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Iago   /iˈɑgoʊ/   Listen
Iago

noun
1.
The villain in William Shakespeare's tragedy who tricked Othello into murdering his wife.






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"Iago" Quotes from Famous Books



... incident, taken in conjunction with Henry Woodfall's connection with E. Curll and the letters of Pope, and the story told by Thomas Gent of the printing of The Bishop of Rochester's Effigy, shows that he was a worthy disciple of Iago in ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... who in their lives had been servants of sin— Adulteress, Wench, Virago— And Murd'resses old that had pointed the knife Against a husband's or father's life, Each one a She Iago. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Dickens booth had several large groupings and tableaux that created a storm of hilarity and amusement. Mrs. Jarley and her famous waxworks, Mrs. Jarley, Mrs. Hodgkins herself, was a sight that would move the latent risibilities of the most morose Iago. It would be impossible for me to give the harangue of that queer old lady, the unction, the comical postures would be lost on paper. She was "sui generis" and must be seen to be appreciated. Her wax figures were original and pertinent hits on the live ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... Like Iago, he saw the indistinct outline of a glorious and a most malicious plot; it lay crude in his head and heart at present; thus much he saw clearly, that, if he could time Mrs. Vane's arrival so that she should pounce upon the Woffington at her husband's table, he might ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... survivors, among them Captain Cheap and Mr. Byron, were taken by some Patagonians to the Island of Chiloe, and thence, after some months, to Valparaiso. They were kept for nearly two years as prisoners at St. Iago, the capital of Chili, and in December, 1744, put on board a French frigate, which reached Brest in October, 1745. Early in 1746 they arrived at ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... the champions were asked if they assented to them, whereon each of them answered, "Aye!" in a clear voice. Then the herald, speaking on behalf of Sir Peter Brome, by creation a knight of St. Iago and a Don of Spain, solemnly challenged the noble Marquis of Morella to single combat to the death, in that he, the said marquis, had aspersed the name of his relative, the English lady, Elizabeth Dene, who claimed to be his wife, duly united to him in holy wedlock, and for ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... reputation! O! I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation! IAGO. As I am an honest man, I thought you ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... scene between Richard and Anne; but the original impulse exhausted itself quickly, and then Shakespeare fell back on his own experience and made Richard keen of insight and hypocritically blunt of speech—a sort of sketch of Iago. A little later Shakespeare either felt that the action was unsuitable to the development of such a character, or more probably he grew weary of the effort to depict a fiend; in any case, the play becomes less and less interesting, and even the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... to what we may term the domestic as opposed to the political criminal when he created Iago. In their envy and dislike of their fellowmen, their contempt for humanity in general, their callousness to the ordinary sympathies of human nature, Robert Butler, Lacenaire, Ruloff are witnesses to the poet's fidelity to criminal ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... emptier his stomach the more his head abounded in plans "for writing books to earn money to buy books." He devised a system of spelling reform and could submit to his pastor friend at Rehau in 1782 a little sheaf of essays on various aspects of Folly, the student being now of an age when, like Iago, he was "nothing if not critical." Later these papers seemed to him little better than school exercises, but they gave a promise soon to be redeemed in Greenland Law-Suits, his first volume to find a publisher. These satirical sketches, printed early in 1783, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the following passage from Lily's "Euphues, the anatomy of wit," 1617, that the plants were not named at random by Iago, but that there was some connection between them. "Good gardeners, in their curious knots, mixe Isope with Time, as aiders the one with the others; the one being dry, the other moist." The gardeners of the sixteenth century had a firm belief in the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... and simple way, then, and without any desire ostentatiously to "chronicle small beer," as Iago sneers it, I suppose it proper to state very briefly when and where I was born, with a word as to my parentage. July 17, 1810, was my birthday, and No. 20 Devonshire Place, Marylebone, my birthplace, at that time the last house of London northward. My father, Martin Tupper, a name ever honoured ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... name sounded all over Maine and Massachusetts