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The Silence of Iago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Daniel Stempel
Daniel Stempel*
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii, Honolulu
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Abstract

In his speech on “vertue” (I.iii) Iago defends the absolute power of the individual to will freely. This doctrine of the autonomous will was commonly attributed to the Jesuit theologian, Molina, whose writings were then the subject of bitter controversy. Iago's subtle twisting of moral values also falls into the pattern of malign casuistry and cynical self-aggrandizement associated with the Jesuit image in England. Iago, then, is not the usual Machiavel who spurns both religion and morality; he is the Jesuitical Machiavel who employs the language of piety to “enmesh them all.” Convinced that he is the master of his will, Iago usually finds no difficulty in supplying motives for his actions; yet, after he is unmasked, he doggedly remains silent. From the Augustinian (and Shakespearean) point of view this is simply the ultimate mute evidence that, contrary to his belief, Iago has been mastered by a radically evil will for which he has merely supplied both motive and opportunity. Like the Pardoner and the Ancient Mariner, he knows what he has done, but does not (in the fullest sense of the word) know why he has done it.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , March 1969 , pp. 252 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 All citations are taken from the New Variorum Edition, ed. H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1886).

2 Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil (New York, 1958), pp. 423–424.

3 Princeton, 1963, pp. 159–160.

4 Thoughts on Machiavdli (Glencoe, Ill., 1958), p. 246. See also Friedrich Meinecke, Machiavdlism (New York, 1957), p. 36: “The individual agent cannot escape the nature he is born with. He acts in such and such a way because this nature requires it.” Gentillet's A discourse upon the meanes of wel governing against N. Machiavdle, trans. S. Patericke (London, 1602), p. 138, gives the following version of Ch. xxv of 77 Principe: “So that if hee which governes himselfe moderately, encounter and meet with a time, wherein his vertue is requisit, he cannot faile but prosper; yet if the time change, he shall undoubtedly overthrowe himselfe, if hee likewise change not his manners and order of life.” Gentillet comments, “Now Machiavell would make men beleeve, that this is true, and that all the good and evill which come to men, happeneth, because they have Fortune accordant or discordant to their complexions.”

5 Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, pp. 423, 425, 437.

6 Mario Praz, “Machiavelli and the Elizabethans,” Proceedings of the British Academy, xiv (1928), 83.

7 Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavdli (London, 1964), p. 59.

8 “The Epistle Dedicatorie,” n.p.

9 A Letter Written out of England (London, 1599), p. 10.

10 Thomas Bell, The Anatomie of Popish Tyrannie (London, 1603), p. 107.

11 “Unless, therefore, the will itself is set free by the grace of God from that misery by which it has been made a servant of sin, and unless it is given help to overcome its vices, mortal men cannot live upright and devout lives.” Retractions, I, 9. St. Augustine, The Problem of Free Choice, trans. Dom Mark Pontifex (Westminster, Md., and London, 1955), Appendix, p. 24.

12 Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book i, p. vii.

13 Shakespeare's Use of Learning (San Marino, Calif., 1953), pp. 281–282.

14 The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Louis J. Puhl, S.J. (Westminster, Md., 1954), p. 161.

15 For this article I have used the edition of Johannes Rabeneck, S.J. (Madrid, 1953).

16 For a brief description of the Molinist controversy, see “Molinism,” Catholic Encyclopaedia. An excellent account is given by James Brodrick, S.J., The Life and Work of Blessed Robert Francis Cardinal Bellarmine, S.J. (London, 1928), ii, 1–69.

17 “Molina and Human Liberty,” Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance, ed. Gerard Smith, S.J. (Milwaukee, 1939), p, 110.

18 “Ceterum arbitror libertatem esse in voluntate et non in intellectu atque ad libertatem volendi aut nolendi vel continendi actum non volendo, quando velle possumus, et non nolendo, quando possumus nolle, non esse necessariam tantam deliberationem ex parte intellectus quantam multi necessariam esse existimant et multo minus imperium intellectus quo voluntati imperet ut velit aut nolit vel contineat actum; sed ad volendum satis esse notitiam bonitatis alicuius quae in obiecto eluceat rei delectabilis vel utilis aut honestae. Ea vero bonitas si tanta non sit et tam perspicue cognita quae voluntati necessitatem inferat, ut nulla est talis praeter Deum clare visum, integrum est voluntati non elicere actum, tametsi regulariter ilium eliciet, si magna sit nihilque adsit quod ab eo eliciendo retrahat. Similiter existente notitia alicuius mali integrum eidem voluntati est nolle ac respuere obiectum; nec tamen necessitatur ad nolendum, sed potest non elicere nolitionem continendo actum, tametsi quando obiectum est vehemens, regulariter nolitionem eliciet, nisi adsit quod aliunde moveat ad illam non eliciendam aut etiam ad contristativum amplectendum propter bonum cum eo coniunctum. Itaque existente eadem dispositione ac notitia ex parte intellectus qualis explicata est potest voluntas sua innata libertate velle aut nolle vel neutrum elicere actum.” Concordia, Quaest. 14, art. 13, disp. 2, 9, pp. 15–16.

