The general groundwork of the character of Iago, as it appears to us, is not absolute malignity, but a want of moral principle, or an indifference to the real consequences of the actions, which the meddling perversity of his disposition and love of immediate excitement lead him to commit. He is an amateur of tragedy in real life; and instead of exercising his ingenuity on imaginary characters, or forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more desperate course of getting up his plot at home, casts the principal parts among his nearest friends and connections, and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady nerves and unabated resolution. The character is a complete abstraction of the intellectual from the moral being; or, in other words, consists in an absorption of every common feeling in the virulence of his understanding, the deliberate wilfulness of his purposes, and in his restless, untamable love of mischievous contrivance. We proceed to quote some particular passages in support of this opinion.
In the general dialogue and reflections, which are an accompaniment to the progress of the catastrophe, there is a constant overflowing of gall and bitterness. The acuteness of his malice fastens upon every thing alike, and pursues the most distant analogies of evil with a provoking sagacity. He by no means forms an exception to his own rule:—
His mirth is not natural and cheerful, but forced and extravagant, partaking of the intense activity of mind and cynical contempt of others in which it originates. Iago is not, like Candide, a believer in optimism, but seems to have a thorough hatred or distrust of every thing of the kind, and to dwell with gloating satisfaction on whatever can interrupt the enjoyment of others, and gratify his moody irritability. One of his most characteristic speeches is that immediately after the marriage of Othello:—
The pertinacious logical following up of his favourite principle in this passage, is admirable. In the next, his imagination runs riot in the mischief he is plotting, and breaks out into the wildness and impetuosity of real enthusiasm:—
There is nothing here of the trim levity and epigrammatic conciseness of Mr. Kean’s manner of acting the part; which is no less paradoxical than Mrs. Greville’s celebrated Ode to Indifference. Iago was a man of genius, and not a petit maitre. One of his most frequent topics, on which he is rich indeed, and in descanting on which, his spleen serves him for a muse, is the disproportionate match between Desdemona and the Moor. This is brought forward in the first scene, and is never lost sight of afterwards.
Now, all this goes on springs well oiled: Mr. Kean’s mode of giving the passage had the tightness of a drumhead, and was muffled (perhaps purposely so) into the bargain.
This is a clue to the character of the lady which Iago is not at all ready to part with. He recurs to it again in the second act, when in answer to his insinuations against Desdemona, Roderigo says,—
And again, with still more effect and spirit afterwards, when he takes advantage of this very suggestion arising in Othello’s own breast:—
This is probing to the quick. ‘Our Ancient’ here turns the character of poor Desdemona, as it were, inside out. It is certain that nothing but the genius of Shakespear could have preserved the entire interest and delicacy of the part, and have even drawn an additional elegance and dignity from the peculiar circumstances in which she is placed. The character indeed has always had the greatest charm for minds of the finest sensibility.
For our own part, we are a little of Iago’s council in this matter; and all circumstances considered, and platonics out of the question, if we were to cast the complexion of Desdemona physiognomically, we should say that she had a very fair skin, and very light auburn hair, inclining to yellow! We at the same time give her infinite credit for purity and delicacy of sentiment; but it so happens that purity and grossness sometimes
Yet the reverse does not hold; so uncertain and undefinable a thing is moral character! It is no wonder that Iago had some contempt for it, ‘who knew all quantities of human dealings, with a learned spirit.’ There is considerable gaiety and ease in his dialogue with Emilia and Desdemona on their landing. It is then holiday time with him; but yet the general satire will be acknowledged (at least by one half of our readers) to be biting enough, and his idea of his own character is finely expressed in what he says to Desdemona, when she asks him how he would praise her—
Mr. Kean’s execution of this part we thought admirable; but he was quite as much at his ease in every other part of the play, which was done (we know not why) in a single key.
The habitual licentiousness of Iago’s conversation is not to be traced to the pleasure he takes in gross or lascivious images, but to a desire of finding out the worst side of every thing, and of proving himself an over-match for appearances. He has none of ‘the milk of human kindness’ in his composition. His imagination refuses every thing that has not a strong infusion of the most unpalatable ingredients, and his moral constitution digests only poisons. Virtue, or goodness, or whatever has the least ‘relish of salvation in it,’ is, to his depraved appetite, sickly and insipid; and he even resents the good opinion entertained of his own integrity, as if it were an affront cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his character. Thus, at the meeting between Othello and Desdemona, he exclaims—‘Oh, you are well tuned now: but I’ll set down the pegs that make this music, as honest as I am’—deriving an indirect triumph over the want of penetration in others from the consciousness of his own villainy.
In most of the passages which we have hitherto quoted, Iago gives a loose to his passion for theoretical evil: in the scenes with Othello, where he has to put his theory in practice, with great risk to himself, and with dreadful consequences to others, he is proportionably guarded, insidious, dark and deliberate. In the very first scene with Othello, he takes a very different tone;—that tone of hypocritical virtue and affected delicacy, which always betrays the want of the reality.
But the part in which, according to our conception, Mr. Kean failed most, was in the third act with Othello, where ‘comes the tug of war.’ The following passage is, we think, decisive to our purpose:—
Now, if there is any thing of superficial gaiety or heedlessness in this, ‘it is not written in the bond:’—the breaks and stops, the pursing and knitting of the brow together, the deep internal working of hypocrisy under the mask of love and honesty, escaped us on the stage.—The same observation applies to what he says afterwards of himself:—
The candour of this confession would hardly be extorted from him, if it did not correspond with the moody dissatisfaction, and suspicious, creeping, cat-like watchfulness of his general appearance. The anxious suspense, the deep artifice, the collected earnestness, and, if we may so say, the passion of hypocrisy, are decidedly marked in every line of the whole scene, and are worked up to a sort of paroxysm afterwards, in that inimitably characteristic apostrophe:—
This burst of hypocritical indignation might well have called forth all Mr. Kean’s powers, but it did not. We might multiply passages of the same kind, if we had time.
The philosophy of the character is strikingly unfolded in the part where Iago gets the handkerchief:—
We here find him watching the success of his experiment, with the sanguine anticipation of an alchemist at the moment of projection.
Again he says:—
So that after all, he would persuade us that his object is only to give an instructive example of the injustice that prevails in the world.
If he is bad enough when he has business on his hands, he is still worse when his purposes are suspended, and he has only to reflect on the misery he has occasioned. His indifference when Othello falls in a trance, is perfectly diabolical, but perfectly in character:—
The callous levity which Mr. Kean seems to consider as belonging to the character in general, is proper here, because Iago has no feelings connected with humanity; but he has other feelings and other passions of his own, which are not to be trifled with.
We do not, however, approve of Mr. Kean’s pointing to the dead bodies after the catastrophe. It is not in the character of the part, which consists in the love of mischief, not as an end, but as a means, and when that end is attained, though he may feel no remorse, he would feel no triumph. Besides, it is not the text of Shakespear. Iago does not point to the bed, but Ludovico bids him look at it:—‘Look on the tragic loading of this bed,’ &c.
We have already noticed that Edmund the Bastard is like an episode of the same character, placed in less difficult circumstances. Zanga is a vulgar caricature of it.