Iago is by far the coolest, the most prepared, and the most subtle manipulator, Cleopatra is the most blatant, and Lady Macbeth falls somewhere in between the two extremes. Furthermore, Othello eventually realizes he is being manipulated, Antony never really acknowledges it (most likely from stupidity and infatuation), and Macbeth somewhat sees it and somewhat does not see it. Let us examine these ideas further.

"Othello" is a play mainly void of subplots. Its main struggle is the process Iago goes through to demean and destroy the title character. If w

Even more important is the fact that this woman loses control soon after her deed. Unlike Iago, who almost walks away free, Lady Macbeth is not strong enough to continue. Pretty soon, it is Macbeth's show, and Lady Macbeth only returns to kill herself in a daze of regret and hallucination. This woman has lost control of others and of herself. Perhaps she seems more human than Iago. She starts off at his demonic level but quickly sinks down. Iago knows when, where, and how hard to hit. Lady Macbeth is a bit more clumsy.

Lady Macbeth has had less time to prepare, though she has certainly thought of being queen before, as her husband has dreamed of being king. Iago works on vengeance, but she is fueled by ambition. Preparation seems very important to Lady Macbeth, who is extremely concerned with how others view her. However, as soon as she receives Macbeth's letter, she must quickly snap into manipulative mood to get her husband to do what she wants. Her reasonings are persuasive, but she is not as good at masking her true ambitions as Iago is. She builds her argument for Macbeth to kill the king like this: After her husband declares he will not kill the man, she immediately calls him a coward. Then her argument becomes a bit more sophisticated when she says to him that if he thought about it once, he really ought to go through with it. Her manipulations really hit home when she tells her husband that there will never be a better time or place to do the dirty deed. It is this argument that finally pulls her husband in. He stops resisting and simply asks, "If we should fail?" (Mac. 1.7. 59). After that, Lady Macbeth blasts into her plan to kill the king. While it sounds well, it is not as clever as most of Iago's schemes. It backfires. She never really thinks about what to do with Duncan's sons. She is not as rehearsed as Iago.

To earn the trust of Othello, Iago quite ingeniously sets himself up to "diffuse" all of the catastrophes he creates in the play. For example, after he engineers a scheme to anger Othello with Cassio, he instructs Cassio to visit with Desdemona, to ask her to persuade Othello to forgive him. This fuels the thoughts that Iago plants in Othello's mind that Desdemona is untrue. Iago employs reverse damage control. To be this manipulative, one must be totally involved in the lives of those he seeks to dominate. I

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Approximate Word count = 1584
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)