B.B. Warfield: Pelagianism & Augustinianism

Augustine & The Pelagian Controversy

by B. B. Warfield

 
Table of Contents
Part I: The Origin & Nature of Pelgagianism
Part II; The External History of the Pelagian Controversy
Part III: Augustine's Part in The Controversy
Part IV: The Theology of Grace
 
Part I: The Origin & Nature of Pelgagianism
It was inevitable that the energy of the Church in intellectually realizing and defining its doctrines in relation to one another, should first be directed towards the objective side of Christian truth. The chief controversies of the first four centuries and the resulting definitions of doctrine, concerned the nature of God and the person of Christ; and it was not until these theological and Christological questions were well upon their way to final settlement, that the Church could turn its attention to the more subjective side of truth. Meanwhile she bore in her bosom a full recognition, side by side, of the freedom of the will, the evil consequences of the fall, and the necessity of divine grace for salvation. Individual writers, or even the several sections of the Church, might exhibit a tendency to throw emphasis on one or another of the elements that made up this deposit of faith that was the common inheritance of all. The East, for instance, laid especial stress on free will: and the West dwelt more pointedly on the ruin of the human race and the absolute need of God's grace for salvation. But neither did the Eastern theologians forget the universal sinfulness and need of redemption, or the necessity, for the realization of that redemption, of God's gracious influences; nor did those of the West deny the self-determination or accountability of men. All the elements of the composite doctrine of man were everywhere confessed; but they were variously emphasized, according to the temper of the writers or the controversial demands of the times. Such a state of affairs, however, was an invitation to heresy, and a prophecy of controversy; just as the simultaneous confession of the unity of God and the Deity of Christ, or of the Deity and the humanity of Christ, inevitably carried in its train a series of heresies and controversies, until the definitions of the doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ were complete. In like manner, it was inevitable that sooner or later some one should arise who would so one-sidedly emphasize one element or the other of the Church's teaching as to salvation, as to throw himself into heresy, and drive the Church, through controversy with him, into a precise definition of the doctrines of free will and grace in their mutual relations.


This new heresiarch came, at the opening of the fifth century, in the person of the British monk, Pelagius. The novelty of the doctrine which he taught is repeatedly asserted by Augustine,2 and is evident to the historian; but it consisted not in the emphasis that he laid on free will, but rather in the fact that, in emphasizing free will, he denied the ruin of the race and the necessity of grace. This was not only new in Christianity; it was even anti-Christian. Jerome, as well as Augustine, saw this at the time, and speaks of Pelagianism as the 'heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno';3 and modern writers of the various schools have more or less fully recognized it. Thus Dean Milman thinks that 'the greater part' of Pelagius' letter to Demetrias 'might have been written by an ancient academic';4 and Bishop Hefele openly declares that their fundamental doctrine, 'that man is virtuous entirely of his own merit, not of the gift of grace,' seems to him 'to be a rehabilitation of the general heathen view of the world,' and compares with it Cicero's words:5 'For gold, lands, and all the blessings of life, we have to return thanks to the Gods; but no one ever returned thanks to God for virtue.'6 The struggle with Pelagianism was thus in reality a struggle for the very foundations of Christianity; and even more dangerously than in the previous theological and Christological controversies, here the practical substance of Christianity was in jeopardy. The real question at issue was whether there was any need for Christianity at all; whether by his own power man might not attain eternal felicity; whether the function of Christianity was to save, or only to render an eternity of happiness more easily attainable by man.7


Genetically speaking, Pelagianism was the daughter of legalism; but when it itself conceived, it brought forth an essential deism. It is not without significance that its originators were 'a certain sort of monks;' that is, laymen of ascetic life. From this point of view the Divine law is looked upon as a collection of separate commandments, moral perfection as a simple complex of separate virtues, and a distinct value as a meritorious demand on Divine approbation is ascribed to each good work or attainment in the exercises of piety. It was because this was essentially his point of view that Pelagius could regard man's powers as sufficient to the attainment of sanctity — nay, that he could even assert it to be possible for a man to do more than was required of him. But this involved an essentially deistic conception of man's relations to his Maker. God had endowed His creature with a capacity (possibilitas) or ability (posse) for action, and it was for him to use it. Man was thus a machine, which, just because it was well made, needed no Divine interference for its right working; and the Creator, having once framed him, and endowed him with the posse, henceforth leaves the velle and the esse to him.


At this point we have touched the central and formative principle of Pelagianism. It lies in the assumption of the plenary ability of man; his ability to do all that righteousness can demand — to work out not only his own salvation, but also his own perfection. This is the core of the whole theory; and all the other postulates not only depend upon it, but arise out of it. Both chronologically and logically this is the root of the system.


When we first hear of Pelagius, he is already advanced in years, living in Rome in the odour of sanctity,8 and enjoying a well-deserved reputation for zeal in exhorting others to a good life, which grew especially warm against those who endeavoured to shelter themselves, when charged with their sins, behind the weakness of nature.9 He was outraged by the universal excuses on such occasions — 'It is hard!' 'it is difficult!' 'we are not able!' 'we are men!' — 'Oh, blind madness!' he cried: 'we accuse God of a twofold ignorance — that He does not seem to know what He has made, nor what He has commanded — as if forgetting the human weakness of which He is Himself the Author, He has imposed laws on man which He cannot endure.'10 He himself tells us11 to that it was his custom, therefore, whenever he had to speak on moral improvement and the conduct of a holy life, to begin by pointing out the power and quality of human nature, and by showing what it was capable of doing. For (he says) he esteemed it of small use to exhort men to what they deemed impossible: hope must rather be our companion, and all longing and effort die when we despair of attaining. So exceedingly ardent an advocate was he of man's unaided ability to do all that God commanded, that when Augustine's noble and entirely scriptural prayer — 'Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt' — was repeated in his hearing, he was unable to endure it; and somewhat inconsistently contradicted it with such violence as almost to become involved in a strife.12 The powers of man, he held, were gifts of God; and it was, therefore, a reproach against Him as if He had made man ill or evil, to believe that they were insufficient for the keeping of His law. Nay, do what we will, we cannot rid ourselves of their sufficiency: 'whether we will, or whether we will not, we have the capacity of not sinning.'13 'I say,' he says, 'that man is able to be without sin, and that he is able to keep the commandments of God;' and this sufficiently direct statement of human ability is in reality the hinge of his whole system.


There were three specially important corollaries which flowed from this assertion of human ability, and Augustine himself recognized these as the chief elements of the system.14 It would be inexplicable on such an assumption, if no man had ever used his ability in keeping God's law; and Pelagius consistently asserted not only that all might be sinless if they chose, but also that many saints, even before Christ, had actually lived free from sin. Again, it follows from man's inalienable ability to be free from sin, that each man comes into the world without entailment of sin or moral weakness from the past acts of men; and Pelagius consistently denied the whole doctrine of original sin. And still again, it follows from the same assumption of ability that man has no need of supernatural assistance in his striving to obey righteousness; and Pelagius consistently denied both the need and reality of divine grace in the sense of an inward help (and especially of a prevenient help) to man's weakness.


It was upon this last point that the greatest stress was laid in the controversy, and Augustine was most of all disturbed that thus God's grace was denied and opposed. No doubt the Pelagians spoke constantly of 'grace,' but they meant by this the primal endowment of man with free will, and the subsequent aid given him in order to its proper use by the revelation of the law and the teaching of the gospel, and, above all, by the forgiveness of past sins in Christ and by Christ's holy example.15 Anything further than this external help they utterly denied; and they denied that this external help itself was absolutely necessary, affirming that it only rendered it easier for man to do what otherwise he had plenary ability for doing. Chronologically, this contention seems to have preceded the assertion which must logically lie at its base, of the freedom of man from any taint, corruption, or weakness due to sin. It was in order that they might deny that man needed help, that they denied that Adam's sin had any further effect on his posterity than might arise from his bad example. 'Before the action of his own proper will,' said Pelagius plainly, 'that only is in man which God made.'16 'As we are procreated without virtue,' he said, 'so also without vice.'17 In a word, 'Nothing that is good and evil, on account of which we are either praiseworthy or blameworthy, is born with us — it is rather done by us; for we are born with capacity for either, but provided with neither.'18 So his later follower, Julian, plainly asserts his 'faith that God creates men obnoxious to no sin, but full of natural innocence, and with capacity for voluntary virtues.'19 So intrenched is free will in nature, that, according to Julian, it is 'just as complete after sins as it was before sins;'20 and what this means may be gathered from Pelagius' definition in the 'Confession of Faith,' that he sent to Innocent: 'We say that man is always able both to sin and not to sin, so as that we may confess that we have free will.' That sin in such circumstances was so common as to be well-nigh universal, was accounted for by the bad example of Adam and the power of habit, the latter being simply the result of imitation of the former. 'Nothing makes well-doing so hard,' writes Pelagius to Demetrias, 'as the long custom of sins which begins from childhood and gradually brings us more and more under its power until it seems to have in some degree the force of nature (vim naturae).' He is even ready to allow for the force of habit in a broad way, on the world at large; and so divides all history into progressive periods, marked by God's (external) grace. At first the light of nature was so strong that men by it alone could live in holiness. And it was only when men's manners became corrupt and tarnished nature began to be insufficient for holy living, that by God's grace the Law was given as an addition to mere nature; and by it 'the original lustre was restored to nature after its blush had been impaired.' And so again, after the habit of sinning once more prevailed among men, and 'the law became unequal to the task of curing it,'21 Christ was given, furnishing men with forgiveness of sins, exhortations to imitation of the example and the holy example itself.22 But though thus a progressive deterioration was confessed, and such a deterioration as rendered desirable at least two supernatural interpositions (in the giving of the law and the coming of Christ), yet no corruption of nature, even by growing habit, is really allowed. It was only an ever-increasing facility in imitating vice which arose from so long a schooling in evil; and all that was needed to rescue men from it was a new explanation of what was right (in the law), or, at the most, the encouragement of forgiveness for what was already done, and a holy example (in Christ) for imitation. Pelagius still asserted our continuous possession of 'a free will which is unimpaired for sinning and for not sinning;' and Julian, that 'our free will is just as full after sins as it was before sins;' although Augustine does not fail to twit him with a charge of inconsistency.23


