Iago is a man who has been shaped by his experiences. Shakespearean characters traditionally act simply as stock characters; they fill a necessary role in the story and they are just characters created in the vacuum of this play. The action of the play and the circumstances surrounding the story dictate how the characters act and react to events. Interestingly for Othello, each character is guided by their experiences outside the play. What happened to them before the play began determines how they act in the play. This is especially true for Iago, who was guided by his experiences outside the context of the story itself. The insecurities that torment him, the machinations he uses to manipulate other characters, the lust for control, all of these were caused by his experiences outside the play. And in fact, these experiences created his supergoal: to prove his worth in the world by regaining control of the circumstances he believes are working against him. The first thing to understand about Iago is that he is not a bad person. On the contrary, Iago is the most genuinely sensitive and good character in the play. He is a very introverted and withdrawn researcher who does not know how to impose himself in the world. He understands his independence and remarks on it at the beginning of the play, saying: “I follow him to serve him my turn. / We cannot all be masters, nor all masters / Cannot really be followed…” (I. i. 41-43). He knows he is not a follower, but at the same time he lacks Othello's ability to inspire others to follow him. He has something to say sincerely, independent of the established social order of the time. This causes him significant insecurities...... middle of paper...... te when he succeeds. It is Iago who has spoken the most throughout the play, and it is he who has had the most to do, the most manipulation and influence on his world, and yet, once he has finished, he states it with finality. “Don’t demand anything from me. What you know, you know / From now on I will not say a word” (V. ii. 303-304). He's done, his plan is complete, and he leaves the room on that note; with no answers, no sense of closure, just a declarative statement of the accomplishment of one's goal. And he makes little effort to justify what he did, when given the opportunity to reveal how deeply the gravity of the circumstances hurt him. “I told him what I thought, and said no more / Than what he found fit and true” (V. ii. 187-188). And that, in a way, is what makes Iago the most compelling character in the play. He fought the law and, in a sense, he won.