"Emil. I will be hang'd, if some eternal villain,
Some busy and insinuating rogue,
Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,
Have not devis'd this slander; I'll be hang'd else.
Iago. Fie! there is no such man: it is impossible.
Des. If any such there be, Heaven pardon him!
Emil. A halter pardon him, and hell gnaw his bones!"
All three characters stand out in clear relief in these short speeches. But Iago's is the most significant. His "Fie! there is no such man; it is impossible," expresses the thought under shelter of which he has lived and is living: other people do not believe that such a being exists.
Here we meet once more in Shakespeare the astonishment of Hamlet at the paradox of evil, and once more, too, the indirect appeal to the reader which formed the burden, as it were, of Hamlet and Measure for Measure, the now thrice-repeated, "Say not, think not, that this is impossible!" The belief in the impossibility of utter turpitude is the very condition of existence of such a king as Claudius, such a magistrate as Angelo, such an officer as Iago. Hence Shakespeare's "Verily I say unto you, this highest degree of wickedness is possible in the world."
It is one of the two factors in life's tragedy. Stupidity is the other. On these two foundations rests the great mass of all this world's misery.
[1] He says (i. 3):—
"I hate the Moor,
And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets
'Has done my office. I know not if 't be true;
But I for mere suspicion in that kind
Will do as if for surety."
He adds (ii. 7):—
"I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip,
Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb,
For fear Cassio with my night-cap too.