Iago

Iago
Edwin Booth as Iago, c. 1870
Creator	William Shakespeare
Play	Othello
Date	c. 1601–1604
Source	"Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio (1565)
Role	Antagonist Othello's ensign Emilia's husband
Quote	O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.
Portrayed by	Robert Armin Edwin Booth Laurence Olivier Kenneth Branagh Christopher Eccleston Frank Finlay Philip Seymour Hoffman Henry Irving Jose Ferrer Micheál MacLiammóir Ian McDiarmid Ewan McGregor Ian McKellen Nicholas Pennell Christopher Walken Bob Hoskins Rory Kinnear Daniel Craig Andre Braugher

Iago is a fictional character in Shakespeare's Othello (c. 1601–1604). Iago is the play's main antagonist, and Othello's standard bearer. He is the husband of Emilia, who is in turn the attendant of Othello's wife Desdemona. Iago hates Othello and devises a plan to destroy him by making him believe that his wife is having an affair with his lieutenant, Michael Cassio.

The role is thought to have been first played by Robert Armin, who typically played intelligent clown roles like Touchstone in As You Like It or Feste in Twelfth Night.

The character's source is traced to Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio's tale "Un Capitano Moro" in Gli Hecatommithi (1565). There, the character is simply "the ensign".

While no English translation of Cinthio was available in Shakespeare's lifetime, it is possible Shakespeare knew the Italian original, Gabriel Chappuy's 1584 French translation, or an English translation in manuscript. Cinthio's tale may have been based on an actual incident occurring in Venice about 1508.

While Shakespeare closely followed Cinthio's tale in composing Othello, he departed from it in some details. In Cinthio's tale, for example, the ensign suffers an unrequited lust for the Moor's wife, Desdemona, which then drives his vengeance. Desdemona dies in an entirely different manner in Cinthio's tale; the Moor commissions his ensign to bludgeon her to death with a sand-filled stocking. In gruesome detail, Cinthio follows each blow, and, when she is dead, the Moor and his ensign place her lifeless body upon her bed, smash her skull, and then cause the cracked ceiling above the bed to collapse upon her, giving the impression the falling rafters caused her death.