Wear your heart on your sleeve Why Should I Care

Why Should I Care?

In Othello, Shakespeare explores factors that play an important role in the formations of one's identity—race, gender, social status, family relationships, military service, or whatever else. Shakespeare asks us a bunch of big questions when it comes to identity in this play:

• What shapes our identity?
• Can someone's identity break down?
• Can someone manipulate his identity?

But here's the thing: Iago's identity is ultimately unknowable. The play's characters certainly don't know who he really is, which is a scary thing if you think about it. He tricks them all into thinking he's an honest, decent guy. But he's nothing of the sort.

Now we might like to think we have more complexity to us than a character in a play, and that's true. But, we'd wager that at some point in your life, you've come across someone who turned out to be different from what she originally seemed. This is exactly what the play is getting at.

It isn't about who we are, it's that who everyone else is can be changed at any moment. We might not even be aware of when people are pretending to be someone else. So, in a backwards, twisty, make you scratch your head kind of way, the quote is actually warning us no one can really know the real identity of people. No one really wears his heart upon his sleeve. It all comes down to performance.

Anyone else just get chills?