Priest:
Thou art a sinner, who fears no God,
Who speaketh a lie, who
betrays his master,
Who torments his wife,
who maketh a fool of a loyal man,
Who casts a spell on
the General, who kills his wife!
Iago:
Talk not of indulgence, for what you do is no lesser sin.
You maketh religion a
garb to hide your misdeeds,
You use Jesus to kill
the mortals, you use God to betray people.
Never said the Holy
Father to kill and torment,
Fellow beings from the
East.
He never asked to make
slaves, the people
Who know no wars; the
people across the seas
Who know no
discrimination; born to be respected,
Not for being bonded
Ariels or
Calibans.
Talking of
Christianity, you made the circumcised Moor the General;
Where was your religion
then?
Where was the moral of
honesty, loyalty and divinity lost?
Or did you fear honesty
commanding your land?
You follow not a single
word of the Holy Father,
You scoundrel, preach
no more religion to me;
For I know what I did
was wrong, but it did
Reflect what I saw when
I was innocent.
Denied education
because I refused to submit,
Denied praise because I
refused to cheat.
I learnt to survive
this state of affairs,
Be not honest as
honesty hath no value.
I turned to dishonesty,
betrayal and violence; as
It gets you a job, its
gets you education,
It gets you praise, it
gets you promotion.
P.S. This was a part of
the submission for the course ‘Shakespeare and the World’ last July. In this
piece and other pieces which supplemented it, I had tried to present Iago’s
background and the hypocrisy present in the society due to which Iago was
forced to take extreme steps. In this piece, after being reprimanded by a
priest, Iago tries to bring out the misdeeds of the entire social framework of
Venice and the double standards of the aristocracy which runs it.
