The passage III.iii, 413-426, in Othello, is revealing of many of the central themes of the play. Two of those themes are immediately evident: jealousy and insecurity from racial discrimination. Othello is a man more skilled in war than love and Iago knows he is vulnerable because he has just spent most of this scene filling Othello’s mind with suspicions about love, marriage, Casio, and jealousy, “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock / the meat it feed on” (Shakespeare 1131). In this passage, Casio now gives Othello the example for which he asks. He tells him he has heard Casio confess of love between he and Desdemona, “In sleep I heard him say ‘Sweet Desdemona, / Let us be wary, let us hide our loves” (Shakespeare 1134). Iago’s determination to right the wrong of his being passed over for Casio has him vividly conjure up Othello’s worst nightmare, one he has been planting fertile mental ground for up to now.
Iago is not content to stop here. He already knows he has Othello in a state which makes him vulnerable to his telling of this vivid depiction of Casio and Desdemona coupled in a clandestine affair. However, he goes on to tell Othello something else Casio has uttered in his passionate dream of Desdemona. He has already softened Othello’s state of mind by preying on his jealousy and lack of experience with romance and marriage. Now he goes to work on Iago’s sense of displacement and inferiority because he is not a Venetian but a Moor. As Iago relates, “And then, sir would he gripe and wring my hand, / Cry ‘O sweet creature!’ and then kiss me hard / As if he plucked up kisses by the roots / That grew upon my lips; lay his leg over my thigh, / And sigh, and kiss, and then cry ‘Cursed fate / That gave thee to the Moor!” (Shakespeare 1134).
Not only does Iago’s vivid and in-detail description of the passion of Casio f
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