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Iago's Marriage In Othello Essay

992 Words4 Pages

Othello is a medieval morality play written by Shakespeare in 1603. The play explores the fall of the tragic hero, Othello, from grace. Othello’s marriage is manipulated by the antagonist of this play. His Ancient, Iago. Iago uses his language to skillfully control and inevitably end the life and marriage of Othello. In this passage, there is an exchange between Iago and Roderigo, a man in love with Othello’s wife. In this passage, Iago uses a focused speech, clever techniques to convince Roderigo. Also in this passage, Iago is characterized as the antagonist of the play to the audience.

Shakespeare structures Iago’s speech, in this passage, towards reassuring the unstable Roderigo. In the context of this text, Brabantio reluctantly gave Othello and Desdemona’s marriage his blessing despite Iago and Roderigo attempts. Due to this, Roderigo says he’s going to drown himself. The structure of Iago’s response is very interesting. First, disregards Roderigo’s plan to drown himself. Iago begins his monologue with a very harsh tone. Iago goes on to state: ““Come, be a man. Drown thyself? Drown cats and blind puppies”. Iago shows no empathy to his so called friends death threat. Iago goes on to emphasize, “I have professed me thy friend”. And from here Iago tells Roderigo what he wants to hear. …show more content…

Before this passage, Roderigo states that his going to drown himself i. At this point, Roderigo has taken his life back into his own hands. This proves to be dissatisfying to Iago, since Roderigo is still of use of him. Iago uses his monologue in this passage to regain the power he had over Roderigo. Shakespeare also uses the speech difference to tell the audience that Iago is all the power in this relationship. And that this relationship is more of a master to his slave. Not a friendship, which Iago state that he is. By the end of this passage, Shakespeare uses Iago’s dialogue to effectively shift the power back to

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