Plain-Dealing Villainy: Social Disruptors in Shakespeare and Pop Culture

One of Shakespeare’s most memorable dramatic motifs are his incredibly complex and

engaging portrayals of villains. While often displaying a remarkable gift of elocution and

familiarity with the audience, almost all of Shakespeare’s antagonists make their motivations

clear, thus putting the viewers into conflict on whether to loathe or support these figures in their

quests to thwart the happiness of the ‘heroes’ and the embrace of their corrupt natures. Yet there

are a few significant antagonists many scholars agree seem to have no motive and merely

commit evil for the sheer satisfaction of transgressing. These Shakespearean villains even

profess they wish to be evil because they feel it’s simply their purpose in life to cause others pain

and to prevail through treachery. Some clear examples are Iago, Richard III, Don John and

Edmund the bastard. Inspired by the popular one-dimensional Vice figures from Medieval

drama, Shakespeare granted these particular opponents elaborate dialogue and crafty prescience,

to awe the audience with their machinations and feel conflicted amusement from their progress.

What’s intriguing is that these figures are just as popular today, and viewers continue to debate

their motivations, or whether any actually exist. This may be due to a current fascination with

chaotic lifestyles and ruthless paths to success, even when inevitably defeated. People will

always strangely be drawn to well-designed, cunning villains in drama. They enable us to

vicariously question and disturb the order of things. As Daniel Forbes points out, “the modern

villain often represents an opposing perspective to values we take for granted… thus the

narrative allows us re-examine [the validity of] our established values and beliefs… which is

necessary for adventure and growth” (19) Shakespeare was quite skilled at villains who enticed

with subversion of social ideals and affirmations of deviating from the norm. Many have

remarked that Shakespeare’s attempts to “justify the villain in terms of human psychology

[ultimately lead to] the villain indirectly becoming the hero, the person in whom we are chiefly

interested and with whom we sympathize” (Coe, 40) Thus, one could argue that some of the

literary social disruptors of today are specifically influenced by the Bard’s fiends. And though

some scholars have looked at the characters’ circumstances and proposed very convincing

motivations, most of these remain doubtful due to what the villains say and their frequently

irrational methods. In this paper, I propose that these villains’ true intentions are to challenge

certain social customs and beliefs they disagree with and find foolish. Indeed, the social values

they challenge are ones that we ourselves might also rush to question. Furthermore, I will show

how this predilection for diverse social disruption has directly inspired several villains in pop

culture. So, let’s go ahead and plunge into the murky waters of villainy.

Of all Shakespeare’s villains, Iago spends the most time ruminating on motives for his

cruelty, and yet he is also the villain for whom having motives seems the most arbitrary. Plying

his poisonous art of incepting doubt and manipulating all around him with well-phrased

suggestion, he appears to be a most effective schemer, causing nearly every character to suspect

the honor of their closest allies and even question their own honor. Well-versed in the false

social stereotypes of his time regarding true love, the duty of women, and the importance of

reputation, his verbal defacing of others and declarations of the ugly truth of people’s character,

using the slightest proofs, works because he realizes his pawns do not truly know their

companions and only trust the social idealization of how they think their companions should be.

An astute observer of character and methodical speaker, Iago’s only weakness is a lack of

internalizing a real motive. As he commiserates with the audience in his soliloquies, Iago

casually tosses out various explanations from racism to ambition to marital frustration for his

overly complicated treachery and ambition, and each of these reasons are only slightly pondered

on or are completely contradictory. He tells us he loathes his commander Othello both for his

race and his inexplicable success. Indeed, Iago attempts to convince Roderigo, Cassio, Emilia,

and even Othello himself that the Moor is nothing more than a brute by nature. Yet his

intellectual acknowledgment with him dismisses this as an affectation of bigotry. As far as

ambition, if he intends to merely disgrace Cassio and gain his place, he would’ve quit while

ahead. What of his suspicion of Othello’s cuckolding him? First of all, we know this rumor is

false and Iago’s cold tone towards Emilia leads us to believe that he never really cared much for

her to begin with. So what can be his true motive? Is it just a passing whim? Or villainy for

villainy’s sake?