The peculiar individualism of the Pelagian view of the world comes out strongly in their failure to perceive the effect of habit on nature itself. Just as they conceived of virtue as a complex of virtuous acts, so they conceived of sin exclusively as an act, or series of disconnected acts. They appear not to have risen above the essentially heathen view which had no notion of holiness apart from a series of acts of holiness, or of sin apart from a like series of sinful acts.24 Thus the will was isolated from its acts, and the acts from each other, and all organic connection or continuity of life was not only overlooked but denied.25 After each act of the will, man stood exactly where he did before: indeed, this conception scarcely allows for the existence of a 'man' — only a willing machine is left, at each click of the action of which the spring regains its original position, and is equally ready as before to reperform its function. In such a conception there was no place for character: freedom of will was all. Thus it was not an unnatural mistake which they made, when they forgot the man altogether, and attributed to the faculty of free will, under the name of 'possibilitas' or 'posse,' the ability that belonged rather to the man whose faculty it is, and who is properly responsible for the use he makes of it. Here lies the essential error of their doctrine of free will: they looked upon freedom in its form only, and not in its matter; and, keeping man in perpetual and hopeless equilibrium between good and evil, they permitted no growth of character and no advantage to himself to be gained by man in his successive choices of good. It need not surprise us that the type of thought which thus dissolved the organism of the man into a congeries of disconnected voluntary acts, failed to comprehend the solidarity of the race. To the Pelagian, Adam was a man, nothing more; and it was simply unthinkable that any act of his that left his own subsequent acts uncommitted, could entail sin and guilt upon other men. The same alembic that dissolved the individual into a succession of voluntary acts, could not fail to separate the race into a heap of unconnected units. If sin, as Julian declared, is nothing but will, and the will itself remained intact after each act, how could the individual act of an individual will condition the acts of men as yet unborn? By 'imitation' of his act alone could (under such a conception) other men be affected. And this carried with it the corresponding view of man's relation to Christ. He could forgive us the sins we had committed; He could teach us the true way; He could set us a holy example; and He could exhort us to its imitation. But He could not touch us to enable us to will the good, without destroying the absolute equilibrium of the will between good and evil; and to destroy this was to destroy its freedom, which was the crowning good of our divinely created nature. Surely the Pelagians forgot that man was not made for will, but will for man.
In defending their theory, as we are told by Augustine, there were five claims that they especially made for it.26 It allowed them to praise as was their due, the creature that God had made, the marriage that He had instituted, the law that He had given, the free will which was His greatest endowment to man, and the saints who had followed His counsels. By this they meant that they proclaimed the sinless perfection of human nature in every man as he was brought into the world, and opposed this to the doctrine of original sin; the purity and holiness of marriage and the sexual appetites, and opposed this to the doctrine of the transmission of sin; the ability of the law, as well as and apart from the gospel, to bring men into eternal life, and opposed this to the necessity of inner grace; the integrity of free will to choose the good, and opposed this to the necessity of divine aid; and the perfection of the lives of the saints, and opposed this to the doctrine of universal sinfulness. Other questions, concerning the origin of souls, the necessity of baptism for infants, the original immortality of Adam, lay more on the skirts of the controversy, and were rather consequences of their teaching than parts of it. As it was an obvious fact that all men died, they could not admit that Adam's death was a consequence of sin lest they should be forced to confess that his sin had injured all men; they therefore asserted that physical death belonged to the very nature of man, and that Adam would have died even had he not sinned.27 So, as it was impossible to deny that the Church everywhere baptized infants, they could not refuse them baptism without confessing themselves innovators in doctrine; and therefore they contended that infants were not baptized for forgiveness of sins, but in order to attain a higher state of salvation. Finally, they conceived that if it was admitted that souls were directly created by God for each birth, it could not be asserted that they came into the world soiled by sin and under condemnation; and therefore they loudly championed this theory of the origin of souls.


The teachings of the Pelagians, it will be readily seen, easily welded themselves into a system, the essential and formative elements of which were entirely new in the Christian Church; and this startlingly new reading of man's condition, powers, and dependence for salvation, it was, that broke like a thunderbolt upon the Western Church at the opening of the fifth century, and forced her to reconsider, from the foundations, her whole teaching as to man and his salvation.


For the rest, see:
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/augpel.html

Shakespeare's "Othello:" Iago...Totally Corrupted, Utterly Depraved, Entirely Enslaved and Remorselessly a Rational Madman

Aside from our Biblical, Confessional, liturgical and historic committments, a study in rendered on

Iago, a keen antagonist in Shakespeare's Othello.  Iago appears to be a decretal reprobate from
eternity past.  We submit the following review of Iago, the corrupted, depraved, ontologically
enslaved,  epistemologically enslaved, volitionally enshackled and thoroughly corrupted Iago. 

Shakespeare’s Othello:  Iago, the Corrupted, Depraved, Enslaved, and Rational Mad Man

            Following the suggestion of the text, two questions are posed (Kennedy 1014).   Thus, the task is to ask and assess two questions.  The first question is:  “What motivates Iago to carry out his schemes?”  Several motives will appear in the text as consequences rather than causes of Iago’s depravity—ontology governing epistemology and praxis. Iago is “essentially” corrupt, at root and at base (pun intended).  These motives will be cited several times, albeit without full analysis of each motive. The second question is: “Is Iago a devil incarnate, a madman, or a rational human being?”  With respect to the second question, preliminarily, the metaphysical and theological question of a “devil incarnate” is immediately dismissed; although Shakespeare makes a few theological allusions, they are that, allusions, rather than didactic, dogmatic, or catechetical assertions of belief.  The second question will be treated more largely than the first question, focusing on Iago as an utterly corrupt madman possessing high intelligence, facile reasoning skills and wittiness, adept craftiness, and an ability to adroitly shift to tactical demands.  Also, with respect to the second question, the term “madman” is little addressed in terms of “insanity” or a “diminished capacity.”  While there are a few instances where Iago indicates a moral sensibility, his conviction and silence in Act 5 strongly indicates an underlying awareness of right and wrong.  Iago is not insane, but fully rational and corrupt.  Asimov handily summarizes Iago, “Since the entire play is a demonstration of the two-facedness of Iago, it is entirely proper that he [Iago] swears by Janus” (Asimov 615).  As such, as a thoroughly corrupted human, Iago freely chooses the worst paths in accordance with his own instinctual depravity; his ontological depravity enslaves him to his own choices and feelings.  Throughout Iago’s displays of madness (again, madness not as insanity or madness without some underlying and existential moral sense) and rationality, a basic, corrupted and repeated pattern of opposition emerges as one scholar notes:  “I versus him, them, and everyone else” (Rodgers-Gardener 41).  Iago cannot be other than he is, at base. At base (again, pun intended), Iago takes “pleasure in manipulating lives” with an “intense” pleasure (Asimov 631).  This is the ultimate “ego;” “ego” is the Anglicized form of the Greek pronoun “εγω;” this is the ultimate, lawless and autonomous “I” of “Iago,” perhaps an intentional play on a word by Shakespeare. To answer the two posed questions, the procedure will be to provide a diachronic analysis of Iago from Acts 1 to 5.  Question one will not be widely developed, although each stated motive could be individually assessed on its own.  Question two will be the larger focus.  The diachronic analysis, Act by Act, will afford an emphasis of accumulated weight—albeit tedious—that will inarguably demonstrate that Iago is a madman with exceptional rational skills.  Iago is corrupted, enslaved, addicted and depraved, but rational, cool, adroit and scheming.

