Othello Jealousy

Shakespeare has an exceptional ability to compose plays full of deceit, trickery, murderous revenge, and jealousy. In Othello, one of his most recognized tragedies was consistently evolving around the central theme of jealousy. Jealousy in Othello is what the play was founded on. One of Shakespeare's most credible characteristics in his writing is his ability to compose a play in which has a story that originates, and strides on lies. As theses lies were unraveled the central theme of his play became distinct, and clearly visible. The central theme was based on the acts that characters had taken based on their jealous feelings. The flaws within all of the characters lied within their blindness to over look Iago's lies. What made each character jealous, was what they perceived as the truth. What adds to this great tragedy is that it is a love story as well. In which a man, Othello, loves Desdemona excessively and passionately, however he loves her unwisely. Love consumes all those who take part in it, and in Othello's case his flaws lie in his loving Desdemona so blindly. It is for that single reason that Iago knows that such a naпve man as Othello, who loves his wife so blindly and unrealistically, can be made to think whatever Iago wants Othello to believe. Just as Othello's flaws lied within his inability to see past his jealous feelings, so did most of the rest of characters, no matter what social ranking they were classified in. Even from the well-developed characters, such as Othello, to the lesser figures, such as Roderigo, envy and lust were feelings all of Shakespeare's characters were accountable of holding at one time or other in the play. Within each of the characters in Othello was a level of jealousy, which Iago created by testing their pressure points for his benefit.

In Act 1 Scene 1, Shakespeare opened up to his audience a level of jealousy that goes hand in hand with the feeling of greed. This scene being referred to is where Iago expressed his animosity for Othello. Iago was subconsciously telling the audience how jealous he was about Cassio's promotion. And at the same time Roderigo blatantly expressed his jealousy for Desdemona's love for Othello. These two are the most common types of jealousy and envy that we know and express.

"O sir content you.

I follow him to serve my turn upon him...."(lines38-39)

"It is as sure as you are Roderigo,

Where I the Moor, I would not be Iago.

In following him, I follow but myself.

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,

But seeming so, for my perculiar end;

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In complient extern, tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws peck at; I am not what I am." (lines53-62)

Which brings us to who Iago is in this play. Iago, being the cause of this tragedy, is an intricate and complex character, who unraveled the play with his lies. However a person must keep in mind that the direction of Iago's jealousy was not only against sexual love, but against love itself in all manifestations. Iago, being the villain of this tragedy, appeared to have a desire to reach out and destroy the loving, as well as the good in everything. For example, after he unsuccessfully tried to enrage Barbantio with Othello and Desdemona's secret, he began the endless web of lies. As a result of all of Iago's lies, each character wound up having a false feeling of jealousy.

This "false feeling" can be better explained in Emilia's response to Desdemona's cries:

"But jealous souls will not be answer'd so;

They are not ever jealous for the cause,

But jealous for they are jealous: tis' a monster

Begot upon itself, born on itself." (III iv 159-62)

False feelings are, according to Emilia, when the soul is tempted by the appearance of a particular situation enraging the person into committing vial and unethical acts which do not match up with their personality. Reasons for these unethical acts are most often because the person is being misled on information or they are misjudging reality. Jealousy is a manifest, according to D.R.Godfrey, one of several Shakespearean critics. From the moment jealousy started Godfrey states, that characters such as Othello, Roderigo, and Iago divorce themselves from rationality. He later went on to say that "jealousy once awakened, becomes self perpetuating, self intensifying, and where no justifying evidence for it exists, the jealous person under the impulse of an extraordinary perversity will continue to manufacture it, inventing causes, converting airy trifles into "confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ," [OthelloIII. iii. 323-324]. In other words, he concluded that any attempt to interpret jealousy rationally, to look for logic in the mental process of a jealous person, will be "unavailing", for we will be dealing invariably and in at least some measure with a "monster", form of possession, an insanity. (Godfrey D.R.,Shakespeare for Students pp. 418)

Any one who interacted with Iago fell under a false feeling. In Othello's case his false feelings grew to such a degree that it changed him as a person entirely. From Act I through Act IV the audience watched Othello drastically change into two different characters whom are quite opposites. The question of how a well-respected