In the past, many scholars like Bernard Spivak, have believed this idea, asserting that

“Iago is a villain and that’s all there is to it. He’s a villain in a sense so special it has nothing to

do with moral condemnation and is not receptive to the moral symbolism through which evil is

interpreted in other great tragedies” (Spivak, 10, 56) However, Iago’s skill at using the quaint

prescriptions of loyalty, authority, and chastity in his society and turning them into weapons of

slander, and his statements of contempt for these fictions reveals an even more insidious

incitation, a desire to prove these ideals as flawed through the destruction their devotees

perpetrate. Iago’s contempt for arbitrary figures of social authority is implied as he outlines his

deceitful charade before Roderigo: “In following him, I follow but myself / Heaven is my judge,

not I for love and duty, / But seeming so, for my peculiar end;/For when my outward action doth

demonstrate/The native act and figure of my heart/In complement extern, 'tis not long after But I

will wear my heart upon my sleeve/For daws to peck at/ I am not what I am.” (Othello, I.1. 56-

65) This tells us Iago acts lowly and dutiful merely to use people to his benefit. He’s a

manipulator of the system because he recognizes it’s all a game. His statement of pretense and

besmirching of character shows that he regards people’s virtue as changeable and will alter his

character to adapt to chaos. We further see his revulsion at orderly society in his lewd proverbs

and songs about infidelity, and in his equating “a senator” with villainy.

We see its full extent of Iago’s social indignation in his plot’s effect on Othello, so

obsessed with proving his worth in the eyes of Venetian nobility that all his romantic actions are

constructed to follow guidelines of chivalric society. Othello even gifts Desdemona with a

customary handkerchief, woos with tales of warfare and compliments her as “My fair warrior”.

And because Chivalry prizes unwavering loyalty, obedience and chastity as key elements in

romance, Othello’s deepest fears are swiftly aroused into violent anger when Iago causes him to

doubt Desdemona’s constancy. As Pete Erickson clarifies, “Othello draws upon chivalric notions

of heroic deeds and devotion to the lady inspiring them, transferring his warrior identity to

Desdemona through courtship… When his preconceptions about her appear false, his extreme

vulnerability can be counteracted only by an equally extreme resort to the violence chivalry

prizes as the path to honor” (Erickson, 90, 91) Iago convinces Othello that his place as a man is

to punish Desdemona for defying him and for making him into the fool that European Patriarchal

ideology suggests he is. Thus, in showing the psychological downfall such misconceived ideals

can bring forth, Shakespeare is subtly criticizing the ancient patriarchal society’s obsession with

women as property and controlling sexuality at any cost. While Shakespeare does not condone

Iago’s villainy, he is asking us to see the social fictions he was able to twist. As Erickson writes,

“The play raises difficult questions about the scope of evil in society that the characters try to get

around by pretending that the evil can be confined to Iago, so isolated and excised” (103).

Ultimately, by throwing Othello’s social notions into doubt, Iago disrupts their validity, making

him doubt everything he’s been led to believe about right and wrong. Iago’s deception

effectively throws Othello into a state of violent chaos.

Iago’s methods liken him to another agent of chaos in today’s pop culture. Just as Iago

responds with bold faced defiance towards social convention and causes people to doubt social

preconceptions, the Joker in Nolan’s The Dark Knight acts as both a cold-blooded murderer and

diabolical word-smith all in the name of questioning and tearing down social definitions of order

and morality. Both Iago and the Joker carry out their sadistic social disruption with sheer glee

and frequently alter explanations for their stratagems. Like Iago, The Joker exists outside any

purely exclusive classification of good and evil, and his actions and words put the citizens of

Gotham into a confusing state of moral quandary. The Joker himself states that his crime spree is

