![]() In short, Iago's inferences are disgusting exaggerations. "Exsufflicate" means "overblown," and "blown" probably means "flyblown" meat gets flyblown when it's so rotten that the blowfly lays eggs all over it. He says to Iago that he will not concern himself with "such exsufflicate and blown surmises, / Matching thy inference" (3.3.182-183). The problem is - and Othello will wrestle with this problem until he kills Desdemona - he has no way to resolve his doubt. Othello here uses the word "once" in both the sense of "as soon as" and in the sense of "finally." He means that as soon as he is in doubt he will resolve that doubt once and for all. Othello doesn't believe that he is the sort of person who can be jealous, because for him "to be once in doubt / Is once to be resolved" (3.3.179-180). ![]() From Iago's point of view, this is a good sign, just as was Cassio's denial that he was drunk. Iago's warnings against jealousy have the effect that he was probably looking for: Othello denies that he is jealous. Thus Iago tempts Othello to make the jump from suspicion to anger, without pausing to determine if the suspicion has any basis in fact. In comparison to all of this pain of suspicion and doubt, it's "bliss" to just be angry. And the monster is insatiable, always gnawing away, so that the jealous person is never at peace. At the same time, the monster mocks that person's heart, so that he or she feels shame. The meat that the monster feeds on is a person's heart, which it eats away. This speech is justly famous, not only for its description of jealousy, but also for the cunning of its psychological destructiveness. Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves! (3.3.165-170) Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger īut, O, what damned minutes tells he o'er The meat it feeds on that cuckold lives in bliss It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock We have already seen that his jealousy has made him "shape faults that are not" in Emilia he suspects that she is sleeping with both Othello and Cassio.Ĭontinuing his campaign to make Othello jealous, Iago warns Othello against jealousy: Here Iago uses the word "jealousy" in its general sense of "suspicion," but - whether he knows it or not - he has also told the truth about himself. He says, "I confess, it is my nature's plague / To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy / Shapes faults that are not" (3.3.146-148). Othello must feel that same poisonous jealousy that Iago feels, and Iago's jealousy is so strong that he also suspects Cassio of wearing his " night-cap too" (2.1.306)." Īfter having delivered a series of innuendoes about Desdemona, Iago encourages Othello to think about them by saying that they may not be worth thinking about. The phrase "even'd with him, wife for wife," seems to mean that he has some notion that he might have sex with Desdemona, but it's not the sex that's important. It's eating at his gut and he won't be satisfied "Till I am even'd with him, wife for wife, / Or failing so, yet that I put the Moor / At least into a jealousy so strong / That judgment cannot cure" (2.1.299-302). He wants revenge for his own suspicion that Othello has gone to bed with Emilia. He says of Desdemona, "Now, I do love her too / Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure / I stand accountant for as great a sin, / But partly led to diet my revenge" (2.1.291-294). ![]() In a soliloquy at the end of the first scene in Cyprus, Iago speaks of his own motivations. No father has ever expressed a more hateful jealousy of his son-in-law. Where Roderigo says "carry't thus" we would say "carry it off."Īfter Desdemona makes it clear that she loves and honors her husband, Brabantio remains vindictive, and bitterly warns Othello that Desdemona may turn out to be a slut: "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: / She has deceived her father, and may thee" (1.3.292-293). "What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe / If he can carry't thus!" (1.1.66-67). A little later, Roderigo, who is desperately in love with Desdemona, expresses his jealousy of Othello's marriage to Desdemona by exclaiming, ![]() He says that Cassio, a "counter-caster"(1.1.31) (our phrase is "bean counter"), has the job Iago wanted, while Iago has to keep on being "his Moorship's ancient " (1.1.33). At the end of his tale to Roderigo about how he was passed over for promotion to lieutenant, Iago displays his jealousy of Cassio.
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