‘Iago is more of a likeable anti-hero than a hateful villain.’ In light of this view, discuss
Iago’s attitude towards love.
In Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago’s attitude towards love is deeply pessimistic,
manipulative and Machiavellian, thereby undermining any reading of him as a likeable
anti-hero and firmly situating him as a hateful villain. His contempt for genuine emotion,
especially love, reveals a tragic villain who not only exploits love, but scorns the idea of
romantic attachment, exposing it as, in his view, nothing more than a tool to ‘serve his
turn’ upon Othello and create a ‘net that shall enmesh’ the tragic victims of the play.
Throughout the play, Iago weaponises Othello’s insecurities about his marriage to
Desdemona in order to catalyse the tragic hero’s demise. From the beginning of the
play, Iago makes repeated explicitly derogatory comments about the unnatural nature of
Othello and Desdemona’s interracial marriage, thereby revealing Iago’s view that love is
fickle emotion based on our baser instincts of lust and shallow attraction. Shakespeare
evokes animalistic and bestial imagery to describe Othello as a ‘barbary horse’ and the
metaphor of ‘an old black ram tupping your white ewe’ in order to inflame Brabantio
against Othello by manipulating his fears of miscegenation and Elizabethan notions of
black men as hypersexual. This idea is furthered by Iago’s misogyny and general
contempt for women, likening them to ‘guinea hen’, and parroting stereotypes of
Venetian women as ‘super-subtle’ and inherently deceitful, which shows his dismissal of
love as mere lust or folly, underscoring his belief that such feelings are tools to be
exploited. During the temptation scene, Iago’s hateful villainy is again on display when
he abuses the symbolic significance of the ‘handkerchief’ to create ‘ocular proof’ which
later leads to Othello to call for ‘vengeance’ from the ‘hollow hell’, demonstrating Iago’s
adeptness at sowing discord between Othello and Desdemona, corrupting their
marriage as a means to an end. Moreover, during the mock wedding scene, where
Othello and Iago are alone onstage together, the audience witnesses Iago’s
manipulation reach its peak, as this scene, with its ritualistic vows and Iago declaring ‘I
am your own forever’ reflects a perversion of love, emphasising Iago’s isolation of
Othello from his wife and highlighting the lengths that ‘honest Iago’ will go to destroy
Othello. The mock marriage acne appears to be the pinnacle of Iago’s power, arguably
furthering the irony and tragedy of the play, as the audience does not witness the
clandestine wedding between Othello and Desdemona, only this mock wedding - a
blatant betrayal of the views Othello has already undertaken. Iago preying on Othello,
using the ‘green-eyed monster’, the personification of jealousy, which highlights its
potency as a destructive force, ultimately leads to Othello snuffing out Desdemona’s
‘light’ by murdering her. The denigration of Othello and Desdemona’s pure love due to
Iago’s machinations therefore consolidates the audience’s view of Iago as a fiendish
and hateful villain.
© Humanities Unlocked. | AQA A-Level English Literature 2025 | For personal use only. Redistribution is
prohibited.
Iago’s attitude towards love.
In Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago’s attitude towards love is deeply pessimistic,
manipulative and Machiavellian, thereby undermining any reading of him as a likeable
anti-hero and firmly situating him as a hateful villain. His contempt for genuine emotion,
especially love, reveals a tragic villain who not only exploits love, but scorns the idea of
romantic attachment, exposing it as, in his view, nothing more than a tool to ‘serve his
turn’ upon Othello and create a ‘net that shall enmesh’ the tragic victims of the play.
Throughout the play, Iago weaponises Othello’s insecurities about his marriage to
Desdemona in order to catalyse the tragic hero’s demise. From the beginning of the
play, Iago makes repeated explicitly derogatory comments about the unnatural nature of
Othello and Desdemona’s interracial marriage, thereby revealing Iago’s view that love is
fickle emotion based on our baser instincts of lust and shallow attraction. Shakespeare
evokes animalistic and bestial imagery to describe Othello as a ‘barbary horse’ and the
metaphor of ‘an old black ram tupping your white ewe’ in order to inflame Brabantio
against Othello by manipulating his fears of miscegenation and Elizabethan notions of
black men as hypersexual. This idea is furthered by Iago’s misogyny and general
contempt for women, likening them to ‘guinea hen’, and parroting stereotypes of
Venetian women as ‘super-subtle’ and inherently deceitful, which shows his dismissal of
love as mere lust or folly, underscoring his belief that such feelings are tools to be
exploited. During the temptation scene, Iago’s hateful villainy is again on display when
he abuses the symbolic significance of the ‘handkerchief’ to create ‘ocular proof’ which
later leads to Othello to call for ‘vengeance’ from the ‘hollow hell’, demonstrating Iago’s
adeptness at sowing discord between Othello and Desdemona, corrupting their
marriage as a means to an end. Moreover, during the mock wedding scene, where
Othello and Iago are alone onstage together, the audience witnesses Iago’s
manipulation reach its peak, as this scene, with its ritualistic vows and Iago declaring ‘I
am your own forever’ reflects a perversion of love, emphasising Iago’s isolation of
Othello from his wife and highlighting the lengths that ‘honest Iago’ will go to destroy
Othello. The mock marriage acne appears to be the pinnacle of Iago’s power, arguably
furthering the irony and tragedy of the play, as the audience does not witness the
clandestine wedding between Othello and Desdemona, only this mock wedding - a
blatant betrayal of the views Othello has already undertaken. Iago preying on Othello,
using the ‘green-eyed monster’, the personification of jealousy, which highlights its
potency as a destructive force, ultimately leads to Othello snuffing out Desdemona’s
‘light’ by murdering her. The denigration of Othello and Desdemona’s pure love due to
Iago’s machinations therefore consolidates the audience’s view of Iago as a fiendish
and hateful villain.
© Humanities Unlocked. | AQA A-Level English Literature 2025 | For personal use only. Redistribution is
prohibited.
