About the lecture

In this module, we think about the character of Iago, the largest role in the play and the second-largest in the whole of Shakespeare (after Hamlet). Firstly, we think about some of the stock roles that Shakespeare appears to drawn upon when creating the character of Iago. After that, we think about why Iago does what he does, before considering the casting of Iago in relation to Othello.

About the lecturer

Born in Bristol, and educated at Oxford and St Louis, Dr John Lennard has taught English, American, and Commonwealth Literature in Cambridge, London, and Jamaica over more than twenty years. He has written two widely used textbooks (on poetry and drama) and monographs on Shakespeare, Paul Scott, Nabokov, and Faulkner, as well as two collections of essays on contemporary genre writers in crime, science fiction and fantasy, and romance. Enthusiastic, discursive, widely knowledgeable, and a demon for punctuation (on which he has also published extensively), he has been a popular Summer School Course Leader and lecturer for the Institute of Continuing Education since 1992.