Iago : Othello’s ‘Ancient’, a villain in Shakespeare’s play “Othello, the Moor of Venice”.
... Shakespeare hated Iago for injuring Othello; do you think that Shakespeare shared the feelings of [Lodovico] when he condemned the successful villain to death & torture? If Shakespeare did hate Iago, you would at once say that it was illusion, Avidya, on the part of Shakespeare—since it is Shakespeare himself who set Iago there to injure Othello, since indeed there is no Othello or Iago, but only Shakespeare ...
... Square Velasquez, within sight of the Donna's windows. There I will come to you. Sir, if your sword be half as ready and irresistible as your tongue, I would gladly have you there with him, though Saint Iago grant that neither prove necessary. You look sad, Sir. God save you for a witty and eloquent gentleman. Exit. ANTONIO O cousin, I am bewitched with happiness. Pardon me that I leave you... dre, pun and quibble, rhyme and Page 835 unreason, catcall and onomatopoeia; all, all, though it be an avalanche. It will be terrible, but I will stand the charge of it. BASIL St Iago! I think she has the whole dictionary in her stomach. I grow desperate. BRIGIDA Pray, do not be afraid. I do not indeed press you to throw your-self at my head, but for a small matter like your... this gentleman's conversation have swept away half my wit, I have at a desperate peril, saved the other half for your service. Come, Sir, I have need of you to frighten the mice away. BASIL St Iago! Exit Brigida with Basil. ISMENIA Dear, we must part. I would have you my necklace, That I might feel you round my neck for ever; Or life be night and all men sleep, then we Need never ...
... is as real and unreal today as it was when Shakespeare created it or in more accurate Vedantic language asrijata , loosed it forth from the causal world within him. Within the limits of that world Iago is real to Othello, Othello to Desdemona, and all are real to any and every consciousness which can for a time abstract itself from this world [of] its self-created surroundings and enter the world... feelings, and sometimes even by our actions to be real, are, all the time and we know them perfectly well to be as mythical as the dream, the mirage and the juggler on his rope. There is no Othello, no Iago, no Desdemona but all these are merely varieties Page 386 of name & form, not of Shakespeare, but in which Shakespeare is immanent and which still exist merely because Shakespeare is immanent ...
... wheel of phenomenal Evolution, which He guides and governs. He is then Isha, the Lord or Ruler. To use a human parallel, Shakespeare pouring himself out in a hundred names and forms, Desdemona, Othello, Iago, Viola, Rosalind, Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, Cymbeline is using his power of Avidya to become the lord and ruler of a wonderful imaginary world. Shakespeare putting aside his works and returning to his... and His Universe is He, just as Shakespeare's creations are really Shakespeare himself, woven by him out of his own store of psychic material; and yet it would be obviously a mistake to identify, say, Iago with Shakespeare. This tree is evolved out of original ether, ether pervades it and surrounds it, but the tree cannot be described as ether, nor ether as the tree; so, going deeper down, we find it ...
... the better, and in Timocles there is a change for the worse. Even Cleone shows good impulses towards the end. Only Phayllus is the "abhorred and crooked devil" throughout: an Aurobindonian version of Iago. Rodogune and Antiochus grow continually, she from the beautiful but helpless captive princess of the first Act to the heroical sublime of the last, and he from an egoistical hero as fighter to a patriot... and double-entendre, pun and quibble, rhyme and unreason, catcall and onomatopoeia; all, all, though it be an avalanche. It will be terrible, but I will stand the charge of it. B ASIL St. Iago! I think she has the whole dictionary in her stomach. I grow desperate. In the tradition of Shakespearian comedy, lovers come, not as an isolated pair, but many in rows and file. The scenes have ...
... modifying Goldsmith's lines on Burke: Born for the universe, he narrowed up his mind, And to himself gave what was meant for mankind. It was not Satan, nor Achitophel, nor Manthara, nor Iago that tempted Pururavas or Ruru; they were but betrayed by the infinitesimal egoistic false within themselves. The Temptation was enacted, in the last resort, only in the theatre of their souls,; ...
... tuquoque and double-entendre, pun and quibble, rhyme and unreason, catcall and onomatopoeia; all, all, though it be an avalanche. It will be terrible, but I will stand the charge of it. "BASIL: St. Iago! I think she has the whole dictionary in her stomach. I grow desperate." 3 Sri Aurobindo, born in 1872, was taken to England at the age of seven. He studied and stayed there till his twenty-first ...
... Although vampires, when in a human body, may not be altogether conscious of their parasitical or blood-sucking nature, their influence is malignant all the same. Like the motiveless malignity of an Iago! Evil-doing is the svabhāva of a vampire, just as, for Satan, "Evil! be thou my good!" is the natural affirmation. One of the tragedies of organised human life is that only such people seem to control ...
... that his figures utter or even sympathising with all their feelings. If AE's dictum is correct, a dramatist like Shakespeare should never have penned quite a number of celebrated speeches such as Iago's or Lady Macbeth's, for he could never have answered satisfactorily to AE's "posers". We have to recognise that a poet's function essentially is not to transcribe his own convictions and experiences ...
... existence like a tremendous storm rather than a sinister breath, whirling in an uncontrollable catastrophe the human figures: the commotion on the heath is but an outward symbol of a mysterious madness. Iago's "motiveless malignity" is another and less apparent way of hinting the incalculable behind life and its conscious aims; and it evokes against it a corresponding incalculable — the demoniac obsession ...
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