It is night in Venice. Two men are shouting under someone’s window. Brabantio, the master of the house, wakes and opens it.
One of them calls up that his daughter is gone. She has left with the general Othello. Brabantio gathers men and goes out after him.
The man who shouted was Roderigo. The man standing beside him, telling him what to say, is Iago. And Iago will shortly be at Othello’s side with a worried face.
Hiding a Name in the Dark
This play opens with Iago talking. He tells Roderigo that he hates Othello. He gives a reason too.
Cassio, not he, was made lieutenant. He has fought in the field many times, he says, and Cassio is only a man good with figures. And he is still serving under him as an ensign.
Then why not leave, Roderigo asks. There are men, Iago answers, who serve in appearance and take their own cut. What such a man does on the outside and what he does inside are two things. Then he says this.
“I am not what I am.” (Act 1, Scene 1)
That one line opens the door of the play. The audience knows his inside from the first scene. The people inside the play never learn it. Five acts run with the knowing and the not knowing kept apart.
The Night in the Senate
Brabantio brings his men and stops Othello. He charges him with having put a spell on his daughter. But the senate was awake at that hour too.
Word had come that a Turkish fleet was making for Cyprus. The only man Venice would call was Othello. The men who came to arrest him and the men who came to send for him meet in one room.
Othello speaks in the senate. He says he told the story of his life in that house many times. It was war, and being taken prisoner, and strange countries. The daughter wept over the telling, and so they came to know each other.
That is the only spell there was, he says. Then Desdemona is brought in. They ask her whom she will follow.
She says first that she knows what she owes her father. Then she says that as her mother followed him, she will follow her husband. In this play she settles her own place with her own mouth. Given what comes later, the scene stays with you.
Brabantio gives his daughter up. And he leaves Othello with one line. A child who deceived her father may deceive her husband too. The line stays like a seed, and comes back later out of Iago’s mouth.
Alone, Saying the Plan
The two of them are to sail for Cyprus. Roderigo, who loved Desdemona, is broken by the news. Iago tells him to get money together. Love like that will cool, he says, so wait.
Roderigo goes out and Iago is left alone. He tells the audience what he intends. He will make Cassio look close to Desdemona. He will use the fact that Othello trusts people easily.
Here he adds one more reason. He has heard it said that Othello has been with his wife. He says at once that he does not know whether it is true. It may not be, he says, and he will act as if it were.
Richard in chapter 27 also told the audience his plan first. But he named his reason plainly. Iago gives several and holds on to none of them. That is what makes this man different.
The First Night on the Island
The ships run into a storm. The Turkish fleet is scattered by it. Men who sailed to fight reach the island with nobody to fight.
A night of celebration is opened. Iago presses drink on Cassio. Cassio says he has a poor head for it, and takes it anyway.
Drunk, Cassio is drawn into a quarrel and draws his sword. The noise grows until it wakes the governor. Othello comes down and asks what has happened.
Iago answers. He speaks as though shielding Cassio, laying out only facts, in order. It is the method Antony used in chapter 31. By the end of it Cassio has lost his place.
Ruined, Cassio laments that he has lost his name. Iago comforts him. A name is nothing, he says. Then he offers him a way. Ask the general’s wife, and the general will come round.
Honest Iago
Nobody in this chapter thinks ill of Iago. Roderigo leaves his money with him. Cassio asks him for advice. Othello calls him an honest man.
The way he wins trust is simple. He says things that shield people, he states facts, and he does not push himself forward. That he hardly ever lies is the mark of this man. He works by selecting true things and setting them down.
He uses no weapon in this play. With no blade and no poison, words alone bring down a household. What he works with is the trust that people hand him.
Today, The Man Who Never Says Why
Iago gives his reasons more than once. He was passed over, he says, and he has heard a rumour. And he holds on to none of them. He does not stop after Cassio has lost the place.
A man with one reason stops when you take the reason away. A man with several picks up the next one. So this man cannot be argued with.
In chapter 46 Hamlet left a story behind him. Iago explains nothing, to the very end. In the next chapter a handkerchief is used as evidence. And nobody asks a single question about it.