"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables----meet it is I set it down/That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!" Hamlet, after his first visit with the ghost of his father, portrays how a villain may look like. As we move on to read Shakespeare, we are faced with evil characters as half of life is naturally in the hands of evil people because, in the Bard's own words," the web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together". The predicament of human life lies in his inability to delve deep into the human psyche, the Bard clarifies, "As there is no art to find the mind's construction in the face", we have to put up with all, men and women, good or bad because "Readiness is all" and "Some innocents escape not the thunderbolt".
Shakespeare is well known for creating some wonderful villains and everyone loves a good villain as villainy is a very common human trait. Although the characters discussed here may not be the epitome of villainy, the quote selected certainly reflects villainous thoughts or intents. 'The vicious mole of nature' that Hamlet attributes to the villainous activities of human beings, is exquisitely delineated in the words uttered by the villains in different plays.
The 'pelican daughters' of King Lear, Goneril and Reagan are the most heartless and cruel children who betrayed their gullible father King Lear and innocent sister Cordelia. But both of them developed extra marital relationships with Gloucester's bastard son Edmund, who deceived his father and brother. Edmund is gradually developed into a more and more dangerous villain than Goneril and Regan who schemed to destroy all and grab everything. He ponders, "To both these sisters have I sworn love;/ Each jealous of the other, as the stung/ Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take?/ Both? One? Or neither? Neither can be enjoyed/ If both remain alive."
There has always been great debate regarding Shakespeare's portrayal of the infamous King Richard III, and some critics disagree that he was as diabolical as Shakespeare presents him. Nevertheless, in the opening soliloquy of the play, " Now is the winter of our discontent", Richard explains his evil intentions quite clearly. Shakespeare is never partial to any character--- good or bad. He magnanimously allows the most diabolical villain to defend his cause and enough room to explain why he commits crime. He woos and cajoles Anne Neville into marrying him, even though he killed her husband hours before and father earlier. He basically kills anybody who objects to him, and then he had his two nephews beheaded for good measure. Richard, aware of his deformity and ugliness, concludes that his only course to follow is to resort to ill deeds, " And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,/ To entertain these fair well-spoken days,/ I am determined to prove a villain/ And hate the idle pleasures of these days."
Macbeth, portrayed as very valiant, loyal and dutiful, before he meets the three weird sisters the witches, turns out to be ambitious and commits one sin after another to ascend to the throne and perpetuate his kingship. The character that goads him to perform all ill deeds is his wife- Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare endowed Lady Macbeth with more hard metal than most of his villains. Apparently free from all female 'frailties', she denies the inherent softness of a woman, especially of a mother to her children. After she obtains Macbeth's consent to murder King Duncan and the queen , she evinces her determination to become a devil, "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here / And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full / Of direst cruelty!"
Macbeth, ambitious to usurp power and prompted by the witches and Lady Macbeth, adds to the darkness of his horrific crime, murdering Duncan and the queen as the worst violation of hospitality. From then on, he goes on to murder Banquo, the wife and children of Macduff and so on. He does not know how to bring an end to his reign of carnage. He utters, "For mine own good / All causes shall give way. I am in blood/Stepped in so far that , should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go aver. Strange I have in head, that will to hand / Which must be acted ere they may be scanned."
Aaron in Titus Andronicus is very naïve in delivering his thoughts of villainy compared to other consummate villains. But the revenge that Aaron the Moor cooks up is so harsh that he ranks very high in the Shakespearian Villain list. He convinces Tamora's remaining sons to rape and mutilate Titus's daughter Lavinia. They cut out her tongue and cut off her hands so that she cannot identify them. Titus's other two sons were imprisoned, so Aaron told Tamora to tell Titus that if he would cut off his own hand she would set his sons free. So Titus chops off his own hand, and then promptly receives his sons back minus their bodies. Aaron is unrepentant even when he is ordered to be buried chest-deep and left to die of thirst and starvation, " If one good deed in all my life I did / I do repent it from my very soul." He defiantly proclaims his criminal proclivities, "I have done a thousand dreadful things/ As willingly as one would kill a fly / And nothing grieves me heartily indeed / But that I cannot do ten thousand more."
