In my opinion, Othello is one of William Shakespeare’s better works of literature. Many important themes even seen today in literature are seen in this play. Iago’s villainous acts are one of Shakespeare’s more evil character points. He does things that many of the other antagonists don’t even dare to do in other tragedies or comedies. He completely dismantles the relationship between Desdemona and Othello and almost succeeds in killing Cassio. Iago did an incredible job of being a villain and his use of the handkerchief was genius. He knew that that was a gift from Othello so he completely used that to his advantage and made Othello adamantly believe that the rumors that were going around about Desdemona and Cassio were completely true, which they weren’t.

 

Shakespeare used many of the characters in Othello to create some sort of commentary of the people during his time. Othello was that man that everyone loved and trusted. A person with much power and love who people took advantage of because of his good demeanor. Iago knew how trusting Othello was and he completely took advantage of it. He used his position in order to sway Othello because he knew that Othello completely trusted him due to their relationship. Desdemona’s character was used to comment on the usual role of women during the Shakespearean era. Just as we can see in other of Shakespeare’s works, women play a much greater role than they would’ve in actual life during Shakespearean times. Desdemona publicly denied her father’s commands during the beginning of the play when she married Othello without his consent. Most women during that time would definitely not of defied their father like Desdemona did. Her character is very strong, but towards the end, she falls inferior to Othello when she doesn’t fight Othello’s accusations very much when told of the tales that have been going around about the relationship between Desdemona and Cassio. Othello contains all of Shakespeare’s usual tragedy constructions and uses the character in order to comment on the social constructs of people during his times.