Word: iago
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...Othello is, perhaps, the greatest work in the world," wrote that famous man of letters Thomas Macaulay. And nothing, I think, has happened in the century since to alter his verdict. Giraldo Cinthio's story of the Moor of Venice, his ensign Iago and his wife Desdemona has, in fact, been the source of several superlatives: it gave us Rossini's Otello, his finest serious opera; it gave us the best of all Italian opera libretti (by Arrigo Boito), which, when set to music by Verdi, became the supreme Italian tragic opera of the Romantic century; and it gave...
...playwright's works. Othello lacks the usual extraneous trappings and non-essentials. We do not have here scenes of tension or conflict alternating with scenes of "comic relief"; nor do we have any separate sub-plots. Everything is directly related to the main current of the drama. Once Iago begins to poison Othello's mind, the play moves slowly, unswervingly and unalterably to the final catastrophe like a runaway steamroller grinding down a hill. But the conflict between Iago and Othello (if we can call it a conflict, for it is a battle in which one of the two combatants...
...young. Handsome and six-feet-three, he properly cuts a figure of great physical and moral stature. A rich, sonorous voice is complemented by an extraordinarily expressive face as, going from calm imperiousness through tormenting doubts and jealousy to become a tragically pitiful uxoricide, the Devil's agent Iago gradually wreaks the havoc of his human lord and the heavenly Desdemona (see cuts on page...
...empty of any more profound Shakesperean qualities. The critics exaggerate--less about the murders, which are truly abundant and dominant, than about the alleged lack of anything else. Although Shakespeare is particularly blunt in Titus, he still creates a drama whose vigor and clear foreshadowing of Lear, Hamlet and Iago should be respected, and cannot glibly be tossed aside...
Lost Eden. McCool becomes a kind of Iago subverting Duncan's better judgment. When Chief is killed by the neighbor who had enjoyed Duncan's wife, it is McCool who offers to lure the man within Duncan's shooting range. After that, the book moves to its bloody close with the implacable fury of a hill-country feud...