unusual ability and cruelty.  These are the more popular views.  The second group of false interpretations is much smaller, but it contains much weightier matter than the first.  Here Iago is a being who hates good simply because it is good, and loves evil purely for itself.  His action is not prompted by any plain motive like revenge, jealousy or ambition.  It springs from a ‘motiveless malignity,’ or a disinterested delight in the pain of others; and Othello, Cassio and Desdemona are scarcely more than the material requisite for the full attainment of this delight.  This second Iago, evidently, is no conventional villain, and he is much nearer to Shakespeare’s Iago than the first.  Only he is, if not a psychological impossibility, at any rate not a human being.  He might be in place, therefore, in a symbolical poem like Faust, but in a purely human drama like Othello he would be a ruinous blunder.  Moreover, he is not in Othello:  he is a product of imperfect observation and analysis.

Coleridge, the author of that misleading phrase ‘motiveless malignity,’ has some fine remarks on Iago; and the essence of the character has been described, first in some of the best lines Hazlitt ever wrote, and then rather more fully by Mr. Swinburne,—­so admirably described that I am tempted merely to read and illustrate these two criticisms.  This plan, however, would make it difficult to introduce all that I wish to say.  I propose, therefore, to approach the subject directly, and, first, to consider how Iago appeared to those who knew him, and what inferences may be drawn from their illusions; and then to ask what, if we judge from the play, his character really was.  And I will indicate the points where I am directly indebted to the criticisms just mentioned.

But two warnings are first required.  One of these concerns Iago’s nationality.  It has been held that he is a study of that peculiarly Italian form of villainy which is considered both too clever and too diabolical for an Englishman.  I doubt if there is much more to be said for this idea than for the notion that Othello is a study of Moorish character.  No doubt the belief in that Italian villainy was prevalent in Shakespeare’s time, and it may perhaps have influenced him in some slight degree both here and in drawing the character of Iachimo in Cymbeline.  But even this slight influence seems to me doubtful.  If Don John in Much Ado had been an Englishman, critics would have admired Shakespeare’s discernment in making his English villain sulky and stupid.  If Edmund’s father had been Duke of Ferrara instead of Earl of Gloster, they would have said that Edmund could have been nothing but an Italian.  Change the name and country of Richard III., and he would be called a typical despot of the Italian Renaissance.  Change those of Juliet, and we should find her wholesome English nature contrasted with the southern dreaminess of Romeo.  But this way of interpreting Shakespeare