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and with a high tragedy of purpose; he does not watch avidly as his Ensign beats her to death with a sack of sand. 

     The Ensign of Cinthio (who becomes our Iago) is a small man led to his deceits by lust for his master's wife. That is his sole purpose. He is a shallow and singly dimensioned character who serves simply as a literary illustration of the old saw about what monstrous nets we weave. Shakespeare took this neo-moron and made him into a human. He has pride; he has ambition; and he has a desire for revenge. These are all in the makeup of any member of mankind; but in Iago they become the controlling factors of his life. They become his sole reasons for action, and in this intensification lies the evil which makes Iago the supreme villain of our literature. There is little that is abnormal in Iago's character except the disproportion which ambition takes in his life, the same ambition which affected the Macbeths and was attributed to Caesar. 

     Our Iago is basically a commoner who has had long sergeant-like military service; he hates the background and education which has made Cassio his superior and he hates Othello, for recognizing this superiority in his rival. It is true that Othello was high born in his own land; but that land was Africa――and to Iago it was a Continent of barbarity and savage customs. It was not Italy, the land that had produced both Cassio, the cultured Florentine graduate of a military academy, and Desdemona, daughter of a nobleman, who may have influenced Othello against him, Iago, the soldier. And, in the final scene, Iago is not Mephistophelian; he is as naturally human as any one of our Capone lads. He is snarling, bitter, and despicable when caught; just as he was arrogant and scheming in working out his revenge on the high born who thwarted his ambition. 

     Desdemona's only fault lies in the fact that she came of a class which Iago might not enter, she is always in the phrase of Wordsworth: "The gentle Lady married to the Moor." True, she champions Cassio and asks Othello to reinstate him after his groggy brawl, but why should she do otherwise? He was her friend and had often come calling with Othello during courtship days. She must have thought him an old friend much abused, and unwittingly fed Iago's plan by trying to sway her husband's decision. The tragedy of Desdemona, who cannot believe that wives could be unfaithful, is that she was honest but unworldly.

     Of Emilia, Shakespeare has made great use, both as a character and as a device to wind up the plot in the final scene. In the novel it is perhaps interesting to note that the wife of the Ensign, as she is called, is sort of an animated dust mop who knows of the plan to dishonor Desdemona but is so afraid of her husband that she keeps silent except for a single veiled statement to Desdemona, "show to him by every means your fidelity and love." In fact, in the novel, not the Ensign's wife, but his little child steals the handkerchief and brings it home to Papa. Shakespeare has made this wife into Emilia, witty companion, and lady-in-waiting of a sort, to Desdemona. She knows the story of the handkerchief, which her husband has snatched from her, but she, too has a very natural fault, fear. She is not Cinthio's girl who fears her husband. Emilia not only loves Iago――she has all the faith in him that a good wife should possess. She is a commoner who fears her lord. Were it not for the terror which she feels at watching the almost epileptic fits that jealousy rouses in Othello, she might have

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