#80 Othello by William Shakespeare

Iago. The name means supplanter, but after reading this play, demon seems more fitting. Everyone believes this inhuman dog is the soul of honesty. This belief is Othello’s downfall. Damn'd Iago has but to hint that Desdemona, Othello’s devoted young bride, is an adulteress, and her husband, a man known for his steadiness of character, is completely undone. At first, Othello is merely slightly troubled by the thought. But as Iago pours his poisonous potion of lies into Othello’s ear, the Moor becomes a brooding, violent, wretched thing, collapsing into seizures brought on by Iago’s “medicine”, which proves its potency in the number of corpses left behind at the play’s end.