            A larger context on Iago (beyond Othello: The Moor) is strongly suggested with weighty questions.  Beyond Iago specifically and by way of a wider context about moral freedom and moral enslavement in decision-making, a few indications are offered.  Again, this is for a wider context and for introductory purposes, lest one think that Shakespeare is a solitary voice on the subject of depravity, moral sense and ability of the mind and will. The ancients may have pointed to the “fates,” predetermination, and puppetry.  These lengthy discussions—depravity, moral ability, and freedom of the will—surely broke out in the historic, well known, well documented and extended imbroglio between Pelagius, a British monk, St. Augustine of Hippo, Africa, and St. Jerome of Jerusalem and Rome in the late 4^th century.  There are “volumes” of primary documents from these three contestants, not to mention the secondary sources through the centuries. Based on Pelagius and Augustine, these debates caused one well known scholar, the Rev. Dr. R.C. Sproul (B.A., Westminster College, M.Div., Pittsburgh Seminary, Th.D., Free University of Amsterdam, and author of seventy books), to famously say that all theological discussions, all philosophic systems and all religious denominations can be reshuffled and re-categorized into three categories:  Pelagian, Semi-Pelagian, or Augustinian.  Infamously, as the battles roiled, the Synod of Orange in France, 529 C.E., ruled for Western Christendom in favor of Augustinianism.  Eastern Christendom, or Greek Orthodoxy and affiliates, never accepted the Synod of Orange. The Italian scholar, Thomas Aquinas of the 13^th century, and the English scholar and Oxfordian, John Wycliffe of the 14^th century, stood in the Augustinian tradition.  The battles about volitional freedom and rational enslavement (to one’s own nature) broke out with a poignant freshness in the infamous and widely known battle between Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Dutch Renaissance humanist and scholar, and the unwieldy but scholarly monk from Wittenberg, Germany, the Teutonic titan, Martin Luther in 1525.  Luther issued his classic and must-read-for-the-period, The Bondage of the Will, again favoring Augustinian directions on ontology, anthropology, harmartiology, and ethics (Luther, throughout).  Luther, true to his tavern-style, called Melanchthon’s arguments a “gold painted cow pie” (actually, Luther used a scatological term in German).  Luther’s view reflected Swiss, German, French, and English Reformers.  It is quite arguable that Augustine, Luther and others reflected a careful, Pauline theology.  English scholars were abreast of the Continental developments. The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England, the law of the land during Shakespeare’s day, the Articles to which every Anglican cleric subscribed, and the Articles which were largely amplified and defended in the writings of the dominant English Reformers, reads on the relevant points of depravity and freedom:

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil… (Article IX, “Of Original Sin, Articles of Religion”).

Or again,

“The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith; and calling upon God…(“Of Free Will,” Articles of Religion, Article X)

The Roman Catholic response was to rebut these English (and other Protestant) views with the well-crafted Council of Trent (1545-1563), reasserting free will with some sacramental modifications, but denying the depth, extent, and deadly effect of native depravity.  Subsequently, various disagreements with Reformation Protestantism arose from within the three Protestant streams of Anglicanism, Lutheranism and the Presbyterianism-Reformed axis, e.g. Jacobus Arminius of the Dutch Reformed Church of the Netherlands, John Wesley of Anglican Methodism and Charles Finney of Wesleyan-Pentecostalist orientations.  It is probably fair to say that in the post-Enlightenment, post-Protestant and post-Roman traditions in the West, these are non-issues.  One suspects that an asserted “moral autonomy and ability,” Kant’s view, is assumed in the post-Kantian West, more assumed than analyzed. Suffice it to be said that a long, long history informs the debate through history with deeper questions.  Even in our own time, a degree of biological determinism (evolution) and behaviorism (B.F. Skinner) survives.  Or, one even hears uncritical themes of “victimology” in media stories, as if “freedom” and “moral power” disappeared or were diminished due to poverty, bad parenting, inadequate government funding and more.  Aside from this wider context of introduction, yet for the purpose of the present task of analyzing Iago as a rational villain, at no point does Iago evince anything else or any other thing than a consistent, repeated, and unaltered course of depraved thinking, feeling, and conscience.  One wonders, using modern themes, if Iago might claim: “My Momma was mean to me and my Daddy beat me and was a drunk,”  ergo, I lack moral freedom, volition, rationality and affection?”  Who knows, but wider questions are in play. Whatever Shakespeare believed about volitional freedom, depravity and moral enslavement and whatever he may have known of the lengthy history of these vexed questions, Shakespeare’s Iago presents a rational madman (a vexing oxymoron), incapable, indisposed, disabled, and dead in his moral capacities and thoughts.  Corrupt though he was, yet he was rational, cool and scheming. Turning from the wider context to the diachronic (and tedious) analysis with the cumulative weight, Iago’s character is now assessed, Act by Act.

            Whatever one may think or believe about the freedom and power of the human will in relation to reason and feeling, Iago is an example of bondage to himself.  At no point, does he demonstrate abiding moral sense, moral conscience that governs, or a moral power of will over himself. Act 1 sets the essential outlines of Iago’s character and motives.  A list of motives can be cited, more as consequences of a foundational, essential and ontological corruption.  The list of motives is hereby developed. He’s an embezzler, if not a pick-pocketer, of the hapless and duped Roderigo (1.1.1-3).  He is “greedy.” Roderigo, in his own way, also demonstrates a persistent moral inability; he angles for an adulterous relationship with Desdemona and is willing to kill Cassio.  Iago is “greedy” for Roderigo’s easy money. Iago “hates” and is “jealous” of Cassio, claiming that Cassio’s promotion above him proceeds by a “preferment” that “goes by letter and affection” (1.1.37).  Iago takes contemptuous views of his fellow soldiers who, he claims, are self-serving pensioners and time-servers in pursuit of cashiering out for the easier life; unlike these lackeys, some—as Iago infers about himself—“…These fellows have some soul…I am not what I am” (1.1.56, 67).  Iago is “loveless” and “contemptuous” of others. In short, while Iago plays the game of external forms, he is willing to play the “hypocrite,” the two-faced, the Janus-faced liar, or, to be “not what I am.”  Iago is a morally negating “hypocrite” in a shameless way. His fellow soldiers are self-serving soulless creatures while he, Iago, has—he thinks—higher ambitions, e.g. Ego, Super-Ego and Super Id, if we may anachronistically use Freud’s presumptions.  It is a serious contradiction that Iago does not himself sense, that is, to castigate his fellow soldiers who are self-serving while Iago, himself, asserts and values the same. After a discussion with Roderigo, playing to Roderigo’s quest for Desdemona, he stirs Cassio to confront Brabantio about Desdemona’s marriage to Othello.  Iago is “manipulative.” No trick, no turn of phrase and no concept is too low or too vulgar for Iago as he adroitly uses rational, spiteful and ill-willed language, said to include bestiality, racism, geo-political tensions, and the biological prospect of illegitimate offspring from such a union. Iago is a “liar.”  He shamelessly recommends that Roderigo “poison his [Brabantio’s] delight” and “plague him with flies” (1.1.70, 74).  As Roderigo bestirs Brabantio from sleep and engages him in conversation, Iago speaks from the dark shadows; this betrays Iago’s self-awareness of right and wrong and his underlying sense that informs his desire for anonymity and exculpability; from the shadows, Iago uses inflammatory rhetoric with Brabantio.  Here are a few choice phrases from Iago: Othello is an “old black ram,” “tupping your white ewe,” “the devil will make a grandsire of you,” “covered with a Barbary horse, nephews neigh to you,” and the Moor and Desdemona are mating like the “beast with two backs” (1.1.111, 114, 116-117).  Roderigo echoes Iago’s inflammatory rhetoric and says that Desdemona is in the “gross clasps of the lascivious Moor” in this “gross revolt” (1.1.120, 139).  Iago is an impenitent “trouble-maker.” Yet, aware of his involvement and need for cover-by-night, the need to excuse himself from the entanglement and any accountability for hatred of Cassio and Othello, Iago explains his self-serving departure: “It seems neither meet nor wholesome to my place…/against the Moor” (1.1.145).  Willing to inflame, hate and accuse, Iago wants no accountability.  Wanting no accountability betrays his underlying moral sense of right and wrong which aggravates the charge of corruption and underscores that Iago is a rational tactician rather than a raving madman. His Janus-faces are further seen as he excuses himself and beats a retreat: “Tho’ I do hate him as I do hell pains…/Yet for necessity of present life…/I must show out a flag and sign of love” (1.1.154).  The scene is set in the seed plot of Act 1, Scene 1, and presents a corrupted yet reasoning Iago.  The consequential motives to a native depravity are: greedy, jealous, hateful, loveless, contemptuous, hypocritical, manipulative and trouble-making.  Although he shows a few limited signs of moral sense and sight, e.g. the need to hide in the dark and appear otherwise than he is in reality, he still disregards adherence to moral norms.  No changes in Iago’s character appear throughout the scenes as they unfold.  His corrupted motives proceed from his essential corruption, at base, in the dirt, root, tree, branch and leaves.

            In Act 1, Scene 2, the scene shifts to Venice and another street before Othello’s residence; however, if the scene changes, here as throughout the play, there are no changes in the rational madman, Iago.  Again, “madman,” by an assumption, does not imply ignorance, lack of moral sight or sense, mental incompetence, or a lowered IQ.  Iago is a “madman” in another sense:  he thinks, feels, chooses, and acts in the face of norms he understands. As the angered Brabantio and Roderigo approach, Iago offers more lies when he says to Othello: “I hold it the very stuff of conscience/To do no contrived murder.  I lack iniquity…” (1.2.2). Iago’s claim to have a “the very stuff of conscience” may be factual, but it is hardened conscience beyond sensibility and moral governance; as the play unfolds, one will see that he utterly lacks the “stuff of conscience.”  Iago’s claim is false on its face.  The claim to do “no contrived murder” will melt as the plot unfolds and the bodies pile up. Iago, quite to the contrary, will be guilty of assault and battery with the intent to kill (a failed attempt with respect to Cassio), two second degree murders (Emilia and Roderigo), one first degree homicide as an accessory to the fact (Desdemona), and one felony murder as an accessory to the fact (Othello).   That is four homicides.  As for Othello, the fourth homocide, the issue of first and second degree murder is not at issue; in the commission of any other felonies, a result has occurred with Othello’s suicide.  Ergo, Othello’s suicide is an indictable offense as a “felony murder,” the equivalent of a first degree homocide for modern sentencing purposes and for older rulings in English common law.  In other words, there are four felonious homocides to which and for which Iago is guilty. Iago’s claim to “lack iniquity” is wickedly ludicrous on its face, especially after watching him in Act 1, Scene 1.  Shakespeare is further advancing the idea of Iago’s moral villainy and moral incompetence.  Of course, Iago offers—as a confirmed liar—further inflammatory words as Brabantio approaches Othello.  In a major pivot, Iago states to Othello that Brabantio has used “scurvy and provocative terms against your honor…/…with the little godliness I have I did full hard forbear him…” (1.2.6, 17). Again, more lies are instinctually offered.  While Iago has affirmatively declared “I lack no iniquity,” he now recognizes that he possesses “little godliness.”  This may be the first limited truth claim uttered by Iago.  Further, he plainly lies to Othello that he “did full hard forbear him.”  This is palpably false. Iago further states, despite any stated evidence, that Brabantio will bring the force of law to bear on Othello: “…what restraint or grievance the law…” (1.2.14).  Act 1, Scene 2, develops Iago’s confirmation in lies, false self-exculpation, and trouble-making. Piling lie upon lie, Iago is a clinical sociopath, a corrupted disposition that is un-amenable to correction or treatment.  Iago is corrupt at base, in the dirt, root, tree, trunk, branches and leaves.

