lied in saying he had already chosen his officer, have no verisimilitude; and if there is any fact at all (as there probably is) behind Iago’s account of the conversation, it doubtless is the fact that Iago himself was ignorant of military science, while Cassio was an expert, and that Othello explained this to the great personages.  That Cassio, again, was an interloper and a mere closet-student without experience of war is incredible, considering first that Othello chose him for lieutenant, and secondly that the senate appointed him to succeed Othello in command at Cyprus; and we have direct evidence that part of Iago’s statement is a lie, for Desdemona happens to mention that Cassio was a man who ’all his time had founded his good fortunes’ on Othello’s love and had ‘shared dangers’ with him (III. iv. 93).  There remains only the implied assertion that, if promotion had gone by old gradation, Iago, as the senior, would have been preferred.  It may be true:  Othello was not the man to hesitate to promote a junior for good reasons.  But it is just as likely to be a pure invention; and, though Cassio was young, there is nothing to show that he was younger, in years or in service, than Iago.  Iago, for instance, never calls him ‘young,’ as he does Roderigo; and a mere youth would not have been made Governor of Cyprus.  What is certain, finally, in the whole business is that Othello’s mind was perfectly at ease about the appointment, and that he never dreamed of Iago’s being discontented at it, not even when the intrigue was disclosed and he asked himself how he had offended Iago.

2

It is necessary to examine in this manner every statement made by Iago.  But it is not necessary to do so in public, and I proceed to the question what impression he made on his friends and acquaintances.  In the main there is here no room for doubt.  Nothing could be less like Iago than the melodramatic villain so often substituted for him on the stage, a person whom everyone in the theatre knows for a scoundrel at the first glance.  Iago, we gather, was a Venetian[108] soldier, eight-and-twenty years of age, who had seen a good deal of service and had a high reputation for courage.  Of his origin we are ignorant, but, unless I am mistaken, he was not of gentle birth or breeding.[109] He does not strike one as a degraded man of culture:  for all his great powers, he is vulgar, and his probable want of military science may well be significant.  He was married to a wife who evidently lacked refinement, and who appears in the drama almost in the relation of a servant to Desdemona.  His manner was that of a blunt, bluff soldier, who spoke his mind freely and plainly.  He was often hearty, and could be thoroughly jovial; but he was not seldom rather rough and caustic of speech, and he was given to making remarks somewhat disparaging to human nature.  He was aware of this trait in himself, and frankly admitted that he was nothing if not critical, and that it was his nature