Iago’s motivations in Othello

In my production people often say why does Iago do what he does? You know, why does he do it? What is his motivation? Well it’s easy to get really complex about this. It’s very simple in a way; he didn’t get promoted and Othello did.

Now everything else beyond that, the racism, the undercurrents, the sexual undertones, the fact that he might be jealous, all that stuff you can put that in, but the bottom line is, here is a man that got passed over by a black man basically and he shouldn’t have. And there is the inherent, to me, the nub of the play.

And when I did it, the opening scene, where Rodrigo and Iago are talking, I had Iago sitting in a night-club, actually I had a pole dancer dancing at his table, and he was getting drunk because he was just musing it over. He was planning his whole thing right there. And then Rodrigo comes in and they had this discussion, so I made it very clear that that was Iago’s initial motivation. And then of course like a lot of Shakespearean, and Elizabethan, and Jacobean villains, they start this process of revenge if you like, and they start to enjoy it, and then they have to die.