as the heroic tradesman who had parted with his money only when overpowered by superior force. It is impossible to say what motives may impel men who are half-crazed by vanity, or half-demonized by malice. Coleridge describes Iago's hatred of Othello as the hatred which a base nature instinctively feels for a noble one, and his assignment of motives for his acts as the mere ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... see no excuse for it in America. It has remained for us to add to the body of the law the idea that men are created free and equal. The lack of that saving principle in the codes of the world has been the great cause of injustice and oppression. The voice of revolution here would be like that of Iago in the play and worse. It would be like the unscrupulous lawyer, anxious for a fee, who says to a client, living happily with his wife: 'I know she is handsome and virtuous and intelligent and loving but she has her faults. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... of Shakespeare are so much the objects of meditation rather than of interest or curiosity as to their actions, that while we are reading any of his great criminal characters,—Macbeth, Richard, even Iago,—we think not so much of the crimes which they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity, which prompts them to overleap those moral fences. Barnwell is a wretched murderer; ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... fought under flags inscribed with red crosses and their battle cries were "Jesus," "Maria," and "St. Iago." They defended the castle successfully against repeated assaults until the 12th of April, when, their provisions and their ammunition alike being exhausted, they were overwhelmed and put to the sword, with the exception ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... however, help thinking that there is more than a little exaggeration in more than one point of the story. The Abbe Birotteau is surely a little too much of a fool; the Abbe Troubert an Iago a little too much wanting in verisimilitude; and the central incident of the clause about the furniture too manifestly improbable. Taking the first and the last points together, is it likely that any one not ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... waddies, wallabies' skins, owls, fly-flappers, red ochre, and numerous other minor valuables. These we brought in triumph to the camp. It always distressed me to have to fire at these savages, and it was only when our lives were in most imminent danger that we did so, for, as Iago says, though in the trade of war I have slain men, yet do I hold it very stuff o' the conscience to do no contrived murder. I lack iniquity, sometimes, to do me service. We then went on with our work, though expecting our foes to return, but we were not again molested, as they now probably ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... his opinion of this Essay, answered, 'Why, Sir, we shall have the man come forth again; and as he has proved Falstaff to be no coward, he may prove Iago to be a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... of evil sprang from no love of good, but to whom the sight of depravity and baseness was welcome, inasmuch as it afforded him me occasion to wreak his own scorn and pride. His ambition was to be the English Juvenal; and it must be conceded that he had the true Iago-like disposition "to spy out abuses." Accordingly, in 1598, he published a series of venomous satires called "The Scourge of Villanie," rough in versification, condensed in thought, tainted in matter, evincing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... is everything and nothing—it has no character—it enjoys light and shade—it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated—it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things, any more than from its taste for the bright one, because they both end in speculation. A poet ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... a legislature, even there he receives his lessons, and is told, either in phrases of well-conceived irony, or by the exhibition of facts and reasonings which take him by surprise, that he is not altogether the person he deemed himself to be. But he does not mind it. Like Iago in the play, he "knows his price, and, by the faith of man, that he is worth no worse a place" than that which he occupies. He finds out the value of the check he receives, and lets it "pass by him like the idle wind"—a ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... child, who was at this very time the only woman whom he loved,—with an entire absence of delicacy. Bozzle would have thought reticence on his part to be dishonest. We remember Othello's demand of Iago. That was the demand which Bozzle understood that Trevelyan had made of him, and he was minded to obey that order. But Trevelyan, though he had in truth given the order, was like Othello also in this,—that he would ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... misbelieving bands, Alla and Mahomet their battle-word, The choice they yield, the Koran or the Sword - See how the Christians rush to arms amain! - In yonder shout the voice of conflict roared, The shadowy hosts are closing on the plain - Now, God and Saint Iago strike, for the good ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... Modena and Nuncio in Germany, inclined the same way as the suspected cardinals. The most eminent men of the Italian clergy were steering for Wittenberg, and taking Rome with them. An uncle of the Duke of Alva, the cardinal of Sant Iago, thereupon suggested to Caraffa that the best way to save the Church was to introduce the Spanish Inquisition; and he was seconded by another Spaniard, a Basque of great note in history, of whom there will ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... 