Jacobsen, Ken. “Iago’s Art of War: The ‘Machiavellian Moment’ in Othello.” Modern Philology, vol. 106, no. 3, 2009, pp. 497–529. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/605074. Accessed 16 July 2021.
Jacobsen focuses on Machiavelli’s lesser known manuscript (the only one published in his lifetime: 1521AD – about 80 years before Othello was penned by Shakespeare), The Art of War, while trying to understand Iago’s psychology and motivation. “Barbara Spackman argues that The Art of War approaches warfare primarily as a discursive activity analogous to and at times homologous with rhetoric, and only secondarily as physical conflict” (500). Thus, it is argued that we should see Iago’s speeches as a combination of (military) strategy and rhetorical persuasion. While noting that Othello’s speeches are generally eloquent, they are also a bit anachronistic and old-fashioned; but, when we look at Iago’s speeches, his reputation as an “honest fellow” seems to be solely based on the plain, blunt or “soldierly” speech he utters (while simultaneously “protesting too much” that he knows nothing of how to speak politely).
This foreshadows another distinction; Othello is described as more of a Homeric Hero than is likely to be found in 16th Century Italy, so he seems aloof and out-of-touch when compared to Iago’s plain-spoken bluntness. Thus, it seems that we have a paradigm clash with Othello representing the old-world and nobility, and Iago representing the “changing of the guard” via their command of language.
The general then, like the orator, vies for total control of the semantic environment, exercising power through the coordination of expressive forms (most often words but also a range of nonverbal signals like facial expressions, gestures, battle formations, banners, trumpet blasts, and so on) and the exploitation of appearance and probability (505).
Given this, Jacobsen walks through some advice offered by Quintilian and brought to life in Shakespeare’s play by Iago, but the emphasis is on seeing Iago as using rhetorical invention (exploiting appearance and probability as “good enough” to determine the truth of the matter) to express his power over others.
The Machiavellian Moment is only seconds long; it occurs after Desdemona’s death, prior to Emilia speaking and clarifying the picture. At that moment, “fortune” smiled, and all was right in Iago’s world. However, once Emilia speaks, contingency comes rushing back in and the “old ways” (the power of the nobility) provide us with a more familiar kind of “forced order.”
Tony Thorstenson
