1. 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

2. [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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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,

14. 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.

15. References
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