The man deceived even his wife; for she, speaking the next day to Desdemona of Cassio's disgrace, says,

I warrant it grieves my husband

As if the case were his.

Act III. Sc. 3.

Now it is plain that Iago had no particular reason or occasion to deceive his wife on this point. He merely showed to her what he showed to everybody, a readiness to sympathize with the joys and sorrows and wishes of those around him. Emilia, a woman of the world, a woman of experiences, who knew her husband better than many wives know theirs, is yet imposed upon by this skin-deep warmth and surface glow of his character. It is not until the climax of the tragedy that even she is undeceived.

In the eyes of his friends and acquaintances Iago was not merely an honest man and a good-natured one, after the semblance of ordinary honesty and good nature. These traits were salient in him; they distinguished him from other men. And they were his noted peculiarities of character among his acquaintances long before he had any temptation to reveal his real and inner nature, which, until the temptation came, was possibly but half known to himself, although indeed he had a certain consciousness of it in his feeling of instinctive aversion to the sweetness and nobility of soul showed in Cassio's daily life. The occasion that revealed him completely to himself was the elevation of Cassio to the lieutenancy, this being a place second in rank to that of a general officer.

For this honest, warm-hearted, effusively sympathetic man was a soldier of such approved valor and capacity, and so highly regarded, that when the lieutenant-generalship became vacant, notable men of

Venice concerned themselves to have the young officer promoted to the place; for which they made personal suit to Othello, an incident which in itself shows not only Iago's military distinction, but his success in attaching others to his interests. And Shakespeare, as if to put the full complement of Iago's personal gifts beyond a question (he gives to Iago's character a particularity of description as rare with him as that which he gives to Imogen's beauty), makes Othello say of him that he "knows all qualities, with a learned spirit of human dealings." Indeed, there is hardly a man of Shakespeare's making, except Hamlet, who is set before us as possessing the manifold personal gifts, accomplishments, and attractions which won for Iago the distinction and favor which he enjoyed in the highest society of Venice.

As to the make of him, and what he really was, Iago by a very evident special design of the dramatist reveals himself fully in the first scene. After setting forth the promotion of Cassio as the cause of his illwill to Othello, and expressing his contempt for such honest knaves (that is, merely such honest servingmen) as do their duty for duty's sake, he says,

Others there are

Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty,

Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,

And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,

Do well thrive by them, and when they have lin'd their coats
Do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul;
And such a one do I profess myself.

Act I. Sc. 1.

And again, in his soliloquy at the end of the first act, he shows us the same selfish, unscrupulous nature, but no disposition to malice, or even to needless mischief, -only a cruel heartlessness. Even the Roderigos of the world would have remained unharmed by him, un

less he could have gained something by their injury. The very man who "makes a corner in stocks or in provisions, by which he ruins the acquaintance with whom he dined yesterday and brings unknown widows and children to want, is not freer from personal malice towards his victims than Iago was from ill-will towards his. He would much rather have attained his ends by doing them a service. But let a worm or a friend bar his way, and he would rack and rend the one just as quickly and coolly as he would crush the other.

Some other traits of Iago's character, which are manifested incidentally, notably a certain coarseness, and a lack of any tenderness or sentiment towards women, or any faith even in the best of them, I pass by with mere allusion; although those which I have now particularly mentioned are made by Shakespeare, with a great master's subtleness and truth, marked elements in the composition of such a man.

The

In the creation of Iago the author of Othello had, as I have already remarked, no help or hint from the story out of which he made his tragedy, nor from any precedent play, so far as we know, a rare isolation and originality in Shakespeare's personages. Iago of the Italian story is a coarse, commonplace villain, who differs from Shakespeare's Iago in this very point that he is a morose, malicious creature. His soul is full of hatred; he has the innate spontaneous malignity which some critics have found in Iago, and have attributed to the creative powers of Shakespeare, but which Shakespeare's creation is entirely and notably without.

:

It was no mere villain, however black, no mere embodiment of cruelty, however fiendish, that Shakespeare saw in his idea of Iago. In that conception

and in its working out he had a much more instructing, if not instructive, purpose. Such a purpose he seldom seems to have; nor does his own feeling toward his evil creatures manifest itself except on very rare occasions, and then slightly and by implication. But upon Iago he manifestly looked with loathing and with horror, although he spent upon him the utmost powers of his creative art.

In Iago Shakespeare has presented a character that could not have escaped his observation; for it is of not uncommon occurrence except in one of its elements, utter unscrupulousness. But for this, Iago would be a representative type, representative of the gifted, scheming, plausible, and pushing man, who gets on by the social art known as making friends. This man is often met with in society. Sometimes he is an adventurer, like Iago, but most commonly he is not; and that he should be so is not necessary to the perfection of his character. The difference in social conduct between him and a genuine man is that this one is simply himself, and forms friendships (not too many) with those whom he likes and those who, taking him as they find him, like him; while the other lays himself out to make friends, doing so not always with the direct and specific purpose of establishing a social connection, but because it is his nature to; as the sea monster which preys upon its own kind throws out its alluring bait which is part of itself, whether there are fellow-fish in sight or not. This is not only his way of getting on, but his way of going through life. He accomplishes his purpose somewhat by flattery, of course, but less by direct flattery than by an ever-springing sympathy, and a readiness to help others in the little affairs in which their vanity or their pleasure is concerned.

Sympathy in purposes and tastes is the finest, subtlest, most insidious flattery; the lack of it repels shallow souls and thoughtless minds as surely as a rock will turn aside a shallow brook, — and how many men are there who are not shallow, and who do think? As to helpfulness, you may be ready to watch with men when they are ill, to fight for them when they are in peril, to relieve them when they are in trouble; but if you are careless about their little vanities and their little pleasures, you will be set down by most of them as ill-natured, selfish, and cold-hearted. The opportunities of doing real service are rare; the union of opportunity and ability is still rarer; but every day brings occasion to gratify the prurience of your neighbor's vanity by the tickling of direct flattery, or to soothe it with the soft caress of seeming sympathy. The men who become popular, the women who achieve social success (except by the brute force of sheer money), are not those who are ready to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, or who have in their hearts that charity which seeketh not its own, which thinketh no evil, but which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; they are rather they who do seek their own, and who think much evil, but who are ready to minister to the vanity and to serve the interests of those around them. And chiefly they are the former; for not only are opportunities of service, even in small matters, comparatively rare, but the memory of service, substantial although it be, is not fed upon daily, like the words and sympathetic acts that are so hungrily swallowed into the bottomless maw of human vanity. He who once promoted his friend's interest in a serious matter is less sure of being remembered