            In shifting to Act 1, Scene 3, the scene has shifted to the Venetian council chambers where disputes are heard.  Iago is largely absent throughout in terms of discussion.  But, true to character as noted above and throughout the paper, he reemerges at the end of Scene 3 with his usual depravities.  In session, the Venetian noblemen discuss the impending Turkish invasion of Cyprus, but also the Brabantio-Othello-Desdemona relationship.  Three subplots emerge with minor resolutions.  First, there is a discussion between Brabantio and the Venetian noblemen. Second, there is a discussion between Othello and the Venetian noblemen about the marriage.  Third, there is a responsive and lengthy discussion between Desdemona, Brabantio, and the Venetian noblemen about the marriage (1.3.1-301).   After the tensions to the subplots are partially resolved in these lengthy discussions, Iago and Roderigo re-emerge in a telling section apart from the Seignory (1.3.302-382).  For the present argument, the end of Act 1, Scene 3, the discussion between Iago and Roderigo is relevant to the thesis that Iago is a rational and corrupted sociopath, corrupted through all faculties of soul, mind, reason, will, and feeling.

            Extending on the above, Act 1, Scene 3 offers a foundational insight to Iago, specifically, his own discussion about human nature in general, the role of will, reason, passions and a power and ability of will and reason. This is an important hermeneutical key to Iago himself.  Iago himself offers it.  Iago, in a consummate act of self-deception and individualistic assertion of autonomous competence, educates the dim-witted and hapless victim of embezzlement, Roderigo.  Iago states:  “…Our wills are gardens…sterile with idleness or manured with industry…”  Laziness and industry of will are the two moral options of the benighted Iago.  This is a limited set of options!  Iago further speaks of planting botanical species in the garden of the human body by autonomous willing and decision.   Iago believes in the ability, competence and independency of moral choice in the planting; however, Iago utterly fails to answer why he unfailingly and consistently plants the seeds of his own corrupt thoughts and choices; as noted above, Iago is greedy, jealous, hateful, loveless, contemptuous, hypocritical, manipulative and trouble-making.  The deeper question is avoided, namely, why does Iago consistently plant corrupt seeds? Did Iago autonomously plant these seeds by way of an enabled moral and “free” choice or, as a “depraved self” corruptly acting upon himself, did he necessarily choose these seeds because of his own corruption?  It is argued here that “Yes” is the answer to both questions. Yes, Iago freely made these choices with consistency.  But also yes to this question.  Yes, Iago is natively and naturally corrupted which influences his mind, affections and volitions. Iago’s failed explanation about the human condition raises another charge, to wit, hubris, conceit and self-deception about himself and humans.  Iago never demonstrates the slightest ability—as desire—to make capable moral choices or thinking.  Essentially, at base, Iago is corrupted and, as a consequence, he freely chooses according to his nature.  The list of motives comes as consequences to his nature.

            To revise and extend on the botanical metaphor offered by Iago in Act 1, Scene 3, this is exactly what Iago has done with Roderigo and Brabantio, willfully planting seeds of insinuations, distrust and hate.  This sowing reaps a latter harvest of crops—corrupt crops in their minds, corrupted wills and bodies driven by their own underlying ontology and epistemology.  The continuing moral incompetence and obtuseness of Roderigo may be another support in view of moral depravity and inability.  Roderigo is consistently blinded until the end of the play; Othello, Emilia, and Desdemona are similarly duped.  Also, throughout the play, players continue to believe that Iago is “honest,” a narrative-seed that, inferably, Iago has assiduously and carefully cultivated. One may infer that Iago has been reaping an internal harvest for quite some time within himself, by himself, and upon himself —greed, jealousy, hatred, lovelessness, deception, self-exculpation, trouble-making, and conceit about his moral abilities and self-blindness.  Little does he know that he himself is in bondage to those same fruits while claiming self-control or a power to choose otherwise. 

            If one introduces the issue of reason as over against or alongside the matter of human will, the following develops.  Following Iago’s own hermeneutic, Iago’s will and body are “manured with industry,” a powerful statement by Shakespeare implying “excrement” in Iago’s body, mind and soul.  One may think of horse, pig, dog and other sources of excrement.  In our clinical times, these matters are confined to sterile bathrooms.  However, in the streets of England and in a more agricultural society, these matters appeared in barns, streets and byways.  Whether then or now, it remains a powerful statement.  It is a powerful phrase by Shakespeare put in a verbal rather than noun form, “manured.” With respect to himself and his own reason, Iago, full of himself and full of industrious “excrement” (from beginning to end), asserts that the “scale of reason” serves as a “counterpoise” to the passions.  Rhetorically put, but containing an indicative assertion, “Where and at what point does Iago demonstrate this counterpoise of reason governing his underlying motives, or passions of hate, jealousy and more?”  This is almost an Aristotelian touch of sorts by Shakespeare with Aristotle’s classic quest and emphasis on reason as the moderator of difficult passions.  It was Aristotle’s argument and quest for “harmony” of all parts, reason governing the unruly passions. Iago notes that without reason, one would be conducted “to preposterous conclusions” (1.3.323). Quite precisely but very ironically, the “preposterous conclusions” based on reason will arise in Iago’s own corrupted garden of corrupted reasoning and thinking.  Iago’s reason will indeed lead to “preposterous conclusions.” Iago adds, “…we have reason to cool our raging motions” (1.3.324).   This is a telling section on Iago’s view of himself and others, suggesting power and ability of will, reason, and controlled passions.  As a rational but corrupted man, Iago is “supremely aware that he wants to destroy all that does not feed his ego” and this governs all that he says and does (Rogers-Gardener, 50).  Iago thinks himself autonomous when, in fact, he is in bondage to his own being. The corrupted root, tree and trunk nourish the corrupted branches and leaves.

            To extend and emphasize the above, how does Iago reflect on mind, will and body as Act 1, Scene 3, concludes?  The emphasis shifts back to empirical passions of hate, greed, revenge, and slander, again without an ounce of compunction, expression of moral ability, or moral sight and sense.  In another greedy shakedown-move on Roderigo, Iago repetitively exhorts the dim-witted Roderigo to “fill thy purse,” or, put another way, fill “Iago’s purse.”  In another instance of slander, of course without evidence or reason, he assures Roderigo that Desdemona “must change for youth when she is sated with his body…/…she will find the error of her choice…” (1.3.335-336). The marriage, Iago assures Roderigo, is sure to dissolve since it involves an “erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian” (1.3.340).  The two-faced Iago further exclaims murderously, “I hate the Moor” (as does Roderigo) and exhorts both to be “conjunctive in our revenge” on Cassio (1.3.347).  With respect to Othello, Iago encourages Roderigo, “If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport” (1.3.346-347).  The intellectual and moral dimwit, Roderigo, ignobly exits.  In a staccato-like-aside at the end of Act 1, Scene 3, Iago offers more corrupted expositions on corrupted faculties of reason and soul: (1)  that Othello faultily thinks that men are “honest” (1.3.377), (2) that “For my sport and profit, I hate the Moor” (1.3.363), (3) that Othello and Emilia have disported themselves together, thus cuckolding him, Iago, to wit, “…betwixt the sheets/He hath done my office…” (1.3.364-365) and (4) that he will “abuse Othello’s ear that he [Cassio] is too familiar with his [Othello’s] wife” (1.3.371-372).  Whatever Iago thinks his intellectual and moral freedoms to be, he—empirically—has no powers of moral sense, yet shows that he is rational and willing. Iago shows hate, greed, revenge and slander in his “freely chosen” agenda, influenced by his “cool reason,” as cultivated by own willful garden “manured by industry” (tongue firmly in cheek). As one analyst summarizes it: “The Othellos and Iagos and Macbeths in Shakespeare are humanity gone mad…” (Rodgers-Gardener, 69).  Rational madness, at base and in the roots, begets more madness in the branches.

            Act 1 established the preliminary villainies of Iago in mind, will and affection.  A lengthy set of motives has been listed in response to the first of two questions.  The first question pertained to Iago’s motives and those have been indicated.  The second question pertains to Iago as a devil incarnate or rational madman.  Act 1 is a foreshadowing of later villainies with enlargement on both questions. Act 2 amplifies and illustrates Iago’s innate corruption as his total corruption gains clarity as a scheming, rational, but morally insensate sociopath.    