19 Although the first stirrings of Arminianism made their appearance in the decade preceding the staging of Othello, they were not identified as a Protestant reaction to Calvinism, but rather as a Catholic fifth column. William Perkins (1558-1602) warned, “Lastly, it were to be wished that some of our students euen of Divinity, had not a spice of this sinne of Core: for within this sixe or seuen yeares, divers haue addicted themselues to studie Popish writers and Monkish discourses, despising in the meane time the writings of those famous instruments and cleare lights, whom the Lord raised up for the raising and restoring of true religion; such as Luther, Calvin, Bucer, Bern, Martyr, &c, which argueth that their minds are alienated from the sinceritie of the truth.” Works (1609), iii, 552. He may have been referring to William Barret, who was forced to make a public recantation of his unpopular views at Cambridge in 1595. William Prynne gives a complete account of the incident in his Anli-Arminianisme, 2nd ed. (1630), pp. 61–62. Prynne describes Barret's doctrines as “these then Pelagian, and Popish, but now both Popish, and Arminian tenets.”

20 PMLA, lxxix (Sept. 1964), 390–400.

21 Thomas Dekker's The Whore oj Babylon, registered in 1607 but possibly written and performed earlier, includes in its “Drammatis Personae” Palmio, “a Iesuite.”

22 The lesuites Catechisme or Examination of their doctrine. Published in French this present year 1602, and nowe translated into English. N.p.

23 Works, i, between pp. 701–702.

24 The emendation “wise” for “wife” has been offered before (see the discussion in the Variorum Othello), but not with this specific meaning. As for the “divinity of hell,” Bell, Anatomie of Popish Tyrannie, p. 45, writes: “But in regard of brevitie, I referre the reader, that shall desire more of this kind of their hellish divinitie, to that worthie book which the French papistes haue put forth, (intituled the Iesuites catEchisme,) a golden booke indeede.” See also Antoine Arnauld, Le franc discours. A Discourse, presented of late to the French king (London, 1602), p. 7: “Will you haue the truth, their proper element is Diuinitie, that's their Facultie, that's their field: therein are they expert.”

26 Bellarmine, ii, 38. Also see Concordia, p. 645: “Quare potest unus cum aequali aut minori eiusdem gratiae prae-venientis auxilio converti, quando alius cum aequali aut maiori eiusdem praevenientis gratiae auxinb non convertitur.”

26 The Sermons of John Donne, eds. G. R. Potter and E. M. Simpson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1955), ii, 375.

27 Diary of John Manningham, ed. John Bruce (Westminster, Eng., 1868), p. 88. For this reference I am indebted to my colleague, Dr. Elizabeth N. McCutcheon.

28 Works, ii, 11–12. Also see Thomas Wood, English Casuistical Divinity During the Seventeenth Century (London, 1952), Ch. i.

29 A Full Satisjaction Concerning a Double Romish Iniquitie (London, 1606), p. 87. Although the reference is dated two years after the first performance of Othello, it indicates that there was a contemporary knowledge of the methods of Jesuit casuistry.

30 See Perkins' The Whole Treatise oj the Cases of Conscience (Cambridge, Eng., 1609), “The Epistle Dedicatorie” by Thomas Pickering.

31 Phillip Stubbes's Anatomy of the Abuses in England (1583), ed. F. J. FurnivaU (London, 1877–79), Part ii, pp. 6–7.

32 Spivack also notes Iago's “sexual syllogism,” p. 426.

33 Analomie of Popish Tyrannie, p. 78.

34 The Censure of a loyall Subiect (London, 1587), n.p.

35 See Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton (Oxford, 1907), i, 77 ff., 318.

36 See John Gerard, S.J., The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, trans. Philip Caraman (London and New York, 1951), pp. 72–73.

37 Speculum, xxvi (1951), 473.

38 “A Poem of Pure Imagination: An Experiment in Reading,” in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (New York, 1946), p. 81.

39 The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York, 1950), p. 387.