‘Othello’ opens mouth, says words that matter
“Men should be what they seem,” Iago says in Shakespeare’s “Othello,” and in the audience we feel we could prematurely strangle him for saying so. He is, after all, one of the great deceivers of dramatic literature — a man nothing like what he seems. With little more than the precision of his irony, he engenders lust, wrath and murder. And that’s before he even picks up a dagger himself.