“not about money, it’s about sending a message” (Nolan). As Janey Heit observes, the Joker is

trying to teach Gotham that “associating goodness with adherence to a set of moral standards not

only limits freedom but also fractures that which provides such clarity in the first place… it’s

only by releasing oneself from these paradigms that one can recover one’s freedom… To the

Joker, chance is the only fair game” (Hiet, 182-183). In the interrogation scene, the Joker focuses

on instigating Batman into seeing the figures of social order and the very citizens he protects as

all being potentially criminal under the right circumstances, declaring, “Their morals, their code,

it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows

them to be. You’ll see. I’ll show you. When the chips are down, these civilized people, they’ll

eat each other. I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve” (Nolan). According to Hiet,

“Batman’s actions, the Joker insists, are a façade if they uphold simplistic notions of good. The

goodness with which Batman actively aligns himself is, the Joker points out, the product of

utility. Such arbitrary notions of good should not be trusted” (Hiet) Like Iago’s corruption of

Othello, The Joker unhinges distraught Harvey Dent, telling him he failed to protect Rachel,

Gotham and himself because he followed a code and a set of rules made to be broken,

proclaiming that all one need do is “introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order and

everything becomes chaos… and the thing about chaos, it’s fair” (Nolan). Though Batman

ultimately proves the Joker wrong about humanity as a whole, Harvey Dent still succumbs to

violent amoral fury, becoming the vengeful criminal Two-Face, now bereft of all faith in social

justice and order. Thus, in some way, Joker, like Iago, still fulfills his goal of forcing the

audience to question how flawed the social code of morality in their environment might be if its

followers can so easily be turned into monsters. And by attacking the social order, they both

force us to “confront the uncomfortable reality that they elude moral judgment because they

simply do not acknowledge that their actions have any moral worth and only serve to question

the simplistic caricatures our society tends to assign to morality” (Heit, 185).

While we must recognize that Shakespearean villains carry out malicious acts, it cannot

be denied that they do this in appealing ways. Thus the audience recognizes what evil is and

understands how easily anyone can be made to reason like a villain. The best example of this

kind of villain is Richard of Gloucester. Technically, Richard isn’t ultimately seeking evil ends.

His end goal is merely to be king. He feels he has the proper intellect and strength to rule; it’s

only due to nature and chance he was born second and deformed, and thus considered both

abhorrent and undeserving of the crown. In a political sense, we should applaud Richard’s

initiative and confidence in spite of deficiencies. It’s his methods that make him a villain. Yet his

ruthless methods seem perfectly natural to him because he feels they are merely a response to a

world regularly managed with ruthlessness and hypocrisy to begin with. From the start of the

play, Richard explains that “since I cannot prove a lover, I am determined to play a villain, and

hate the idle pleasures of these days” (Richard III, 1.1.) In Henry the Sixth, he justifies his ways

even more clearly by explaining how he seems shaped by nature to be a loathsome and cruel

figure, how he feels utterly alone, and how he’s merely acting as he was meant to because of

this. Richard tells us, “Why, love foreswore me in my mother’s womb… She did corrupt frail

nature with some bribe… To disproportion me in every part, Like to a chaos.. And am I then a

man to be beloved?.. Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so, Let hell make crook’d

my mind to answer it. I have no brother, I am like no brother… I am myself alone (Henry VI Pt.

3, 5.6.78-83). In Richard’s mind, he causes chaos and disrupts order because he was shaped

chaotically and he sees chaos as true natural order. He feels singled out, and since people will

only ever see him as a monstrosity, he might as well become one and show how powerful

monstrosities can be. As Critic Sherr Ziako states, “There’s something abnormal in Richard’s

mere existence, and his deformity is a visual signifier of how he’s upsetting the perceived world

order of his time... It’s not considered natural for Richard to become king, and by murdering

those who should precede him he upsets the chain of being in the body politic, and because he

encourages our own ambition despite limits, we find ourselves rooting for him” (76-77).

