Iago Speaks. . .(to a priest)

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.