TEACHING OTHELLO: What makes Iago Shakespeare’s Perfect Villain?
When it comes to choosing a Shakespeare play to teach to your high school students, there are a lot of factors to consider, but none more pressing than will this be engaging for our (mostly) disengaged students?
Engagement in learning is at an all-time low, so it is rapidly becoming a driving decision-making factor for teachers. Shakespeare, to begin with, has historically been written off by many as out of touch, irrelevant, and not necessary for students in their everyday lives. And while this has not been my experience at all, I can completely understand how it may have been the case for teachers.
Having access to the right teaching pedagogy and materials is key, but so is a deep understanding of the play itself and the story of the human experience that it is poised to tell.
The story of Othello is actually pretty straightforward, plot-wise. But here is what makes this play a premium choice for student engagement: Iago’s villainy.
STUDENTS LOVE VILLAINS
In any given student’s ELA experience, they’ve likely heard about and read about the Hero’s Journey many times. But have they ever gotten the chance to look at the origin story of a villain? Debate the difference between “deranged” and “psychotic”?
Likely? No.
Just as we’ve seen a huge surge in the public demand for true crime, villain stories are hugely popular with modern audiences.
This unit, like all of my units, is actually not an Othello unit. It’s a unit about villains, how they’re made, where they come from, what motivates them, and what makes them successful or not. Through the use of an Essential Question and supplemental texts, our class is just as interested in Ursula’s agenda as Iago’s.
We begin the unit by graphing villains -- yes, actually ranking them in terms of their INTENSITY and LEVEL OF DESTRUCTION. It’s a vocabulary exercise first: students each get words to add to the graph and argue for where they belong on the scale (this alone can take at least one class period!), and then, head back to their computers for some research on individual villains. We then come back to the graph as a class and try to plot the point where each villain belongs. This sets the stage beautifully for the play as it becomes a quick and exciting goal to figure out where Iago belongs among these other villains as we go.
THE LANGUAGE IS HARD, BUT FOCUSED ON ONE GOAL
I’m not going to sugarcoat this -- Othello’s plot might be mostly straightforward, but there’s nothing simple about Iago’s rhetoric. But here’s what does help our struggling readers:
Our attitude: I am always straight with my students and tell them: “Yep. This is going to be hard. Shakespeare is challenging. But just like any challenging text we come across, the process of working through it will only make us stronger.” We watch the entire play and close read the important scenes and my students know that they’re never responsible for independent cold reading comprehension of a passage at any point during the unit. That’s simply not the focus. They know that I pay attention to the process and progress, not only the result.
A singular focus: While there are a lot of moving pieces to Iago’s plan, he’s always talking about the plan. When we get into reading a passage, there is no question what it’s about -- it’s about Iago scheming. Always. This helps students maintain a consistent schema throughout the play and limits their sense of uneasiness when they might be feeling a bit challenged.
It builds: Each piece of my unit is designed to build on the piece before it. In designing the unit, I was careful not to throw any curve balls. We stay focused on our Essential Question: what happens when the villain wins? This helps students build their confidence AND their skills as we work through the play.
IAGO IS THE KIND OF VILLAINY STUDENTS KNOW
If you’ve ever had a conversation with a teenager, then you know that they’ve experienced their own real-life Iago’s plenty of times before stepping foot in a high school. Love. Jealousy. Crushes. Cheating. Manipulation. Trust. These are all things that teenagers are well versed in long before confronting this play.
That is a superpower behind teaching this play.
Again, while the language may have its intimidating moments, the fact that the only real background knowledge needed to understand Iago is simply living life as a teenager is a huge bonus.
I hope this post has left you feeling pumped up about trying out Othello for the first time or even revisiting it with a fresh approach. Feel free to leave any questions below and I’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as I can!
In the meantime, beware of jealousy…the green-eyed monster!