            Act 2, Scene 1 opens at a seaport and quay wall in Cyprus (2.1.1-100).  Act 2, Scene 2, may be quickly dispatched; Scene 2 is an official and public summons in a Cyprus street.  The trumpeted summons calls to repasts of drink, food, and a celebration of a nuptial and military victory over the Turks.  Act 2, Scene 3, involves a shift to the banquet inside the Cyprus citadel, a setting-shift from the public (Scene 1 and 2) to a more confined context where most of the play will center (Scene 3).  Throughout Act 2, the moral degradation of Iago’s mind and character is expanded.  Again, there is not one instance of moral insight or sense on Iago’s part, a slave of himself.  Iago is one of “Shakespeare’s rootless, commercial men, without loyalty to anyone, but himself…Machiavellian types, turning whatever practical trick to advance themselves” (Rogers-Gardener, 54).  Rather than rootless and quite to the contrary, Shakespeare may be arguing that tricksters have deeply corrupted “moral roots,” themselves.

            Act 2, Scene 1, gives further displays of Iago’s depraved character. One sees Iago’s ill-will, spite, rational madness, and corruptions further explored.  Diachronically, the list emerges. First, Cassio’s gives a courteous, regal, polite and courtly kiss to the hand of Desdemona, a non-sexual event that Iago seeks to sexualize.  Iago’s intends to exploit Cassio’s kiss as a token of many intimacies between Cassio and Desdemona. Second, Iago’s engages in impertinent, bawdy, banal, sexual and loose banter with Desdemona, therein revealing Iago’s misogyny and general views of women as sexually dissolute (Iago’s projections or perhaps his own adulteries).  Third, Iago’s slanders Desdemona to Roderigo, promising Roderigo a future adultery with Desdemona.  Fourth, Iago further backstabs and slanders Cassio to Roderigo, highlighting a troublesome love-triangle needing resolution and further enflaming the frustrated Roderigo.  Fifth, Iago makes himself an accessory to the fact of a felonious assault and battery by soliciting Roderigo to fight Cassio. Sixth, in extension of five, Iago promises to get Cassio drunk and predisposed to fighting so Roderigo may take Cassio by the sword.  Seventh, Iago gives an expansive soliloquy where he repeats the suspicion that Othello has “cuckolded” him with Emilia, that he will entice the Moor to an incurable jealousy by an alienation of affection from Desdemona,  that he will further “abuse him [Cassio] to the Moor”, and that he will make Othello “egregiously an ass/…even to madness…” (2.1.279, 282, 284).   The list of motives and villainies proceeds by a continuing collection of them.  Act 2, Scene 1, brings the exposition along about Iago’s depravities of mind, feeling and will—an inexorable bondage to himself.

            The ingredients of Iago’s corrupt character were established in Act 1 and they continue in Act 2.  Everyone will be made asses as the plot unfolds.  Beyond being made asses (of all associated with Iago), the story will develop far beyond that.  Many will be killed and assaulted as consequences.  In a line evincing his own depravity with a brief dose of self-understanding and a rare moment of self-insight of right and wrong, Iago confesses, “Knaveries plain fact is never seen till used” (2.1.286).  Knowing what knavery means, a dissolute condition, Iago proceeds indifferently and coldly. 

            Act 2, Scene 1, shifts to the quick and brief Scene 2.  Scene 2 is a call to a banquet, and shifts quickly to Scene 3, inside the Cyprus citadel.  Hereafter, the focus will be on the domestic and courtly setting rather than Venice, Venetian streets, oceanic travels, and the streets of Cyprus.  For an inexperienced reader, one wonders, by this point, if the diabolic schemer can keep all his own schemes.  Iago may be a considerable tactician, moment by moment, but, as a strategist, long term, he utterly fails by the play’s end.  At this point, Iago is pulling many corrupted strings, but can he, Iago, keep up with it all?  But, ever blindly confident and supremely sure in his own wit and autonomous stratagems, one observer summarizes Iago this way: “The positively inflated ego is swollen with megalomania” (Rogers-Gardener, 48). Swollen with his own blind conceits, Iago is irremediable, incorrigible, and corrupt. To make it worse, Iago could care less.

            Act 2, Scene 2, is quickly noted and by-passed; it is a public summons to a nuptial and military banquet full of sport, drink, dance, and feasting.  The scene shifts quickly to Act 2, Scene 3, where further evidences of Iago’s irrational rationality, ill-willed willingness, and moderated immoderations more fully express his consummate darkness as a villain.

            As noted, Act 2, Scene 2 shifts from the streets of Cyprus to the Cyprus citadel in Act 2, Scene 3, a change in setting but not a shift in Iago’s unreformed character.  Iago’s corruptions and depravity are not indexed to geography.  Iago’s corruptions are not indexed to time or circumstances.  Iago’s corruptions are not even indexed or influenced by his own periodic self-insights to himself.  This is a factual summary from 2.3 supporting these contentions. First, Iago actively gets Cassio drunk and predisposes him to felonious recklessness before Roderigo’s designs at assault and battery.  Second, extending on the first, Iago sings two military and national songs of revelry, actively bestirring and inducing Cassio to drunkenness and drawing him into Roderigo’s dangerous orbit.  The sober, but ever-scheming and ever-impenitent Iago sings “O sweet England…/Some wine, ho!” (2.3.71, 80). Cassio gets drunk and never understands the Iago-Roderigo-conspiracy. The arranged fight between Cassio and Roderigo occurs quickly, but Othello opportunely arrives and, as a Commander, quells the disturbance.  Othello interrogates the principals and relieves Cassio, as the second in command, for cause as an “example” (2.3.225).  Third, after all leave, Iago, the Janus-faced liar and ever-shifting tactician, engages in a duplicitous dialogue with Cassio, counseling Cassio to seek redress directly through Desdemona to Othello. The duplicity implicates Desdemona in later charges of adulteries with Cassio and furthers Iago’s design to remove Cassio.  Fourth, in an executive summary, after all are off stage and Cassio has left, Iago offers a soliloquy stating and summarizing his developing tactics: (1) “Th’ inclining Desdemona to subdue” (2.3.290), (2) to play on Othello “…with his weak function” (2.3.299), and (3) to further destroy Cassio beyond the drunkenness and assault by Roderigo, e.g. “Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!” (2.3.301). Iago, again evincing another brief moment of self-insight along with a corrupted indifference, admits he is a diabolical character with utter shamelessness:

When devils will the blackest sins put on/

They do suggest at first with heavenly shows/

As I do now…  (2.3.303-305)

This is about as close as one comes to Iago revealing a self-awareness of his own depravity and diabolic machinations.  Depraved in mind, will and feelings, Iago evinces not the slightest ounce of freedom, the slightest ability or power of moral sense or sight.

            Amplifying and extending on the above, the ever crafty Iago has two more objectives—do they ever end?  First, Iago will need to involve Emilia in the plot, to wit, that Emilia might advocate with Desdemona to pursue Cassio’s redress to Othello, thus securing his earlier agenda for Roderigo, Cassio, Desdemona and Othello.  Second, Iago states a strengthened resolve to further the breach between Othello and Desdemona. The abusive stratagems are:

My wife must move for Cassio to her mistress; /

I’ll set her on; /

Myself to draw the Moor apart/

And bring him jump when he may Cassio find/

Soliciting his wife. Ay, that’s the way. /

Dull not device by coldness and delay.  (2.3.332-337)

Act 2 advances the theme of corruption, with Iago ever weaving astute facts with shifting tactics and more fictions.  Wherein Iago once swore, “By Janus, I think no” (1.2.32), a double-faced two-timer, liar and backstabber, one is ever faced with his relentless duplicity and villainy in every scene. 

            A cumulative weight of evidence is evident by the end of Act 2. While some have argued that Iago possesses a “motiveless malignity,” another analyst reminds the reader otherwise.  That is, Iago is driven by his many corrupted motives (Asimov 621).  In Acts 1 and 2, with respect to Iago, there is a “fierce delight in pulling strings, in the feeling of power that comes of making others into marionettes whom one can manipulate at will” (Asimov 621).  But, can Iago totally master the chaotic subplots that he, arrogantly, thinks he can master and effect?  Or, will the wicked one fall by his own devices?  These are the kind of questions in Acts 1 and 2 that allow the plot to thicken in Acts 3-5. But, even as the character ingredients are largely established in Act 1 and further strengthened in Act 2, one scholar wisely reminds the reader that Iago “is in control of a lot less than he thinks” (Rogers-Gardener, 55).  Acts 3 and 4 will further extend the delineations of Iago’s depraved rationality until—with effects following earlier causes—a depravity will bear the fruits of assaults and homocides.

            Act 3 consists of four scenes.  Act 3, Scenes 1 and 2 are short and offer differing contexts of minimal interest to the present theme of Iago’s manifold depravities of mind, ill-will, non-conscience, and sociopathic non-feeling.  Scene 1 involves Cassio’s continued importunity of Desdemona to intercede on his behalf which Desdemona continues to promise.  This serves to underscore the ignorance of all players about Iago’s developing tactics.  Amazingly and ironically, everyone still thinks Iago is honest.  Othello begins his degradation. Scene 2 involves a brief on state affairs with Othello directing Iago to ensure letters are given to the courier en route to Venice.  The showdown continues through scenes 3 and 4 with more seeds of jealousy sown, an alleged dream of Cassio’s, the initiation of handkerchief-gate, Othello’s deepening degradation, and Othello’s order to Iago to have Cassio killed. Act 3, Scenes 3 and 4—more germane to the thesis—shows the developing tension of Othello’s moral and intellectual degradation fueled by, to use one analyst’s two terms for Iago, this “moral pyromaniac” and “war everlasting” (Bloom, 75).  Bloom has it right.

