But Iago, finally, is not simply a man of action; he is an artist.  His action is a plot, the intricate plot of a drama, and in the conception and execution of it he experiences the tension and the joy of artistic creation.  ‘He is,’ says Hazlitt, ’an amateur of tragedy in real life; and, instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters or long-forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more dangerous course of getting up his plot at home, casts the principal parts among his newest friends and connections, and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady nerves and unabated resolution.’  Mr. Swinburne lays even greater stress on this aspect of Iago’s character, and even declares that ‘the very subtlest and strongest component of his complex nature’ is ‘the instinct of what Mr. Carlyle would call an inarticulate poet.’  And those to whom this idea is unfamiliar, and who may suspect it at first sight of being fanciful, will find, if they examine the play in the light of Mr. Swinburne’s exposition, that it rests on a true and deep perception, will stand scrutiny, and might easily be illustrated.  They may observe, to take only one point, the curious analogy between the early stages of dramatic composition and those soliloquies in which Iago broods over his plot, drawing at first only an outline, puzzled how to fix more than the main idea, and gradually seeing it develop and clarify as he works upon it or lets it work.  Here at any rate Shakespeare put a good deal of himself into Iago.  But the tragedian in real life was not the equal of the tragic poet.  His psychology, as we shall see, was at fault at a critical point, as Shakespeare’s never was.  And so his catastrophe came out wrong, and his piece was ruined.

Such, then, seem to be the chief ingredients of the force which, liberated by his resentment at Cassio’s promotion, drives Iago from inactivity into action, and sustains him through it.  And, to pass to a new point, this force completely possesses him; it is his fate.  It is like the passion with which a tragic hero wholly identifies himself, and which bears him on to his doom.  It is true that, once embarked on his course, Iago could not turn back, even if this passion did abate; and it is also true that he is compelled, by his success in convincing Othello, to advance to conclusions of which at the outset he did not dream.  He is thus caught in his own web, and could not liberate himself if he would.  But, in fact, he never shows a trace of wishing to do so, not a trace of hesitation, of looking back, or of fear, any more than of remorse; there is no ebb in the tide.  As the crisis approaches there passes through his mind a fleeting doubt whether the deaths of Cassio and Roderigo are indispensable; but that uncertainty, which does not concern the main issue, is dismissed, and he goes forward with undiminished zest.  Not even in his sleep—­as in Richard’s before his final battle—­does any rebellion of outraged conscience or pity, or any foreboding of despair, force itself into clear consciousness.  His fate—­which is himself—­has completely mastered him:  so that, in the later scenes, where the improbability of the entire success of a design built on so many different falsehoods forces itself on the reader, Iago appears for moments not as a consummate schemer, but as a man absolutely infatuated and delivered over to certain destruction.