Heilman, discussing Iago's loss of humanity and the function of the serpent imagery in this respect, has suggested the way in which Iago's diabolism functions in the play:

As Iago's diabolism thus emerges distinct from the interwoven texture of action and language, we see how the myth of the devil enters into the play—not as a formula which squeezes out the individuality of Iago, nor as a pure idea of which the dramatic parts are an allegorical projection, but as an added dimension, a collateral presence that makes us sense the inclusiveness of the fable.²⁷

But against this view stands Dr Leavis with his famous pronouncement that Iago is no more than ‘a necessary piece of dramatic mechanism’ designed to trigger off Othello's jealousy,²⁸ and Marvin Rosenberg who emphasizes Iago's humanity (showing him to be a recognizable psychological type) and repudiates his fiendishness²⁹ in spite of the fact that his study of the stage history of the play shows that Iago's role is most powerful when played, as Macready played it, as ‘a revelation of subtle, poetic, vigorous, manly, many-sided devilry’.³⁰

To attempt to analyse the diabolic element in the play when this has been done so fully by the critics cited would be superfluous, but for the purpose of this article it is necessary to summarize very briefly the evidence in support of the view that the myth of the Devil does enter, at some level, into the play. From the very opening of the action, Iago's relationship with the powers of darkness is continually emphasized—it is towards hell that he looks constantly for inspiration, hell and the Devil are for ever in his mouth, continually invoked by him; compare

                                                                                                    Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light

(I, iii, 397-8)

with:

                                                  Divinity of hell!
When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
As I do now:

(II, iii, 339-42)

and

I do hate him as I do hell pains

(I, i, 155)

where his very tones suggest familiarity with the pains he speaks of. Examples could be multiplied. As Heilman has shown, when Othello falls a victim to Iago's temptation, he catches from him not only his debased view of life but his field of reference:

Damn her, lewd minx! O, damn her, damn her!
Come, go with me apart; I will withdraw
To furnish me with some swift means of death
For the fair devil.

(III, iii, 479-82)

Naked abed, Iago, and not mean harm!
It is hypocrisy against the devil.

(IV, i, 5-6)

Fire and brimstone!

(IV, i, 228)

The word ‘devil’ is passed constantly from mouth to mouth. Much of the action of the play seems to take place in the darkness and horror of hell itself—the confusion and darkness of the night scene before Brabantio's house, the quarrel during the night watch, the attempted murder of Cassio—scenes of darkness and mischief over which Iago presides like an evil genius. But it is the final scene of the play that provides the most convincing evidence for Iago's diabolism when the accumulated reference of the play is finally crystallized and centred on him as Othello, in a moment of terrible clarity, realizes the truth:

I look down towards his feet—but that's a fable.
If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.

(V, ii, 289-90)

His failure to do so and Iago's derisive reply,

I bleed, sir; but not kill'd

(V, ii, 291)

surely provide a comment on Iago's ultimate nature. Othello, at least, has no doubts about the nature of the deception that has been practised on him.

Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil
Why he hath thus ensnar'd my soul and body?

(V, ii, 304-5)

Indisputably Iago is engaged in the elaborate seduction of a representative of mankind and the destruction of the values that he represents. But although he undertakes this attack with joy, almost light-heartedness, he reveals that, however gleeful he is in pursuing the downfall of his victim, his hatred of him, of the virtues he possesses, is malevolent in the extreme. Note the intensity of the hatred in the following:

I follow him to serve my turn upon him.

(I, i, 42)

So will I turn her virtue into pitch;
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all.

(II, iii, 349-51)

                                                  If Cassio do remain,
He hath a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly.

(V, i, 18-20)

These are not the tones of an amoral figure acting under the necessity imposed by dramatic convention to demonstrate his own nature, but the accents of a moral being impelled by a burning desire to feed fat a consuming hatred with revenge.³¹

But if Iago is to be regarded on one level (Heilman's ‘added dimension’) as a Devil rather than a Vice, his famous motives may no longer be regarded as the realistic trappings designed to cloak his allegorical origins, and fit him for the literal stage. They must be organic rather than functional. The proposition that Iago is a Devil in some sense of the word³² implies that it is his nature to envy those whose character or situation is in any way superior to his own, to suffer from a sense of injured merit and to seek to destroy anything which by its very superiority threatens his self-love. Hence, locally, he feels he has been slighted by Othello in the promotion of Cassio, he asserts that Othello and Cassio have cuckolded him from his conviction that they cannot be as virtuous as they appear, and from his diseased belief that he is being constantly slighted. His ‘love’ for Desdemona is his desire to possess that object which is clearly highly desirable and belongs to someone else. But the ultimate motive for his hatred of Othello, Desdemona, and Cassio is his denial of the values they affirm, his fixed opposition to the virtues they represent. It is the hatred of Satan for the sanctity of Adam and Eve, the hatred of a being who is forced to recognize a virtue he cannot share and constantly desires. Hence the ‘daily beauty’ of the lives of Othello, Cassio, and Desdemona is a constant affront to him. The myth of Satan depicts him as falling from heaven from a sense of being undervalued; he tempted Adam and Eve both because they were superior to him, and therefore an object of envious hatred, and because he desired to avenge a supposed injury. Iago's motivation is very similar. At the close of the play, when he has corrupted Othello's mind, destroyed both him and Desdemona, when, for them, Paradise has been lost, Iago is dragged away to the tortures that are his element. He does not die at the end of the play, he is not to be put rapidly to death. He is to linger in pain like the powers of whom he is the instrument. Iago follows the pattern laid down in the garden of Eden and repeated over and over again in Christian literature by the archetypal adversary of mankind. Antagonistic to all forms of virtue, obscurely envying a state he constantly denies, he is the inveterate opponent of virtue, the seducer of mankind, who reduces his victims by guile from their original state of bliss to grief, death and hell.