Tamora , the Queen of the Goths, in Shakespeare's bloodiest play Titus Andronicus, turns out to be one of the cruelest villains and secretly plans a horrible revenge for Titus and all his remaining sons. She contemplates, "Ne'er let my heart know merry cheer indeed/ Till all the Andronici be made away / Now will I hence to seek my lovely Moor /And let my spleenful sons this trull deflower."
The most diabolical of Shakespearean villains, Iago, is not so articulate about his evil schemes. His evil design to annihilate Othello, Desdemona and Cassio contaminates the entire atmosphere of the play. He is apparently so naive and pretentious that he never outwardly poses any hint of mischief to any character and never blurts out his nihilistic views on mankind. He will eventually prove utterly different from what he pretended to be, "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 on my sleeve/For daws to peck at: I am not what I am". At the end of the play, as they lead him off to what would seem to be his destruction, he dares to defy authority, "Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: From this time forth I never will speak word."
Measure for Measure is a tragicomedy which unfolds a character, otherwise known as virtuous, turning out to be a nefarious one in circumstances in his control. Angelo rules in the Duke's absence and tries to uphold himself as a man of integrity. When Isabella, a beautiful novice nun approaches him with a request to save his brother now in jail waiting to be executed for newly enacted law of fornication, Angelo, a hypocrite, proposes to Isabella to sleep with her, "Redeem thy brother/By yielding thy body to my will,/Or he must not only die the death,/But thy unkindness shall his death draw out/To lingering sufferance."
Iachimo, in Cymbeline, proves himself to be villainous without having any cause for it. He bets with Posthumus that he can tempt his wife Imogen to commit adultery, "I will lay you ten thousand ducats to your ring that, commend me to the court where your lady is, with no more advantage than the opportunity of a second conference, and I will bring from thence that honour of hers which you imagine so reserved." He sneaks into her bedroom, secretly watches a mole on her left breast while she is asleep and steals a bracelet as a proof of her infidelity.
Claudius usurps the throne of Denmark by murdering his brother and suspects the behaviour of Hamlet who mourns his father and resents his mother Gertrude's hasty marriage to his uncle. His guilty conscience does not allow him to pray, "O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon it, Of direst cruelty!"
The Merchant of Venice is a comedy, but the villainous character Shylock who contrives in a contract to cut one pound of flesh from Antonio's body is also the finest attraction of the play . Shylock hates Antonio because he is a Christian and also because he insults and spits on him for being a Jew. He says, "I hate him for he is a Christian…./ If I can catch him once upon the hip / I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him./…..Cursed be my pride/If I forgive him."
Thomas Delise, an American critic ponders, "The Merchant of Venice is an intriguing play because Shylock, originally regarded as a diabolical villain, is now regarded with a great deal of sympathy. In fact he is perceived to be a victim of cruel prejudice, while some view the Christians in the play as the real villains. Was Shakespeare himself sympathetic to Shylock's plight? We'll never truly know" , but we can at least rest assured that Shakespeare 's villains are never deprived of human touches. When Shylock argues in favour of his action, we can not but suspend our hatred for the time being and agree with him. Shylock's self defense sounds quite reasonable ,"if you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? if you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?----if we are like in the rest, we will resemble you in that."
Bassanio may dream of a world without villain in his passionate expression "I like not fair terms and a villain's mind" but people in fact have no choice. Shakespeare names the evil people as " the devil incarnate", " a stoney-hearted villain," and " bloody minded or a blinking idiot" and offers us the chance to see ourselves in them. As ordinary suffering humanity, we can not rise above our moderate or even high ambitions or we get concerned with money and become the victim of desireeventually all of us become enmeshed in the mystery of life either good or bad. To conclude, Shakespeare has given us wonderful tales filled with remarkable characters such as Othello, who force us to realize that within each of us the better angel of our nature is always struggling for dominance with a subtle dark angel.

Md Shafiqul Islam is a senior government official and Shakespeare buff