IAGO, THE DARK LORD (Mythos of Autumn, N. Frye)

(From Northrop Frye's The Mythos of Autumn, his theory of tragedy)

A tragic counterpart to the vice or tricky slave may be discerned in the soothsayer or prophet who foresees the inevitable end, or more of it than the hero does, like Teiresias. A closer example is the Machiavellian villain of Elizabethan drama, who, like the vice in comedy, is a convenient catalyzer of the action because he requires the minimum of motivation, being a self-starting principle of malevolence. Like the comic vice, too, he is something of an architectus or projection of the author's will, in this case for a tragic conclusion. " I limned this night-piece," says Webster's Lodovico, "and it was my best." Iago dominates the action of Othello almost to the point of being a tragic counterpart to the black king or evil magician of romance (epic). (The term "black king" by Frye equals what we now call "Dark Lord" ie your Saurons, your Voldemorts, your Palpatines, etc.) The affinities of the Machiavellian villain with the diabolical are naturally close, and he may be an actual devil like Mephistopheles (in Faust), but the sense of awfulness belonging to an agent of catastrophe can also make him something more like the high priest of a sacrifice (Northrop Frye).

Frye gives here much food for thought about the Machiavellian villains of tragedy, of which Iago is the prototype:

1. Machiavellian villain as convenient catalyst of the action because he requires the minimum of motivation, being a self-starting principle of malevolence (compare Loki in Norse myths or Satan in Paradise Lost)
2. Machiavellian villain as the tragic, autumnal counterpart to the Dark Lord (black king, in Frye's terms) of epic, the Mythos of Summer: Iago dominates the action to the point of being a tragic counterpart to Voldemort or Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid, Palpatine's actor, was inspired by Iago!)
3. Machiavellian villain's affinity with the demonic / infernal - he may be literally demonic, like Mephisto (Iago uses a lot of infernal imagery, that he spreads to Othello)
4. Machiavellian villain as agent of catastrophe, with a sense of awfulness (inspiring awe), similar to a high priest
5. Machiavellian villain as architectus or projection of the author's will (Iago of Shakespeare's, Satan of Milton's, Mephisto of Goethe's). In a sense, the Machiavellian villain is an avatar of the author (though a different, more sinister kind of avatar than Rohan Kishibe, Jo March, or Hermione Granger).