e the chief ingredients of the force which,
liberated by his resentment at Cassio's promotion, drives Iago from
inactivity into action, and sustains him through it. And, to pass to a
new point, this force completely possesses him; it is his fate. It is
like the passion with which a tragic hero wholly identifies himself, and
which bears him on to his doom. It is true that, once embarked on his
course, Iago _could_ not turn back, even if this passion did abate; and
it is also true that he is compelled, by his success in convincing
Othello, to advance to conclusions of which at the outset he did not
dream. He is thus caught in his own web, and could not liberate himself
if he would. But, in fact, he never shows a trace of wishing to do so,
not a trace of hesitation, of looking back, or of fear, any more than of
remorse; there is no ebb in the tide. As the crisis approaches there
passes through his mind a fleeting doubt whether the deaths of Cassio
and Roderigo are indispensable; but that uncertainty, which does not
concern the main issue, is dismissed, and he goes forward with
undiminished zest. Not even in his sleep--as in Richard's before his
final battle--does any rebellion of outraged conscience or pity, or any
foreboding of despair, force itself into clear consciousness. His
fate--which is himself--has completely mastered him: so that, in the
later scenes, where the improbability of the entire success of a design
built on so many different falsehoods forces itself on the reader, Iago
appears for moments not as a consummate schemer, but as a man absolutely
infatuated and delivered over to certain destruction.

5

Iago stands supreme among Shakespeare's evil characters because the
greatest intensity and subtlety of imagination have gone to his making,
and because he illustrates in the most perfect combination the two facts
concerning evil which seem to have impressed Shakespeare most. The first
of these is the fact that perfectly sane people exist in whom
fellow-feeling of any kind is so weak that an almost absolute egoism
becomes possible to them, and with it those hard vices--such as
ingratitude and cruelty--which to Shakespeare were far the worst. The
second is that such evil is compatible, and even appears to ally itself
easily, with exceptional powers of will and intellect. In the latter
respect Iago is nearly or quite the equal of Richard, in egoism he is
the superior, and his inferiority in passion and massive