These
are the more popular views. The second group of false interpretations is
much smaller, but it contains much weightier matter than the first. Here
Iago is a being who hates good simply because it is good, and loves evil
purely for itself. His action is not prompted by any plain motive like
revenge, jealousy or ambition. It springs from a 'motiveless malignity,'
or a disinterested delight in the pain of others; and Othello, Cassio
and Desdemona are scarcely more than the material requisite for the full
attainment of this delight. This second Iago, evidently, is no
conventional villain, and he is much nearer to Shakespeare's Iago than
the first. Only he is, if not a psychological impossibility, at any rate
not a _human_ being. He might be in place, therefore, in a symbolical
poem like _Faust_, but in a purely human drama like _Othello_ he would
be a ruinous blunder. Moreover, he is not in _Othello_: he is a product
of imperfect observation and analysis.
Coleridge, the author of that misleading phrase 'motiveless malignity,'
has some fine remarks on Iago; and the essence of the character has been
described, first in some of the best lines Hazlitt ever wrote, and then
rather more fully by Mr. Swinburne,--so admirably described that I am
tempted merely to read and illustrate these two criticisms.
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