1800 was the hero of the Dublin stage, with the exception of an interval, during which he served in the army. On October 31, 1800, he appeared at Covent Garden as "Richard III.," and afterwards played such parts in tragedy as "Iago" and "Shylock" with great success. In comedy he was also a favourite, especially as "Kitely" in 'Every Man in his Humour', and "Sir Pertinax MacSycophant" in 'The Man of the World'. His last appearance ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... that the disapproval he feels for certain actions is not nearly so strong as his curiosity in their reasons. The character of a scoundrel, logical and complete, has a fascination for his creator which is an outrage to law and order. I expect that Shakespeare devised Iago with a gusto which he never knew when, weaving moonbeams with his fancy, he imagined Desdemona. It may be that in his rogues the writer gratifies instincts deep-rooted in him, which the manners and customs of a civilised world ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... due us, by the bones of Saint Iago," shouted Joe, in a thrill of glad anticipation. "Watch her closely. You saw the brig in Charles Town harbor. Bless God, this may well be Cap'n Stede Bonnet yonder, an' perchance he cruises in search of Blackbeard to square accounts with ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... its beauty and goodness, threw their gloom over these comedies. Failure seems everywhere. In "Julius Caesar" the virtue of Brutus is foiled by its ignorance of and isolation from mankind; in Hamlet even penetrating intellect proves helpless for want of the capacity of action; the poison of Iago taints the love of Desdemona and the grandeur of Othello; Lear's mighty passion battles helplessly against the wind and the rain; a woman's weakness of frame dashes the cup of her triumph from the hand of Lady Macbeth; lust and self-indulgence ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... than before, an officer of the guards—a guardsman is now become indispensable—who is also in love with the marquess's daughter, and being not at all scrupulous of the means of accomplishing his point—a very worthless person in short—he plays Iago, and pours into the lady's ear the tale of Hyde's gambling propensities, and his deep involvements; and moreover of a lady whose affection he had wantonly won, and wantonly cut, and who was now actually dying for him. This, however, was not all true; the lady alluded to was the daughter of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... passion or the sentiment do its own work without prop or bolstering. He would have scorned to mountebank it; and betrayed none of that cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. For this reason, his Iago was the only endurable one which I remember to have seen. No spectator from his action could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed to do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in possession of the mystery. There were no by-intimations to make the audience ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... should be lost, he was to prosecute his voyage in the Adventure. A copy of these orders was given to Captain Furneaux, and in case of separation the following rendezvous were named: Madeira, Port Praya in the island of St. Iago, the Cape of Good ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... presentation of this disinterested, this passive evil, because nothing but the conscious is literary. Shakespeare, in his Othello, a drama which has always appeared false and absurd to me, emphasizes the disinterested malice of Iago, imparting to him a character and mode of action which are beyond those of normal men; but then, in order to accredit him to the spectators, he adds also a motive, and represents him as ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... think of him, all that time—Macbeth in disguise; Richard the Third grown straight; Hamlet as he appeared on his seavoyage to England. What an artful villain he must be, never to have made any sign of the melodrama that was in him! What a wicked-minded and remorseless Iago to have seen you doing Kitely night after night! raging to murder you and seize the part! Oh fancy Miss Kelly 'getting him up' in Macbeth. Good Heaven! what a mass of absurdity must be shut up sometimes within the walls of that ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... 'Because you have sat by, quite sober, and felt an envy of the happiness of those who were drinking.' JOHNSON. 'Perhaps, contempt.