From Shakespearean Tragedy

Abstract

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. 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 to Richard, in egoism he is the superior, and his inferiority in passion and massive force only makes him more repulsive. The alliance of evil like Iago's with supreme intellect is an impossible fiction and Shakespeare's fictions were truth.

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