It is clear that the characteristics displayed by Iago could well have been derived from the Devil rather than the Vice and that this proposition is reinforced by the emphasis on devilry in the play and the nature of Iago's attitude to his victims. But it would be overstating the position to assert categorically that Iago's characterization is necessarily derived from a traditional stage presentation of the Devil. All that can be claimed is that the Devil's claim to be Iago's forefather is at least as good as that of the Vice, and is supported by evidence in the play. Thus, while the Devil cannot be proved to be Iago's ancestor, his contradictory claim clearly invalidates the view that Iago must be regarded as a descendant of the Vice because of the dramatic characteristics he displays. Literary origins make dubious discussion at best, and it would be highly lamentable for Iago to be deprived of his motivation on the grounds that he is an amoral survivor from the psychomachia, roughly clad in the garments of realism, when the very characteristics which have reduced him to this exigency, together with the corroborative evidence from the play, suggest that he is not a Vice but a Devil.

Notes

1. Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare (Strassburg, 1898), p. xciv.

2. ‘The Devil and The Vice in the English Dramatic Literature before Shakespeare’, Studien zur englischen Philologie, Heft VI (Halle A. S., 1900).

3. This summary is drawn from Mr Spivack's analysis of the figure.

4. Spivack, op. cit. p. 134.

5. References are to York Plays, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (Oxford, 1885).

6. The dates of all plays are those given in Annals of English Drama 975-1700, by Alfred Harbage, revised by S. Schoenbaum (1964).

7. References are to The Chester Plays, Part I, ed. Hermann Deimling, E.E.T.S. E.S. LXII (1892).

8. References are to The Towneley Plays, ed. George England and Alfred W. Pollard, E.E.T.S. E.S. LXXI (1897).

9. References are to the text of this play included in The Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, ed. Osborn Waterhouse, E.E.T.S. E.S. CIV (1909).

10. References are to Ludus Coventriae or The Play called Corpus Christi, ed. K. S. Block, E.E.T.S. E.S. CXX (1922).

11. References are to the text included in The Non-Cycle Mystery Plays (see n. 9 above).

12. References are to the text in The Macro Plays, ed. F. J. Furnivall and Alfred W. Pollard, E.E.T.S. E.S. XCI (1904).

13. A text of this play may be found in The Macro Plays (see n. 12 above).

14. Cp. ‘The pivotal action of the allegorical drama, repeated as many times almost as there are plays, is a more sophisticated version of just such a demonstration and such a lecture’ (Spivack, op. cit. p. 125).

15. References are to the text of the play included in The Macro Plays (see n. 12 above).

16. References are to the text of the play in The Digby Mysteries, ed. F. J. Furnivall, The New Shakespeare Society (1882).

17. References are to The Dramatic Writings of John Bale, ed. John S. Farmer, Early English Drama Society (1907).

18. References are to Dodsley's Old English Plays, vol. I, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt (4th ed. 1874).

19. See n. 17 above.

20. Cp. All For Money, Old English Drama, Students Facsimile Edition (1910).

21. Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare, ed. Mrs H. N. Coleridge (1849), I, p. 262.

22. Lecture VI (Othello), Shakespearean Tragedy (St Martin's Library, 1957), pp. 185-6.

23. Art and Artifice in Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1933), p. 97.

24. Cp. ‘The Othello Music’ in The Wheel of Fire (1930).

25. Cp. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (Oxford Paperbacks, 1963), p. 223.

26. Cp. ‘Shakespeare's Imagery: The Diabolic Images in Othello’, Shakespeare Survey 5 (1952), p. 72.

27. Cp. Magic in the Web (Lexington, 1956), p. 96.

28. Cp. ‘Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero’ in The Common Pursuit (Peregrine Books, 1962), p. 138.

29. Cp. The Masks of Othello (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961), pp. 170-1.

30. Ibid. p. 124.

31. Rosenberg's study of the stage history of Othello is again illuminating here, for he shows that Iago's role is unsatisfying when played as Vice rather than Devil. Thus an Iago of 1912 ‘tended to be impish rather than devilish … the real venom … seldom emerged’ (p. 156) and Maurice Evans failed in the part because ‘young, open of countenance, light and gay of speech and step’ as his Iago was, his evil lost its point, was ‘too much akin to irresponsible mischief making’ (my italics). He was clearly amoral rather than immoral.

32. He has been variously regarded as a Devil on the metaphysical level, as a Devil incarnate, as a man possessed, and as a man in the process of becoming a Devil by the denial of the basic facts of his humanity.