Richard’s equally sympathetic and revolting deformity is an element shared by another

modern day villain seeking to dominate the land, and strangely enough he’s found in a children’s

cartoon. In My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, one of the Mane Six’s craftiest foes is the

mischievous draconnequus Discord, who once ruled Ponyille in a state of anarchy, and who

temporarily tricks the heroines into distrusting each other and fighting amongst themselves while

he magically reshapes their town into a world of distorted nonsense. Like Richard, Discord is

appropriately misshapen to reflect his wildness and love for disorder. Also, like Richard, Discord

uses deceptive words (with assistance of hypnotic magic) to turn allies against each other.

Richard does this several times in his Machiavellian quest for power, seducing Lady Anne to

legitimize his advancement and turning Buckingham into his right-hand assassin. One would

think the folly of trusting deformed deceivers would be obvious to the characters, but for both

fiends, their strategies work because of the subconscious attraction to disorder and power, and

because they prey upon the inner doubts and fears of betrayal. And both foes carry out their

schemes not just out of the drive for power but even more because they feel that chaos is the

natural state of the world. They wish to reshape this seemingly ordered system to better reflect

the distortion within themselves. In their view they are simply responding as nature intended

them to. Like Richard, Discord “views everything around him as nothing more than tools to play

with and change for personal amusement. He’s like the kid with the magnifying glass who burns

ants: he simply believes they and their values are so far below him that there is nothing wrong

with destroying them just for a cheap laugh” (Danieltepeskraus) But because both villains prey

upon faulty friendships, it’s likely they are intended allegories of any system that cloaks distrust

and chaos in the guise of harmony and legitimacy. Furthermore, both characters warn us of the

deceptive attractiveness of chaos.

Our next villain is truly something of an enigma, for even though he exists a situation that

might foster enmity, even he states that he’s relatively unconcerned with motives and that his

villainy is sportive. In Much Ado About Nothing, Don John acknowledges that what he does is

‘plain-dealing villainy,’ and that he knows it is wrong. But he follows his course regardless, as if

it’s a welcome distraction that he’ll take up and then put down once he’s tired with it, a

momentary game, nothing more. Scholars have often agreed that Don John lacks “a complex

personality because he merely pursues a villainous path… yet even he can’t recognize a certain

purpose in it. He simply thinks and acts villainously without any major objective nor any obvious

way of benefiting from his actions” (Richters, 6-7). All we’re told from the start is Don John is

melancholy and in bad blood with his brother Don Pedro. Interestingly, it’s Borachio who

appears with information and suggests a stratagem, and Don John just agrees to go along with

this idea. Indeed, as Joss Whedon’s recent adaptation suggests, Borachio actually seems even

more villainous because he initially devised the scheme, making Dogberry’s interrogation of him

even more significant.

Now one could argue that because he’s illegitimate, Don John might have some agenda

to humiliate or discredit Don Pedro, but then why doesn’t he directly act against Don Pedro in

any way? He focuses on deceiving Claudio that his beloved Hero is inconstant and adulterous in

order to break up their marriage. Is it because Claudio is Don Pedro’s friend and misery loves

company. Well, possibly. But the play’s themes of deception and criticism of chauvinistic ideals

of courtly love seems to imply a more likely motive: Don John realizes Claudio is naïve and

easily manipulated by false ideals of reputation and proper love and wants to see him unravel,

exposing the folly of innocently trusting in a flawed system. According to Nadine Richters, “the

villains basically take advantage of the credulousness of the main characters in the play and point

out how easily they are manipulated by perception” (7). Don John knows that Claudio’s bases his

devotion solely on principle and appearance and that he doesn’t love Hero for her own self. He

knows that Don Pedro, Claudio and Benedick have an inner arrogance and resentment toward

women he can exploit. And it’s likely that Shakespeare is using Don John to expose this

chauvinism and the archaic system of courtly love as being a sham. The problem with people

like Claudio and why they’re easily duped is that “in Shakespeare’s time, social reputation and

social supports were very important factors. Women had to be chaste, obedient and silent. For

men it was absolutely unbearable that their spouses might be adulterous or waver in affection, for

they would be publicly disdained… Don John takes advantage of these social practices and thus

manages to lead the suitor into his deceitful trap” (10).