—And, Sir, it is not necessary to be drunk one's self, to relish the wit of drunkenness. Do we not judge of the drunken wit, of the dialogue between Iago and Cassio, the most excellent in its kind, when we are quite sober? Wit is wit, by whatever means it is produced; and, if good, will appear so at all times. I admit that the spirits are raised by drinking, as by the common participation of any pleasure: ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... proof that he was acquainted with Admiralty law, as well as with the procedure of Westminster Hall. Describing the feat of the Moor in carrying off Desdemona against her father's consent, which might either make or mar his fortune, according as the act might be sanctioned or nullified, Iago observes,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... that the lords Powis and Peters were to form an army in Radnorshire, to be joined by another army, consisting of twenty or thirty thousand religious men and pilgrims, who were to land at Milford Haven from St. Iago in Spain: that there were forty thousand men ready in London; besides those who would, on the alarm, be posted at every alehouse door, in order to kill the soldiers as they came out of their quarters: that Lord Stafford, Coleman, and Father Ireland had money sufficient to defray ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a man—a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... wrote an immense number of mildly entertaining novels concerned with the lives and ambitions of English clergymen and their satellites. His best-known book is probably Barchester Towers (1857).... Chronicling small beer is the "lame and impotent conclusion" with which Iago finishes his poem (Othello, Act II, Sc. I).... Rawdon Crawley's blow refers to the most memorable scene in Thackeray's great novel, Vanity Fair (1847-8), where Rawdon Crawley, the husband of Becky Sharp, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Cassio to be the lieutenant, a place of trust, and nearest to the general's person. This promotion gave great offence to Iago, an older officer who thought he had a better claim than Cassio, and would often ridicule Cassio as a fellow fit only for the company of ladies, and one that knew no more of the art of war or how to set an army in array for battle, than ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... Iago. Keep your counsel. Dismiss this from you mind. Make love to some pretty girl, amuse yourself. Do anything but drink or gamble. Keep up a jolly mien. Go in to the summer pleasures a little. It will throw these two crafty ones off their guard. The weeks will soon roll ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... suppose, if some near friend were to watch one who was looking over such a pressing letter, he might possibly see a slight shadow flit over the reader's features, and some such dialogue might follow as that between Othello and Iago, after "this honest creature" has been giving breath to his suspicions ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... it aright and not awry,—it is not of any single person or separate passage that we think when we speak of it; it is to the whole masterpiece that the mind turns at mention of its name. The one entire and perfect chrysolite of Othello is neither Othello nor Desdemona nor Iago, but each and all; the play of Hamlet is more than Hamlet himself, the poem even here is too great to be resumed in the person. But Constance is the jewel of King John, and Katherine is the crowning blossom of King Henry VIII.—a funeral flower as of "marigolds on death-beds blowing," ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... and tested. The imaginative historian cannot lay on his colours, or fill up his canvas, by effective and lively touches without finding his work placed under the microscope of erudite analysts, some of whom, like Iago, are nothing if not critical, are not only exact but very exacting. In these days a writer who endeavours to illuminate some scene of ages past, to show us, as by a magic lantern, the moving figures brought out in relief ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... and their motives are to him an uncharted sea. Suddenly a beautiful young heiress falls in love with him, and leaves home and friends to marry him. He stands on the threshold of a new realm, happy but bewildered. Then comes Iago, his trusted subordinate, —who, as Othello knows, possesses that knowledge of women and of civilian life which he himself lacks,—and whispers in his ear that his bride is false to him; that under this fair veneer lurks the eternal feminine as they had seen it in the common creatures ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... whom we had seen rise up in the boat—was strong enough to tell us his story. I will not repeat it in all its dreadful details of suffering; suffice it to say that their ship, homeward-bound from Saint Iago, had been attacked by a piratical schooner, the crew of which, after rifling and scuttling the ship, had turned the crew adrift in one of their own boats, without provisions or water, masts or sails; ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... importance of this is illustrated by an amusing story of Edmund