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RV 213 (Rh) 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.

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 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. He does not strike one as a degraded