A modern villain who shares Don John’s disdain of society and its focus on appearances

is the downtrodden Dr. Horrible, or Billy from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Like Don John,

Billy is extremely melancholy because of exclusion and filled with envy over shallow, egotistical

‘heroes’ like the muscular Captain Hammer always getting the girl. And so he takes up the

mantle of a supervillain to wage war against Hammer and a society of appearances. A volatile

path no doubt, but Billy feels it’s the only way to respond to his unfair loser status, and maybe

even use his power to win over Penny. He explains, “It’s about tearing down the status quo,

because the status is not quo. The world is a mess and I just need to rule it” (Whedon). As

Lynnette Porter describes

Dr. Horrible seems benign enough at first because modern audiences sympathize with his

earnest desire for affection and insecurity, yet by the end viewers realize that he really is

working for evil and all his lover’s angst and awkwardness are leading to attempts to

destroy society, tragically robbing him of true love even when victorious. Yet more

telling is Captain Hammer’s performing of good deeds only to further his own agenda,

merely playing the hero to seduce the virginal ‘good girl’ and win media attention,

abandoning his protector role when hurt. (Porter, 136)

Thus we see how both Shakespeare and Whedon are indirectly criticizing a society that values

only the appearance of love and heroism, flawed societies which create whim-based deceivers

and individuals so wrapped up in their own desires they play the part of the hero or villain

merely to gain power over society or destroy it.

Of the villains we’re discussing, one more agent of chaos remains, the most redeemable.

Unlike the rest, Edmund the Bastard’s drive to topple society does not arise from a sadistic

hunger for control, but out of a need for acceptance. Edmund is cursed from birth with the

knowledge that he’ll never be granted the privileges nor respect the younger Edgar receives,

though he possesses stronger intellect and leadership skills. Imagine the unfairness of his

situation, waking each day to view a world treating him as insignificant and not through his own

faults but for his father’s, who continually points out Edmund’s illegitimacy. That would put a

resentment in any man, a resentment for both his father and brother and the social rules they

blindly accept. So Edgar proclaims himself as being outside of civilized society’s prejudiced

rules. Attempting to supplant his brother’s fortune and respect, Edmund declares, “Thou, nature,

art my goddess; to thy law / My services are bound. Wherefore should I / Stand in the plague of

custom, and permit/The curiosity of nations to deprive me,/For that I am some twelve or fourteen

moon-shines/Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?/When my dimensions are as well

compact,/My mind as generous, and my shape as true,/As honest madam's issue?” (King Lear,

1.2.1-9) Edmund deceives his father, Gloucester, into believing Edgar a traitor and encourages

Edgar to leave without an explanation. But Edmund’s agenda against society doesn’t end there,

as he seduces both Regan and Goneril, engineers a take-over of the empty throne and casually

leaves Gloucester to be tortured and blinded by Cornwall. When Edgar defeats Edmund in

combat at the conclusion, Edmund forgives Edgar; for even though he tries to perform some

good deeds before dying, Edmund still holds Edgar, Gloucester and society responsible for his

cruel path to power.

While many critics differ on whether Edmund is an abhorrent figure or not, some see him

as merely human. As Race Capet clarifies, “Far from being a villain, the self-proclaimed devotee

of Nature functions, amid the collapse of social order forming the play’s backdrop, as the

emissary of Nature, whose very existence indicts the order that rejects him… because he’s

regarded as a ‘nothing’ in society, he becomes a force of Nature-a violent assertion of natural

law and natural order against the degeneracy of human institutions (Capet).