Kean, who one night played Othello with more than his usual intensity. An admirer who met him in the street next day was loud in his congratulations: "I really thought you would have choked Iago, Mr. Kean—you seemed so tremendously in earnest." "In earnest!" said the tragedian, "I should think so! Hang the fellow, he was trying to keep me ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... Keats, John, his poems Died through bursting a blood-vessel on reading the article on his 'Endymion' in the Quarterly Review His depreciation of Pope Kelly, Miss, actress Kemble, John Philip, esq., his Coriolanus His Hamlet Intreats Lord Byron to write a tragedy His acting described His Othello His Iago Kennedy, Dr., his 'Conversations on religion with Lord Byron in Cephalonia' Lord Byron's letters to Kent, Mr., his taste in gardening formed by Pope Kidd, Captain Strange story related to Lord Byron by Kien Long, his 'Ode to Tea' Kinnaird, Hon. Douglas Lord Byron's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... having in one week lost two of the eldest of them by the small-pox, and the youngest falling ill of the same distemper, he was afraid of being bereft of them all; and made a vow, if heaven would not take him from him also, he would go in gratitude to St. Iago in Spain. ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... honour that thou shouldest die, and never hast thou neglected to do aught which thine honour demands." Whereupon, being arrived in the roadstead of Goa, Alfonzo Albuquerque set in order the affairs of his conscience with the Church, caused himself to be clad in the dress of the Order of St. Iago of which he was a commander, and then "on Sunday the 16th of December, an hour before daybreak, he rendered up his soul to God. Thus ended all his labours, without their having ever ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... in a world apart. They exist in books only by accident, and for one written there are a thousand, infinitely more powerful, spoken. They are deeds: the man who brings word of a lost battle can work no comparable effect with the muscles of his arm; Iago's breath is as truly laden with poison and murder as the fangs of the cobra and the drugs of the assassin. Hence the sternest education in the use of words is least of all to be gained in the schools, which cultivate verbiage in a highly ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... He had missed it by twelve hours, 'the reason,' as he said with a sigh, 'best known to God.' The chance of prize-money was lost, but the political purpose of the expedition could still be completed. The Cape de Verde Islands could not sail away, and a beginning could be made with Sant Iago. Sant Iago was a thriving, well-populated town, and down in Drake's book as specially needing notice, some Plymouth sailors having been recently murdered there. Christopher Carlile, always handy and trustworthy, was ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... latter theory I incline at a scholarly angle. This Cycle may be taken, perhaps, not so much as a living record of human experience as a lofty parable sounding the key-note of all human life. Gill the Grip is the Iago, the Mefistofele, the symbolism of a malevolent destiny. Maxy the Firebug may be the Poet's interpretation of the Social Unrest, of Doubt, of progressive irresponsibility. Would it be going too far, then, to say that Pansy stands to us as the symbol of Pan-girlism - as an almost ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin

... self, so in each age there are conflicting tendencies; but it is the part of enlightened minds and generous hearts to see what is true, and to love what is good. The fault-finder is hateful both in life and in literature; and it is Iago, the most despicable of characters, whom Shakespeare makes say, "I am nothing if not critical." A Christian of all men is without excuse for being fretful and sour, for thinking and acting as though this were a devil's world, and not the eternal God's, as though there were ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... tragic poet cannot clear himself of his plot without introducing a wretch, and when he is reduced to derive the greatness of suffering from the greatness of wickedness, the supreme beauty of his work must always be seriously injured. Iago and Lady Macbeth in Shakspeare, Cleopatra in the tragedy of "Rodogune," or Franz Moor in "The Robbers," are so many proofs in support of this assertion. A poet who understands his real interest will not bring about the catastrophe through a malicious will ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... boys" were ambitious; each annual exhibition was crowded, to listen to the speeches "of Coriolanus, Iago, Brutus, and Cassius" by "raw lads from the village and adjoining farms," in all the bravery of local militia uniform—blue coats "faced with red, matross swords, and hats of '76." On such an occasion James Cooper, then a child of eight years, became the pride and admiration of Master Cory for ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... The lines of care and age gathered again upon her face. Her eyes gleamed with keen intelligence. She braced herself with the thought of all that might still lie before her. The advice of Iago, strangely sanctified, clamoured in her heart—' Put money in ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... Isabella of Castile, who bear on their armor the cross of St. Iago, never enter the temples of Mohammed, except to level them to the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... Lopez bears a distant resemblance to "honest Iago" in Othello, though Molire has only faintly shadowed forth what Shakespeare has worked out in ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere

