Comparing Othello and Canterbury Tales

Comparing Othello and Canterbury Tales

The use of manipulation and misleading for personal gain has

proved to be successful for many people throughout history.

Famous poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, and famous play writer, William

Shakespeare, illustrate characters who possess these manipulating

qualities in their personalities. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Pardoner,

from The Canterbury Tales, and William Shakespeare’s Iago, from

Othello, are good examples deceiving characters. These literary

figures manipulating techniques are very effective on the other

characters in Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s works.

Iago’s main motivation for his manipulation is his hatred of

the main character, Othello. Iago's reasons for his hatred of

Othello begin with the fact that in choosing a lieutenant,

Othello passed over Iago in favor of Cassio, but Iago may have

hated Othello even before that. Roderigo opens the play by

exclaiming to Iago, “Tush! never tell me? I take it much unkindly

that thou, Iago, who hast had my purse as if the strings were

thine, shouldst know of this” (1.1.1-3). The "this" is the

elopement of Othello and Desdemona. Roderigo has been giving Iago

money to help him into Desdemona's favor, and he assumes that

Iago knew about the elopement. Iago didn't know, which must have

been embarrassing. He says about Desdemona, “Now I do love her

too; Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure I stand

accountant for as great a sin, but partly led to diet my revenge”

(2.1.291-294). He wants revenge for his own suspicion that

Othello has gone to bed with Emilia. It's eating at him and he

won't be satisfied “Till I am evened with him, wife for wife. Or

failing so, yet that I put the Moor At least into a jealousy so

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...own blood brother". At the end of the tale, the "brothers"

begin to reveal their true nature. They all turn on each other in

an attempt to steal the treasure for themselves. All of the

loyalty, which they had pledged, was simply a lie and no

faithfulness remained. While the two older "brothers" plotted to

kill the younger brother, the younger "brother" plotted "to kill

them both and never to repent"(p.363, line 522). Thus, these

so-called faithful "brothers" display their true ruthlessness and

reveal their hypocrisy in relation to the Pardoner's character.

It is easy to see the similarities between the pardoner and

Iago. They both deceive people into thinking things that will

benefit their own personal gain. Their misleading inquiries are

important to the plots of the stories; it keeps it interesting

and suspenseful and it is obviously very successful.