ABSTRACT
“I am not what I am.” With these words, Iago, the traditional literary embodiment of unmitigated evil in Shakespeare’s Othello, makes a claim that contains at its core an interesting tension. Within a context of actual deception, manipulation, and a hideous disregard for the lives of those around him, he falsely inspires in everyone a deep trust in his honesty, his supportive reliability, and his general good will. Their misled trust is the source of his malicious power—power he uses to catastrophically bad ends. But when Iago says he is not what he is, he is asserting that he is not what he seems, that appearances are deceiving, and when he says this he explains that he early on learned to keep his inner, real self hidden for fear of (in his words) the birds that would come and peck at the heart on his sleeve. He has been successful in instilling the false belief in the community around him precisely because he has put forward what we succinctly call a false front.
