Roderigo

But when Othello confronts Desdemona's puppy dog eyes, he just can't do it.

Iago, on the other hand, needs to get rid of Roderigo too.

So he gets Roderigo to assault Cassio, hoping that both of them kill each other.

Did I miss anything? One of Iago's ways of destroying Othello, it's not just enough.

If Iago had been given a perfect opportunity to shove Othello off a wall... that would not have been enough for him.

And I think this is another part where all of his cunning has failed him, because previously, when he's killed people, or when he's done awful things...

There's some strategic goal there.

Like with Roderigo, he got a witness out of the way.

How does my old acquaintance of this isle? For us, an acquaintance sounds like a singular person, but in Othello's usage it can equally mean, how are my various friends here in Cyprus? He tells Desdemona that she will be very popular and well-desired here.

More irony, since we know that Rodrigo eagerly desires her, and Iago is planning to make it look like Cassio does too.

But, as Othello says, he has found great love among the people here.

Probably the Venetian people stationed here, admittedly.

Come, he says, calling her by her name again now instead of honey or sweet or indeed my soul.

Once more, well met at Cyprus.

And with that, the whole group disperses, leaving only Iago and Rodrigo on stage.

you can imagine how frustrated Rodrigo is by now.

I resume now at the moment when Othello and Desdemona leave, having got what they wanted from the Duke, permission for Desdemona to go to Cyprus.

This is the second intense conversation between Iago and Rodrigo, a follow-up to the opening pages of the play, when Iago presented himself as the reliable friend of one of the wealthéd, curled darlings of our nation.

This early manipulation prefigures Iago's other manipulations, first of Cassio and then of course of Othello in the central story of the play.

Iago meets Rodrigo's pathetic whining with apparent tough love, again touching on one of the key ideas of this play, knowledge, belief and understanding.

He tells Rodrigo that, I never found man that knew how to love himself.

And of course there is one, Iago himself.

He expands on the reasons in the subsequent speeches, in lower order prose rather than verse, stating that reason balances and controls sensuality.

This is a desperately reductive view of human nature, but it is appallingly true that the play seems to confirm it.