Edmund’s ambitious and resentful trumping of society is reflected in the megalomania of

the Master, in the third season of the Doctor Who reboot. Here, the Master tries to take over

twice, first by alien invasion and election, second through genetically subsuming every human

on the planet. A loathing for order is shown in his contempt towards humans, calling them “the

greatest monsters of them all” and seeing their governments as full of “traitors”. His fury at the

Time Lords forcing the Time Vortex upon him causing the maddening drumming in his head and

his unfulfillable inclinations to annihilate Earth and even himself indicates the Master is not

concerned solely with domination, but is acting out of nihilistic rage towards his blight and a

retaliatory wish to punish the favored Doctor’s beloved species. In truth, the Master carries on

because, deep down, he doesn’t really know his purpose, and believes that conquering is the only

way to discover it. For the Master’s quest to overtake and destroy anything that does not submit

to him alone is truly a pathetic and proud spitefulness against individuality, autonomy, and

respect, the values human society claims to uphold, despite much evidence to the contrary. As

David Layton verifies, “Since he cannot create, the Master seeks to destroy. By destroying, the

narcissistic person feels like he can transcend life. The ‘will for destruction’ is enormously

powerful, but ultimately not satisfying, since the destroyers suffer along with those whom they

would destroy” (Layton 194). Through the Master, Doctor Who shows that absolutism ultimately

results in a self-destructive pride. Yet social disruptors like Edmund and the Master don’t seem

to care whether their efforts bring about self-destruction. Their only thought is one of anger at

human society for its own hypocritical absolutist yearnings and a merciless vengefulness against

the environment that created and wronged them. Like Edmund, the Master’s last act is

surprisingly one of attempted mercy towards the hero, yet also an act of fury against his creators,

defending the Doctor from the Time Lords with a violent energy blast, crying out, “You did this

to me! All of my life! You made me!” (Davies) Thus we see that both these villains were spurred

on not so much by selfish pride, but in response to what they saw as social injustice. Reflecting

upon the motivation of these malefactors, the audience may feel some amount of pity at the

thought that their backgrounds and their environment’s injustice to them led to their downfalls.

Even among today’s youth, indignation and frustration at the inefficient and inwardly

decadent policy of society fosters an understandable yet dangerous interest in anarchist

philosophy. One can see this in many of the riots and subversive underground networks that have

sprung up. The growing popularity of this mindset supports the truth that the inclination for

social disruption lies within us all. It’s even more evident in our pop culture’s antisocial

antagonists and anti-heroes who use methods of control to ultimately throw their worlds out of

control. These literary figures don’t truly care about bringing about a new ‘better’ order or even

self-preservation, but instead desire to lay the foundation for disorder. As Alfred states in The

Dark Knight, “some men aren’t looking for anything logical…some men just want to watch the

world burn” (Nolan). While their dissatisfaction is relatable, and Shakespeare would agree that

there’s nothing wrong with wanting to change flawed systems, it’s important to remember where

this impulse can lead when taken to extremes: disharmony and rampant antipathy. The negativity

these villains cause supports this truth, and is even more apparent in the treachery of their literary

inspirations. As Bernard Spivak concludes,

The behavior of these Shakespearean villains is consistently socially perspicuous.

Their temptations and provocations are results of an interplay between their

natures and their circumstances. They seductively induce doubt with their words

and actively engineer cruel fates... They ultimately reveal their aggression as

directed against the ideals of virtue and honor that define their time... Their

affronts against nature, unity and harmony show Shakespeare’s vision that evil in

its greatest magnitude expresses division and disorder” (Spivak, 43, 45, 49)

These villains are not following evil for evil’s sake as some have suggested. Rather, they are

tools used by Shakespeare to point out flaws in society that could be abused under the guidance

of the malignant. Inevitably, Shakespeare is forcing his audience to see both the hypocrisy of

social conventions and the danger of temptations to topple society altogether. And through the

symbolism of these disruptors, we are being asked to somehow peaceably reform ourselves and

avoid the potential for plain-dealing villainy.

References

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