THE IRONY OF IAGO

Seriously, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Othello is a pretty misleading title.
A far better, and more convenient, one would be The Irony of Iago.
Even Verdi's librettist, Arrigo Boito, wanted initially to call the opera Iago. And its main concern is the theme of the loss of identity, of what happens when our persona slips and the dark side of our true selves, the Stranger in the lyrics of the song, comes to light.

Well we all have a face
that we hide away forever,
and we take them out and show ourselves
when everyone has gone...
Some are satin, some are steel,
some are silk and some are leather;
they're the faces of the stranger,
but we love to try them on...

Well, we all fall in love,
but we disregard the danger:
Though we share so many secrets,
there are some we never tell...
Why were you so surprised
that you never saw the stranger?
Did you ever let your lover see
the stranger in yourself?

You may never understand

how the stranger is inspired,

but he isn't always evil

and he isn't always wrong...

Though you drown in good intentions,

you will never quench the fire:

You'll give in to your desire

when the stranger comes along.

Iago brings out the Stranger in every character (except women, who seem to be immune to his tricks, that is). Now the motifs and tricks he employs are reminiscent of Donegild, the villainous queen mother in the Man of Law's Tale, in fact, these two deceivers share a lot of common ground. Chaucer scholar William F. Woods states that:
"Her (Donegild's) icons --the corruption of language, drunkenness, counterfeit letters, lies, and monstrous births-- are motifs of the loss of identity."
Iago's icons are in fact the same: the corruption of language, drunkenness, counterfeit letters, lies, and monstrous births-- which are motifs of the loss of identity. Which happens to be, in my own humble opinion, the theme that ties the whole play together: identity, the self, and how to react in front of the loss of identity.
The same scholar also speaks of "the divisions created by Donegild." The "honest ensign" also creates divisions by means of the same artifices.
Furthermore, there are more parallels: Donegild's xenophobic refusal to "invest" in new brides, ideas, and babies implies the exilic undertow of worldly events, says Woods. The same could be said of Iago's refusal to "invest" in new officers and ideas.
(Then there's the portrayal of Donegild as a gender deviant: Woods, once more, mentions the willful "male" busyness of Donegild, and her own corrupted will. She is called "mannish" by Chaucer, with the innuendos of a slur, which echoes a long tradition of patriarchal discrimination against willful females. Furthermore, Woods speaks of Donegild-"Virago," committing typically masculine crimes of force and fraud... In Othello, gender roles are inversed and subverted: Iago's wife Emilia, a proto-feminist, is essentially anti-Donegild, while Bianca and Desdemona also display sheer pluck in high amounts. The male characters are all of them flawed and rendered helpless, in some or other way. And it is Iago himself who commits those typically masculine crimes of force and fraud. And the peacetime garrison setting, in itself ironic and contradictory, highlights the relevance of gender here [The conversations between Desdemona and Emilia, like those between Gerda and her female donors in The Snow Queen, prove this story is a Bechdel Test win!])
A word count reveals that the pronoun "I" is the most frequent word in both Shakespeare's and Verdi's (Boito AND Kalbeck libretti) versions. This is a telling sign of the theme that pervades the whole story: the loss of identity. The play is essentially about confronting this issue in different ways, and how it affects our lives and our relationships with others.
Like Andersen's looking-glass, Iago brings out the sinister side of those he befriends, and unlocks the worst potential within both men and women.
Furthermore, Iago, like the frozenhearted Kai, is emotionless, cold, critical, calculating, unable to see the beauty and the goodness in his surroundings and despising positive values altogether. One may say the ensign got a shard of the Mirror of Truth, or Mirror of Reason, in his own heart as well... or that he has been a soldier since childhood, unable to be a child and forced to grow up, to fight the enemy... like the robber boy in Elspeth's Snow Queen fic:
"I have been cutting men's throats all my life, I am merciless as the winter, and I have never been a child. But maybe, with this musket and this helmet, I can go south to the Low Countries where the great kingdoms of the world are forever fighting their wars, and try my luck at being an honest soldier."
They maybe put a gun in Iago's hands at let's say 8 or 9, and he was born and bred in camp. No surprise that he envies the aristocratic, learned stripling who got the lieutenancy that should have been his by right, not merely for attaining the commission, but also for "the daily beauty in his life." It's everything about Cassio: he's good-looking, learned, well-spoken, young, with a sunny and happy aristocratic childhood devoid of hardships, as well as innocent and full of good will. In comparison, Iago himself feels that he never will be that fortunate in any way himself. This is the catalyst for the whole play. The part where the lieutenant gets drunk and furious, stripped of his reason and of his commission, as Iago looks on in schadenfreude, pretending to be well-intentioned (and getting it surprisingly right), is when the theme of loss of identity begins to pervade it all. We feel sorry for Cassio, trying to warn him not to drink anymore as Iago refills his tankard... and we're powerless as we hear one gulp after the other and watch the young officer get more and more intoxicated. Then, we have fallen under the spell of Iago, and under the spell of Shakespeare, as well... The suffering of the innocent and the irony that the wicked prosper, as well as the fact that we are powerless in front of this injustice, are themes that captivate us and tug at our heartstrings, pulling us into a maelström of keeping on watching the show from which there is no escape until the curtain falls, Cassio rules from the keep, at last forgiven yet wounded within and without (the sole survivor is broken, completely bereft of his former identity), and Iago is arrested for torture and execution... yet, somewhere in our minds, lingers the idea that, come hell or highwater, he will take to flight, and corrupt language, lie, and intoxicate others to strip them of their identity and confront them with their inner strangers elsewhere.
Long story short: Iago, just like Azathoth, may be entropy incarnate. The whole universe tends towards entropy, as life, being rather complex chemistry at the end of the day, has always struggled against entropy. From protozoa to people via plesiosaurs, we all tend towards decay and death and disorder, every day we breathe a victory in this conflict as old as day. Though we win each and every battle against entropy, we all (from protozoa to people via plesiosaurs) are doomed to lose the overarching war at the end of the day. The ending of Othello, with mostly everyone dead, the two survivors (Cassio and Bianca, analogous to the Livtrase/Livslust and Liv, respectively, at the end of Ragnarök) alive yet disabled and traumatised, and Iago vanishing like the Cheshire Cat... exemplifies the core of the story's themes: this Shakespearean tragedy is, at the core, the story of the everlasting, futile yet always elusively hopeful, struggle between Life and Entropy.