            Act 3, Scene 3, shows additional consequences arising from this moral and felonious arsonist.  It opens with a discussion between Desdemona, Cassio and Emilia.  Desdemona desires to plead for Cassio.  Emilia ignorantly wonders about her husband’s inexplicable interest in the issue. Yet, all three are all in the dark.  Othello and Iago approach the three, but Cassio hastily departs fearing Othello.  As they approach, Othello inquires about the departing conversant.  Of course, never missing a beat as they approach, Iago depravedly pours more gas on the fire, “…No, sure, I cannot think it/That he would steal away so guiltylike [sic]” (3.3.39-40).  This has been Iago’s boldest imputation about Cassio to date, “so guiltylike.” Desdemona ill-advisedly importunes Othello for reconciliation with Cassio.  Shakespeare gives intensity to Desdemona’s importunity to reconcile with Cassio.  Apparently on a Sunday night, she asks that Othello might meet Cassio “tomorrow night, or Tuesday morn/On Tuesday morn, or night, on Wednesday morn…” (3.3.66-67).   Othello dismisses the pleading while his unexpressed and internal jealousy burns brighter.  The two ladies depart, clearing the stage for an extended discussion between Iago and Othello (3.3.98-293).  The seed of jealousy has already been planted, further ensnaring Othello’s mind, will and feelings.  Othello earnestly plies Iago for his thoughts.  Iago insinuates more, “O beware, my lord, of jealousy/It is like the green-eyed monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on. The cuckold lives in bliss” (3.3.178-180).  Othello is falling, demanding proof and, if obtained, “Away at once with love or jealousy” (3.3.206). Iago turns up the heat with the light of fire, “Look to your wife; observe her well with Cassio/…Look to‘t/…Is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown” (3.3.211, 214, 218).  More fully ensnared, Othello commissions Iago to spy-mastership and asks Iago to use Emilia as a spy, “”If more thou dost perceive, let me know more/Set on thy wife to observe…” (3.3.255-256). Careful to remain out of view himself, again evincing some underlying and momentary shaft of  light breaking through to himself, Iago counsels Othello to patience and observation, “Note if your lady strain his entertainment/With any strong or vehement opportunity/Much will be seen in that…” (3.3.266-268). Iago departs. Desdemona enters with Othello complaining of a headache.  Othello claims “I have a pain upon my forehead here,” pointing to his head where cuckolding horns might appear? (3.3.300). Desdemona offers the charmed marital gift, the handkerchief.  Handkerchief-gate is underway. Othello refuses it as an inadequate remedy.  He drops the handkerchief to the ground, unbeknownst to Desdemona and Othello. They exit.  In a brief interlude, Emilia finds the handkerchief and turns it over to Iago.  Emilia says that Desdemona “…let it drop by negligence” (3.3.328).  The ill-starred but determined tactician of adept, adroit, and depraved thinking, willing and feeling, offers this statement of intent: “I have use for it…/I will leave it in Cassio’s lodging lose this napkin/And let him [Othello] find it…/Are to the jealous confirmation strong/As proofs of Holy Writ. This may do something” (3.3.336-340). Whatever metaphor might be chosen, poisons, pyromania, or the earlier “gardening” metaphor used by Iago to describe the human will, power, mind, and reason, the results are the same:  degradations underway, further clarified and with consequences to come.  Iago advises of these developments, “The Moor already changes with my poisons/Dangerous conceits are in their nature poisons” (3.3.340-341).  Othello’s suspicion and mental/moral deterioration is tethered to Iago’s corruptions and is growing:  “Farewell, the tranquil mind! /…O Farewell! / Othello’s occupation is gone…/…Give me the ocular proof” (3.3.364, 366, 374, 376).  More pyrotechnical consequences as a result of Iago’s lighting of matches in a barn full of combustible straw and wood! 

            Act 3, Scene 3, further documents two more stratagems on Iago’s part: the use of a contrived dream by Cassio and by playing the handkerchief-card.  The first is a real winner. The second is a ballgame with extra innings. Iago tells the distressed and gullible Othello about this fictitious dream.  Iago claims that Cassio one night cried in a dream: “In sleep I heard him say, `Sweet Desdemona/Let us be wary, let us hide our love’” (3.3.434-435).  Iago pours more gas on the fire, claiming that Cassio cast his leg over Iago, saying, “Cry `O sweet creature!’ And then kiss me hard” (3.3.437).  Iago notes that “this may help to thicken other proofs” (3.3.445).  While working the dream-attack, Iago puts the handkerchief-angle into play: “Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief/Spotted with strawberries in your wife’s hand…/It speaks against her with other proofs” (3.3.449-450, 456).  Iago is enraged, “Blood, blood, blood!” (3.3.467). Once again, to escape accountability and yet advance his game, Iago counsels caution.  However, a new consequence emerges when Othello orders Cassio’s death:  “Within these three days let me hear thee say/That Cassio’s not alive” (3.3.488-489).  At this point, Iago is complicit as an accessory to the fact of a conspiracy to commit felonious murder with the intent to kill.  Iago, true to his enslaved mind and sociopathic sense, does nothing to stop the misinformation, premeditation, malice aforethought or moral malignity.  Othello rewards Iago, “…To furnish me with some swift means of death/For the fair devil. Now art thou art my lieutenant” (3.3.494-495).   Act 3, Scene 3, ends with heightened tensions that are not being relieved but are being aggravated.  The tensions are escalating; Othello’s degradation is spiraling downwards. Iago’s escalating and uncorrected depravities and the potential for an unjustified homocide come to view. Iago’s depravity is pulling all parties into the orbit of his depraved ontology, epistemology, and praxis.  Iago’s initial depravities, as root, tree trunk, and branches are yielding leaves and fruits of more depravity.

            As the plot thickens and tensions approach a zenith in Act 3, Scene 3, the next scene, Scene 4, resolves nothing.  If anything might be said about Scene 4, there is a coming, going, and set of interlocutions that are quick and rapid—almost as if Shakespeare is using kinesis or motion of place and ideas to match the crafted shenanigans of Scene 3.  Scene 4 is full of disconcerting energy and disorienting rapidity.  The speed of it all is there. Desdemona, Emilia and a Clown chat.  Still, Desdemona seeks, still being ignorant of the back story, Cassio’s place of sleeping. She is also looking for the lost handkerchief.  Othello enters.  A strained discussion with Desdemona ensures.  He wants to see the lost handkerchief, but Desdemona begs off and complains that Othello’s speech is “…startling and rash” (3.4.75). Again, ignorantly, she says to Othello: “I pray, talk to me of Cassio” (3.4.88).  Of course, that is exactly the wrong subject for discussion.  Othello exits and Desdemona and Emilia discuss Othello’s jealousy, “Is not this man jealous?” (3.4.95). Iago, in his first appearance in Scene 4, and Cassio enter. Cassio further implores Desdemona for rehabilitation and reconciliation with Othello. Desdemona begs off, “My advocation is not now in time” (3.4.119).  Of course, Iago sees Cassio’s importunity as advancing his game to widen the Cassio-Othello breach all the while with a standing order to kill Cassio.  Again, with more kinetic changing of characters, Iago departs with Emilia and Desdemona resuming the discussion about jealousy.  Emilia says: “But jealous souls will be answered so/They are not ever jealous for the cause/But jealous for they’re jealous. It is the monster/Begot upon itself, born on itself (3.4.153-157). Desdemona begins to get the sense of things, including Othello’s degradation, exclaiming, “Heaven keep that monster from Othello’s mind” (3.4.158).  Desdemona and Emilia depart—more kinesis. Bianca enters and chats with Cassio about coming to see Cassio.  Cassio gives the handkerchief to Bianca and a hankie-discussion ensues, including a new angle, Bianca’s jealousy of the origin of the hankie.  Cassio states that “I found it in my chamber” (3.4.183).  All exit.  One needs a play-card of who comes and goes in these energetic and changing scenes, all of which underscore the plots, subplots, and tensions that emerged in Act 3, Scene 3.  One feels like one is playing an “Action Video Game” with all the kinesis of Scene 4. Iago has successfully sown the seeds of jealousy and has posited an alleged dream of Cassio to enrage Othello.  Iago has successfully put Handkerchief-gate in play. Othello’s degradation deepens.  Othello orders Iago to murder Cassio. Iago is promoted.  Nothing is resolved, but the tensions intensify as Act 4 unfolds at the hand of this “moral pyromaniac” and “war everlasting.”  To bring this back to the theme, Iago is depraved in all faculties of mind, reason and soul without the slightest of empirical evidences to the contrary.  He is corrupt, root, tree, branch and leaves.

            To update the thesis, one analyst offers these comments on Iago’s moral competencies.  He says,

“A.D. Nutall wonderfully remarks of Iago that he `chooses’ which emotions he will experience.  He is not just motivated, like other people.  Instead, he decides to be motivated” (Bloom, 72).

