Iago and the nature of evil

What sort of evil does Iago represent in Othello? Consider how literary critic A. C. Bradley answers the question below.

'Iago stands supreme among Shakespeare's evil characters because the greatest intensity and subtlety of imagination has gone to his making, and because he illustrates in the most perfect combination the two facts concerning evil which seem to have impressed Shakespeare most.

The first of these is the fact that perfectly sane people exist in whom fellow-feeling of any kind is so weak that an almost absolute egotism becomes possible to them, and with it those hard vices - such as ingratitude and cruelty - which to Shakespeare were far the worst. The second is that such evil is compatible, and even appears to ally itself easily, with exceptional powers of will and intellect. In the latter respect Iago is nearly or quite the equal of Richard, in egoism he is the superior, and his inferiority in passion and massive force only makes him more repulsive. How is it then that we can bear to contemplate him; nay, that, if we really imagine him, we feel admiration and some kind of sympathy? Henry the Fifth tells us:

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,

Would men observingly distil it out;

but here, it may be said, we are show a thing absolutely evil, and - what is more dreadful still - this absolute evil is united with supreme intellectual power. Why is the representation tolerable, and why do we not accuse its author either of untruth or of desperate pessimism?

In the first place, Iago is not merely negative or evil - far from it. Those very forces that moved him and made his fate - sense of power, delight in performing a difficult and dangerous action, delight in the exercise of artistic skill - are not at all evil things. We sympathise with one or other of them almost every day of our lives. And, accordingly, though in Iago they are combined with something detestable and so contribute to evil, our perception of them is accompanied with sympathy. In the same way, Iago's insight, dexterity, quickness, address, and the like, are in themselves admirable things; the perfect man would possess them. And certainly he would possess also Iago's courage and self-control, and, like Iago, would stand above the impulses of mere feeling, lord of his inner world. All this goes to evil ends in Iago, but in itself it has a great worth; and, although in reading, of course, we do not sift it out and regard it separately, it inevitably affects us and mingles admiration with our hatred or horror.

All of this, however, might apparently co-exist with absolute egoism and total want of humanity. But, in the second place, it is not true that in Iago this egoism and this want are absolute, and that in this sense he is a thing of mere evil. They are frightful, but if they were absolute Iago would be a monster, not a man. The fact is, he tries to make them absolute and cannot succeed; and the traces of conscience, shame and humanity, though faint, are discernible. If his egoism were absolute he would be perfectly indifferent to the opinion of others; and he clearly is not so. His very irritation at goodness, again, is a sign that his faith in his creed is not entirely firm; and it is not entirely firm because he himself has a perception, however dim, of the goodness of goodness. What is the meaning of the last reason he gives himself for killing Cassio:

He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly?

Does he mean that he is ugly to others? Then he is not an absolute egoist. Does he mean that he is ugly to himself? Then he makes an open confession of moral sense. And, once more, if he really possessed no moral sense, we should never have heard those soliloquies which so clearly betray his uneasiness and his unconscious desire to persuade himself that he had some excuse for the villainy he contemplates. These seem to be indubitable proofs that, against his will, Iago is a little better than his creed, and has failed to withdraw himself wholly from the human atmosphere about him.'

To continue reading this discussion follow the link below to p.154 of "Othello" from A. C. Bradley's book Shakespearean Tragedy available to read online. http://www.scribd.com/doc/33323542/Othello

A. C. Bradley (1851-1935) was a professor at Oxford. His book Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) was one of the most significant works of Shakespearean criticism of the twentieth century. Bradley has sometimes been criticised for writing of Shakespeare's characters as though they were real people.