Othello is a General in the Venetian army.
He's been fighting since the age of seven.
He's seen a lot of the world.
He says, in the play, "Little of this great world can I speak
"more than pertains to feats of broil and battle."
He isn't born into any kind of sense of nobility or money, really.
He's very aware of how he appears in front of the Venetians,
and his appearance is very important to him.
The fact that he's married the only child of a very, very well-to-do senator
means that he stands to inherit, it seems, quite a good position.
That's not why he's married her, but that increases his status in Venice.
Iago, when we first meet him is a...
sort of like a staff sergeant in the army who has been hoping for promotion
and has been passed over in favour of a younger, posher officer called Cassio,
meaning that he's left very disgruntled with Othello.
They've seen the horrors of war together
and have worked together as a team for quite some time.
Definitely, Iago is Othello's most trusted confidant.
So he not only sees himself slighted by the person he's worked closest with,
he also sees someone who hasn't had to work as hard as Iago
being given everything on a plate.
Othello gets the position of General,
and as his right-hand man, he has a Sandhurst-trained,
upper-class Oxbridge graduate who hasn't come through the ranks like Iago has.
It's a logical decision, really.
It's best to have beside you someone who isn't the kind of officer that you are.
Othello's a soldier who's started at the bottom, just as Iago has.
And yet...through his charisma and his skills and his strength as a soldier
has risen to the very top, whereas Iago's stalled somewhere around a third up.
Othello would never suspect Iago
of having any grievance against him because he would have brought it up.
It's the kind of atmosphere in which grievances are aired
as soon as they're felt.
The famous Coleridge quote is "motiveless malignancy",
and this sense of him being the villain of the piece, the archetypal villain.
It's not that easy just to play villainy.
You have to think of why someone is the way that they are.
The indications you have at the beginning of the play
are that he's incredibly frustrated about being passed over for promotion,
and that he thinks Othello has slept with Emilia.
I hate the Moor.
And it is thought abroad that 'twixt my sheets he's done...
..my office.
I know not if it be true,
but I, for mere suspicion in that kind, will do as if for surety.
I think that Shakespeare's using that sense of soliciting an audience.
And when you know most about, and are closest to, the worst person on stage...
..there is a slight sense of dirtiness
(LAUGHS) that you feel of implication.
By the time the great tragedy at the end happens, it's all the more overwhelming
because you've been powerless to stop it and knew all about it.
Othello is undone by Iago.
And Iago can do that because... there are areas about Othello
that Othello wasn't aware were sensitive and vulnerable and weak.
And Iago uses that.
I guess he's the agent of destruction.
It's his idea to try and bring down Othello and Cassio,
against whom he has, in his mind, legitimate grievances.
And through subterfuge and through insinuation
and through getting people on side,
he will wreak the most horrendous revenge.