... The Merchant of Venice have offended. I avow myself an impenitent Shakesperian in this respect also. The constant or almost constant presence of that humour which ranges from the sarcastic quintessence of Iago, and the genial quintessence of Falstaff, through the fantasies of Feste and Edgar, down to the sheer nonsense which not unfrequently occurs, seems to me not only delightful in itself, but, as I have hinted already, one of the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... Shakspeare, who had probably never seen a score of negroes in his life, with the divination of genius, felt the repugnance which a refined woman would feel to accepting one as her husband. The plot of one of his plays turns on it. He makes Iago say ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... of San Carlo, the Scala, and the Fenice. Mrs. Wood, on the other hand, is our own, and wholly our own; she has not basked in the suns of Naples, nor breathed the musical atmosphere of Venice or Milan; yet I, who am an old stager, like Iago, "nothing if not critical," and have heard every prima donna from Billington down to this present writing, have seldom uttered any brava with more unction than when listening to Mrs. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... And as I promised her, so I strove with her father. I used every argument, resorted to every mode of persuasion, hut all was of no avail. Mr. Clifford was under the rigid, the iron government of his fate! His wife was one of those miserably silly women—born, according to Iago...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... with more pleasure. Few in which he is so little exceptionable. On this occasion he was supported by his friend JAFFIER in a manner that reflects much credit on Mr. Wood. And Mr. Wood is not a little indebted to his Belvidera also. Could we speak as favourably of his Iago, we should have introduced him in the proper place. Mr. Cooper's grenadier's cap, added nothing, to say no worse ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... steers us triumphantly among shoals and quicksands, where with any other pilot we had been wrecked:—for instance, who but himself would have dared to bring into close contact two such characters as Iago and Desdemona? Had the colors in which he has arrayed Desdemona been one atom less transparently bright and pure, the charm had been lost; she could not have borne the approximation: some shadow from the overpowering blackness of his character must have passed over ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... sinister, ordinarily invisible. Here were softness, impetuosity, romantic imagination, and tender fire, enough to set up half a dozen poets. Again, there was a fund of malignity, coldness, and subtlety adequate to the making an Iago. Here, too, were the clear sceptical intellect, the fertility and versatile power of brain, which only the loftier minds of the world ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... laugh. 'Is this a tragedy?' they cried—'a man talking out of a window!' They laughed all through the first acts. But," continued Rossi, looking round with a sudden flash from his expressive eyes, "when the scene with Iago came they ceased to laugh; and henceforward they laughed no more. At the present time Shakespeare is thoroughly appreciated in Italy. Our audiences would not endure the altered and garbled versions of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... he has spoken of me, but I don't know what he says.' I translated for him, in a somewhat milder form, Byron's words, which happened to be fresh in my memory: 'They have been crucifying Othello into an opera; the music good but lugubrious, but, as for the words, all the real scenes with Iago cut out, and the greatest nonsense instead, the handkerchief turned into a billet-doux, and the first singer would not black his face—singing, dresses, and music very good.' The maestro regretted his ignorance of the English language, and said, 'In my day I gave ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... code we offer—a code taught to us by the times and by the facts that assail us. When we see an 'honest' Judge 'Iago' rise from his bed at midnight to pander to the contemptible rascality of stock thieves we have but little hope for even what we dignify by the name of law. When we see our churches allowing a host of gamblers to gather for false worship at their shrines and pander ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin



Words linked to "Iago" :   fictional character, fictitious character, character



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