"Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!"

That's Hamlet the Slow Avenger ranting about Claudius, but the same and bolder could be said of Iago. I know he's the vilest of Shakespeare's villains--which would place him high in the running for vilest world-wide--but at some point those just become words. It's the page-by-page visceral experience of watching him secrete his evil that makes my blood boil. As I reread this, I wanted to throw the book, tear it, set it on fire just to get at him. Iago is more than vile. He's the illest m'f(*& I've ever read. I'm going to see a production of this next week, and it will be all I can do not to bum-rush the stage cursing and shouting.