Is it possible to elicit it from Iago himself against his will?  He makes various statements to Roderigo, and he has several soliloquies.  From these sources, and especially from the latter, we should learn something.  For with Shakespeare soliloquy generally gives information regarding the secret springs as well as the outward course of the plot; and, moreover, it is a curious point of technique with him that the soliloquies of his villains sometimes read almost like explanations offered to the audience.[112] Now, Iago repeatedly offers explanations either to Roderigo or to himself.  In the first place, he says more than once that he ‘hates’ Othello.  He gives two reasons for his hatred.  Othello has made Cassio lieutenant; and he suspects, and has heard it reported, that Othello has an intrigue with Emilia.  Next there is Cassio.  He never says he hates Cassio, but he finds in him three causes of offence:  Cassio has been preferred to him; he suspects him too of an intrigue with Emilia; and, lastly, Cassio has a daily beauty in his life which makes Iago ugly.  In addition to these annoyances he wants Cassio’s place.  As for Roderigo, he calls him a snipe, and who can hate a snipe?  But Roderigo knows too much; and he is becoming a nuisance, getting angry, and asking for the gold and jewels he handed to Iago to give to Desdemona.  So Iago kills Roderigo.  Then for Desdemona:  a fig’s-end for her virtue! but he has no ill-will to her.  In fact he ‘loves’ her, though he is good enough to explain, varying the word, that his ‘lust’ is mixed with a desire to pay Othello in his own coin.  To be sure she must die, and so must Emilia, and so would Bianca if only the authorities saw things in their true light; but he did not set out with any hostile design against these persons.

Is the account which Iago gives of the causes of his action the true account?  The answer of the most popular view will be, ’Yes.  Iago was, as he says, chiefly incited by two things, the desire of advancement, and a hatred of Othello due principally to the affair of the lieutenancy.  These are perfectly intelligible causes; we have only to add to them unusual ability and cruelty, and all is explained.  Why should Coleridge and Hazlitt and Swinburne go further afield?’ To which last question I will at once oppose these:  If your view is correct, why should Iago be considered an extraordinary creation; and is it not odd that the people who reject it are the people who elsewhere show an exceptional understanding of Shakespeare?

The difficulty about this popular view is, in the first place, that it attributes to Iago what cannot be found in the Iago of the play.  Its Iago is impelled by passions, a passion of ambition and a passion of hatred; for no ambition or hatred short of passion could drive a man who is evidently so clear-sighted, and who must hitherto have been so prudent, into a plot so extremely hazardous.  Why, then, in the Iago of the play do we find no sign of