This is a gratuitous assumption and a philosophic presumption on Nutall’s part, regrettably posted with Bloom’s endorsement.  Iago “freely chooses” according to an ontology this is preceedingly corrupted, impenitent and shameless.  His choices show him to be a perfect slave to himself, “choosing what he loves,” “choosing what he values,” “preferring the predilections of his affections” and never knowing or seeing otherwise.  The cumulative evidence shows thus far, deliriously and tediously so, that this madman destroys himself and others, without compunction or remorse. Iago’s corrupt ontology governs Iago’s epistemology and praxis, as well as the other parties in the play.

            Acts 1-3 have provided for the disasters of Act 4 and the homocides of Act 5.  The tensions are not abated in Act 4.  Iago’s plots move beyond allegations of Desdemona’s infidelity to greater depravities to Iago’s conspiracy to commit murders.  First, he counsels Roderigo to kill Cassio and promises to assist Roderigo.  Second, Iago rebuts Othello’s exploding desire for poisoning, hanging, and quartering of Desdemona.  Rather than these methods of murder, Iago favors and counsels Othello to murder Desdemona by manual strangulation.  Act 4 gets ugly fast.  It opens and ends with one constant, one stable and repeated character—Iago’s depravity.

            Act 4, Scene 1, like the earlier acts, presents Iago’s corruption un-tethered and not indexed to time, place, other characters, or the occasional self-insight to himself.  Iago is persistently corrupt. 4.1 opens with Iago making more sexual insinuations to Othello about Desdemona.  Scene1 ends with Iago as an accessory to the fact of murder in the first degree, replete with counsel, premeditation, malice aforethought, and the intent to kill.  Iago explicitly provokes Othello by suggesting that Desdemona and Cassio have lain naked in bed without sexual intent: “Or to be naked with her friend in bed/An hour of more not meaning any harm?” (4.1.4-5).  As if Desdemona and Cassio were lying naked in bed innocently, discussing—as it were—differential calculus, ecclesiastical history, canon law, principles of engineering, Aristotle’s ethics, or Plato’s dialogues (tongue in cheek)?   Just lying there, two friends, buck naked, without sexual intent?  The suggestion abounds with Iago’s presumptive boldness and Othello’s incredible naiveté.  Othello falls into an epileptic trance only to arise and hear—once again—Iago’s additional, aggravated, shameless, and impenitent comments that millions of men are cuckolds, “There’s many a beast then in the populous city/And many a civil monster/…There’s millions now alive/That nightly lie in those unproper beds” (4.1.61-62, 66-67).  “Millions” is quite a word by Iago.  By extrapolation, if one assumes three to four million for England’s total population and if one assumes 500,000 for London’s population during Elizabeth’s time, Iago’s exaggeration suggests that an entire nation—man for man, east to west, and south to north—is cuckolded. Iago’s brazenness of assertion is unlimited.  Iago continues by further impugning the demoted Cassio, advising Othello to watch Cassio closely as he, Iago, will pull the fuller confession from Cassio.  Iago counsels Othello saying: “And mark the fleers, the jibes and notable scorns/That dwell in every region of his face/For I will make him to tell the tale anew/Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when/He hath and is again to cope your wife (4.1.82-87). Othello stands downstage while Iago and Cassio discuss Bianca.  Othello mishears the preliminary discussion; he mistakenly thinks Cassio is talking about Desdemona and their sexual liaisons.  Cassio describes Bianca and their sexual rollicking, saying, “…I think, I’ faith, she loves me/Ha, ha, ha! /I marry her? What? A customer?.../This is the monkey’s own giving out…/She was here even now; she haunts me in every place…/…she falls me thus about my neck--/ So hangs and lolls and weeps on me, so shakes and pulls me” (4.1.112, 117, 120, 127, 130, 132, 134).  The sexuality of the words is explosive. The comic words by Cassio, “Ha, ha, ha!,” haunts the tragic air and further exacerbates Othello.  Othello errantly believes this is about Cassio and Desdemona.  To Othello’s mind, Cassio has confessed to adultery thanks to Iago’s leadership.  His rage increases. Bianca enters, again with Othello downstage and listening, and a discussion ensues between Cassio and Bianca about the handkerchief.  Bianca exclaims that it was a “minx’s token” (4.1.144).  A minx is a wanton and dissolute woman. After others exit, the entire scene closes with Iago and Othello discussing the gruesome methods for murdering Desdemona.  Hanging? Othello says, “Hang her!” (4.1.173). Quartering or dismemberment?  “I will chop her into messes. Cuckold me?” (4.1.182). Poison?  “Get me some poison, Iago, this night!” (4.1.186). Iago advises against these homicidal methods arguing for manual strangulation, “Do not do it with poison. Strangle her in her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated” (4.1.188-189).  Act 4, Scene 1, opened with Iago’s explicit sexual insinuations to Othello about Desdemona; it ends with plans to commit murder in the first degree with malice aforethought, ill will, premeditation and the specific formation of the intent to kill.  Thus far, is there one scene where Iago demonstrates any ability or any power of mind or will to do good?  Does he empirically demonstrate any powers to choose aright?  While perhaps not a devil incarnate, he is a rational madman who never retreats, never objects, never interposes and never ceases his machinations. Existentially and ontologically, Iago is corrupted to the core.  The fruit of his existential ontology is his corrupted existential epistemology.  The further consequence of his corrupted ontology and epistemology is his corrupted praxis and ethics.

            Act 4, Scene 2 extends the issues further in support of the thesis.  Things get worse, now in the direction of more crimes.  It continues the discussions about the alleged infidelity of Desdemona and ends with Iago’s complicity with Roderigo to murder Cassio.  Aside from complicity in Othello’s plot to murder Desdemona, Iago adds this to his rap sheet as an accessory to the fact of another felony murder.  Four discussions occur in this scene, two without Iago and two with Iago.  The first two involve the fruits of Iago’s depraved tree, extending the tension.  The latter two discussions, involving Iago, continue the uncorrected corruption of Iago.  The first discussion without Iago directly (but involving Iago’s consequences) involves Othello interrogating Emilia about Desdemona; Othello wants answers from this close observer and attendant of Desdemona; Emilia puts up a spirited defense saying, “…I durst my lord, to wager, she is honest/Lay down my soul at stake…/Remove thy thought; it doth abuse thy bosom…” (4.2.13-15). Othello, however, peremptorily dismisses Emilia’s with “She says enough; yet she’s a simple bawd/…This is a subtle whore…” (4.2.21-22). The second discussion, without Iago’s direct involvement (but involving the fruits of his earlier works), shifts to a fight between Othello and Desdemona; this is a painful discussion; Desdemona is confused, but the scene reflects the now wild, untamable, tainted and agitated mens rea of Othello: “Come, swear it, damn thyself/Heaven knows that thou art false as hell/Ah, Desdemon! Away, away, away! /Impudent strumpet! /What, not a whore? /That have the office opposite Saint Peter/And keep the gate of hell!” (4.2.37, 41, 83, 89, 95-96).  Amidst the varied accusations, Othello calls Desdemona “Desdemon,” leaving the “a” off the name and implying she is a “demon” complicit with the demonic underworld.  The third discussion involves Iago, Desdemona, and Emilia about Othello’s state of mind (4.2.115-179); with tensions out of control, Iago seeks to distance himself from involvement with Othello and duplicitously fobs it off on Othello’s anxious concerns for state affairs, saying, “The business of the state does him offense” (4.2.173).  Despite his manifold depravities, Iago still has an underlying moral sense, now and then, not that it means a thing to him.  While the first three discussions revolve around Othello’s state of mind, the fourth discussion is between Roderigo and Iago, wherein they proactively plot the murder of Cassio.  This fourth discussion affords additional exposition on Iago’s character. Roderigo begins to see something of Iago’s duplicity: “Every day thou daff’st me with some device/…for your words and performances are no kin together” (4.2.183, 189).  Iago, as usual, puts forward another lie to stir Roderigo and to offer false hope.  Ever shifting his tactics adroitly to new battlefield conditions, Iago claims that Othello and Desdemona are headed to Mauritania.  Iago suggests that Roderigo kill Cassio.  This will cause Venice to retain Othello in Cyprus.  If accomplished, under this scenario, the retention of Othello and Desdemona in Cyprus will allow Roderigo his continued pursuits of Desdemona. Iago boldly clarifies to Roderigo the agenda: “Why, by making him incapable of Othello’s place—knocking out his [Cassio’s] brains/Ay, if you dare do yourself a profit and a right” (4.2.222, 224). Iago promises Roderigo that he will participate in the murder saying, “I will be near to second your attempt/And he shall fall between us. Come, stand not amazed at it, but go along with me” (4.2.227-229).  In Act 4, Scene 2, there is no mitigation of Iago’s rational madness or corruption—an enslavement to his own depravity.

            Act 4, Scene 3, is quickly bypassed; it is important on its own terms, but is not directly related to Iago and the thesis of his addicting corruption.  Of warrant, heightening the tension, Desdemona sings the “Willow Song” followed by the famous discussion on love, fidelity and infidelity between Desdemona and Emilia (4.3.42-48; 4.3.60-105).  This scene stands on its own and adds to the plaintiff, doleful and sad harbingers. Act 3, Scene 3, only heightens the sadness and melancholy of the results that occur in Act 5.

