ve no verisimilitude; and if there is any
fact at all (as there probably is) behind Iago's account of the
conversation, it doubtless is the fact that Iago himself was ignorant of
military science, while Cassio was an expert, and that Othello explained
this to the great personages. That Cassio, again, was an interloper and
a mere closet-student without experience of war is incredible,
considering first that Othello chose him for lieutenant, and secondly
that the senate appointed him to succeed Othello in command at Cyprus;
and we have direct evidence that part of Iago's statement is a lie, for
Desdemona happens to mention that Cassio was a man who 'all his time had
founded his good fortunes' on Othello's love and had 'shared dangers'
with him (III. iv. 93). There remains only the implied assertion that,
if promotion had gone by old gradation, Iago, as the senior, would have
been preferred. It may be true: Othello was not the man to hesitate to
promote a junior for good reasons. But it is just as likely to be a pure
invention; and, though Cassio was young, there is nothing to show that
he was younger, in years or in service, than Iago. Iago, for instance,
never calls him 'young,' as he does Roderigo; and a mere youth would not
have been made Governor of Cyprus. What is certain, finally, in the
whole business is that Othello's mind was perfectly at ease about the
appointment, and that he never dreamed of Iago's being discontented at
it, not even when the intrigue was disclosed and he asked himself how he
had offended Iago.

2

It is necessary to examine in this manner every statement made by Iago.
But it is not necessary to do so in public, and I proceed to the
question what impression he made on his friends and acquaintances. In
the main there is here no room for doubt. Nothing could be less like
Iago than the melodramatic villain so often substituted for him on the
stage, a person whom everyone in the theatre knows for a scoundrel at
the first glance. Iago, we gather, was a Venetian[108] soldier,
eight-and-twenty years of age, who had seen a good deal of service and
had a high reputation for courage. Of his origin we are ignorant, but,
unless I am mistaken, he was not of gentle birth or breeding.[109] He
does not strike one as a degraded man of culture: for all his great
powers, he is vulgar, and his probable want of military science may well
be significant. He was married to a wife who evidently lacked
refinement, a