O me, lieutenant!
What villains have done this?
-Iago
Othello Act V, scene i Line 55
Well if we’re going to do a quote from Othello we can’t do
better than Iago! This guy, if you didn’t know it, is widely considered the
best villain that Shakespeare ever created. And if you were thinking that Iago
was just the Gilbert Gottfried voiced parrot in the movie Aladdin, well I think
it’s time we widened your horizons a wee bit.
So Iago is the guy in the play who starts all the bad stuff
happening. If I recall, Iago’s main issue is that he gets passed over for
promotion by Othello in favor of Cassio, a younger guy, so now he’s just gonna
be a real nasty little creep and do everything he can to ruin everyone’s lives.
And he does a pretty good job of it. And the thing is that he’s Othello’s right
hand man and Othello has no idea that Iago is a bad guy until the very end of
the play.
Today’s Totally Random Daily Shakespeare line is a perfect
example of Iago’s treachery. His question is to Cassio who’s been sliced in the
back of the leg. But the answer to ‘what villain?’ is himself. Iago! Iago snuck
up behind Cassio, sliced him, and ran without being seen. Then he’s back a
little while later pretending he was never there, and pretending to be shocked
over what happened to Cassio. We couldn’t have picked a better line to show the
spirit of Iago and this play if we had spent hours poring over the text!
Amazing! Either this random stuff actually works or, more likely, Shakespeare’s
texts are so packed full of good stuff that it’s hard to come up with a bad
line!
So I guess this is the line you can use when mom discovers that
someone (you) has eaten the whole container of mint chip ice cream and put the
empty container back in the freezer. If you walk in the kitchen and see her
looking with disappointment at the empty container you can try this line, “What
villain has done this!” The thing is, your mom is probably smarter than Cassio
and she’ll look right back at you and say “You know damn well what villain,
Porky!”
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