            Act 5, Scene 1, begins with the emerging Iago-Roderigo-murder plot of Cassio, develops with Iago’s shifting tactic to pursue the killing of both men and ends with a chaotic scene with Iago stabbing Cassio from the shadows and, finally, Iago stabbing and silencing his co-conspirator, Roderigo.  It is more chaos. First, Iago premeditates the murder of Cassio by counseling Roderigo: “Have at thy hand. Be bold and take thy stand” (5.1.7).  Yet, Iago wants both dead.  He wants Roderigo dead: “…Now whether he kills Cassio/Or Cassio kill him, or each do kill the other/Every way makes my gain.  Live Roderigo/He calls me to restitution large” (5.1.12-15).  Cassio must also die for “If Cassio do remain…/That makes me ugly; and besides, the Moor/May unfold me to him; there stand I in much peril/No, he must die.  Be ‘t so…” (5.1.18, 20, 21-22).  Again, the occasional moral insights inform and deepen the awareness of Iago’s moral, intellectual and volitional incompetencies. The fight ensues. Roderigo is wounded and Iago wounds Cassio in the leg (from behind and in stealth). Othello hears the chaos and thinks Iago has killed Cassio, “The voice of Cassio! Iago keeps his word” (5.1.28). Lodovico and Othello enter.  Iago, in another tactical shift and effort at self-exculpation amidst the chaos, cries out, “O treacherous villains!” (5.1.59). Roderigo cries out, so Iago surreptitiously and fatally stabs Roderigo to silence a co-conspirator and, then, adroitly shifts all blame to Roderigo, saying, “O murderous villain! O villain!” (5.1.63)  Iago, in another facile move, applies a tourniquet to Cassio’s leg and further blames the now dead Roderigo, “He, he, ‘tis he. [A litter is brought in.] O, that’s well said; the chair” (5.1.100).  Iago continues feigningly the showmanship of concern for Cassio by exhorting members to attend to Cassio’s battle wound, “Kind gentleman, let’s go see poor Cassio dressed—” (5.1.127).  Iago’s depravity, but facility of mind in premeditation and shifting tactics—as needed—are on offer in Act 5, Scene 1. Ever adept at corrupt tactics, things begin unraveling.

            Little more may be stated about Iago’s character than has been said, but Act 5, Scene 2, results in three more homicides beyond Roderigo’s.  Desdemona, Emilia and Othello will die.  In Act 5, Scene 2, the utter unmasking of Iago’s unremitted villainies and his arrest are put forward.  Everyone now will see “what” Iago was rather than “who” Iago was.  To say “who” he was would imply humanity and personality.  To say “what” he was is more suggestive, suggesting Iago lacks a fundamental humanity.  Iago is more of a “what” or a “thing” than a “who” or a person. He is anti-human by this point. 

            The early part of Act 5 involves Othello and Desdemona, their agitated and extended discussion, Othello’s open and stated plan to kill Desdemona, Othello’s utter mental and moral degradation, and, finally, Othello’s homocide in the first degree by manual suffocation.  After Desdemona dies, Emilia enters and Othello tells Emilia that Iago has been the source of the alleged details of adultery.  Several times, in initial disbelief, Emilia states, “My husband?” or “My husband, says that she is false?” (5.2.152, 159).   This back and forth begins to unmask the fuller story to Emilia.  She is horrified. Emilia justly accuses Othello, “…O gull! O dolt! /As ignorant as dirt…/The Moor hath killed my mistress! Murder, murder!” (5.2.171-172, 174). Monanto, Gratiano and Iago enter.  Emilia then interrogates Iago with all auditors (and audience) on hand.  If Iago could count on the naiveties of other players, he apparently never anticipated Emilia’s wrath, Emilia’s love for Desdemona, or Emilia’s willingness to expose and thoroughly castigate her husband. Emilia says, “He [Othello] says that thou toldst him his wife is false/I know thou didst not; thou’rt not such a villain/Speak, for my heart is full” (5.2.180-182). Iago offers a half-answer and Emilia presses on accusingly and with stunned ferocity, “But did you ever tell him she was false?” (5.2.185). Iago says, “I did” (5.2.186).  Emilia concludes the arraignment and indictment of her guilty husband before everyone, saying, “And your reports have set the murder on/“Villainy, villainy, villainy! /…O villainy!” (5.2.194, 197, 198).  Iago tries to control and dismiss Emilia to no avail.  Iago, knowing his machinations may be stated and proven, demands silence, “Zounds, hold your peace/Be wise and get you home/Villainous whore! /“Filth, thou liest!” (5.2.226, 228, 237,239).  Iago—this time—stupidly reacts to the unmasking, fatally stabs Emilia, and exits.  All other auditors, including Othello, have heard the unmasking of Iago and have witnessed Iago’s second degree murder of Emilia.  Gratiano says, “Sure, he [Iago] hath killed his wife” and Montano states, “But kill him rather. I’ll after that villain/For ‘tis a damned slave” (5.2.244, 249-250).  Once the hunter and player, Iago is now the hunted and played.  Othello speaks. Lodovico, Cassio (on a stretcher), Montano and an arrested Iago appear.  “Bring the villain forth” Lodovico orders (5.2.294).  For the first time, instead of being dubbed “the honest Iago,” he is now repeatedly called “the villain” by most participants in the scene.  Facts have emerged for all to see and hear.  Othello makes an aborted effort to kill Iago, but only wounds him. Lodovico asks Iago, “This wretch [Othello] hath part confessed his villainy/Did you and he [either Roderigo or Othello may be in Lodovico’s question] consent in Cassio’s death?” and, in another brief moment of honesty from Iago, he says, “Ay.” (5.2.304-305, 306). Othello commits suicide, the fruit of Iago’s long progeny of serial lies and tactics. Documents are retrieved from the dead Roderigo’s pockets showing Iago’s complicity in an effort to kill Cassio.  Further, eyewitnesses have witnessed him commit the second degree homocide of Emilia.  They have heard of Iago’s complicity to kill Desdemona.  They have witnessed, as a result, Othello’s homocide.  Iago has been involved in four homocides as the play closes with Act 5, Scene 2. Lodivico rightly summarizes Iago, “O Spartan dog” (5.2.373); an explanatory note from the text notes that Spartan dogs were known for “savagery and silence.”  Lodivico commands Iago, “Look on the tragic loading of this bed/This is thy work. The object poisons the sight” (5.2.374-375).  Lodovico commands Gratiano to deal with the legal dimension of the Moor, presumably, estate settlement issues (?);  exercising command presence, Lodovico orders Cassio to take command of Iago’s fate, “To you, Lord Governor,/Remains the censure, the place, the torture.  O, enforce it!” (5.2.379-380). Meanwhile, Lodovico will return to Venice and “…to the state/The heavy act with heavy heart relate” (5.2.381-382). Finally, the corrupted Iago is arrested and, inferably, remanded to custody and trial for multiple homocides and assaults.  These are the “preposterous conclusions” arising from Iago’s vaulted, vain and confident assertions about the role of reason governing passions. 

            As the play closes, one might hear the English audience uproariously exclaim, “Away with the villain!”  Two questions have been asked and answered. The first question is:  “What motivates Iago to carry out his schemes?”  Several motives were cited variously. Iago is greedy, jealous, hateful, loveless, contemptuous, hypocritical, manipulative and trouble-making.  He is also a sociopath and habitual felon. It has been argued that these motives are the consequences rather than causes of Iago’s depravity—ontology governing epistemology and praxis. Iago is “essentially” corrupt.  The second question was, “Is Iago a devil incarnate, a madman, or a rational human being?”  Dismissing the devil-incarnate theory, it was argued that Iago was an utterly corrupt madman possessing high intelligence, facile reasoning, rapier-like wit, adept craftiness, and an adroitness to shift tactics to new changes on his own battlefield.  Asimov, as previously noted, summarizes Iago, “Since the entire play is a demonstration of the two-facedness of Iago, it is entirely proper that he [Iago] swears by Janus” (Asimov 615).  Everything thought, said and done by Iago, or the Big Ego, is false.  As such, as a thoroughly corrupted human being, Iago freely chooses the worst paths in accordance with his own depravity.  Iago is innately or instinctually enslaved to his own choices and feelings.  Throughout Iago’s displays of madness and rationality, a basic, corrupted and repeated pattern of opposition emerges:  “I versus him, them, and everyone else” (Rodgers-Gardener, 41).  Iago cannot be or think in any other way, as the play evinces.  As previously noted, this is the ultimate “ego,” the εγω, or the ultimate “I” of Iago. To answer the two posed questions, especially the last one, the procedure was to diachronically evaluate Iago’s words and deeds from Acts 1 to 5.  The diachronic analysis afforded accumulated weight that inarguably demonstrates that Iago is a madman with exceptional rational skills.  The occasional flashes of moral sense and insight exist within Iago, but these flashes of insight mean nothing to him. Iago is corrupted, enslaved, addicted and depraved, but rational, cool, adroit and scheming.  Ontology governs and influences epistemology and praxis. It would be difficult to gainsay Shakespeare’s audiences’ anticipated reaction, “Away with the villain! To the gallows! This utterly and totally depraved villain in mind, soul, sight, sense, will and feeling! Away with him!

Works Cited

 “Articles of Religion.”  The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.  Anglicans Online.  (www.anglicansonline.org). N.d. Web. 28 Apr 2012. 

Asimov, Isaac.  Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare.  New York: Grammercy Books, 1970.  Print.

Bloom, Harold.  Dramas and Dramatists. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005.  Print.

Luther, Martin.  Bondage of the Will.  Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing, 1957.  Print.

Rogers-Gardener, Barbara. Jung and Shakespeare.  Willmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1992. Print.

Shakespeare, William.  Othello.  Literature: An Introduction to Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Goia.  6^th ed. New York: Pearson, 2010.  912-1012. Print.