Who He Is
Roderigo is a wealthy, credulous Venetian, rejected as a suitor of Desdemona by Brabantio, who had already forbidden him to lurk around the house. Iago lives off his purse, promises him Desdemona's hand, and uses him as a pawn: first to wake the senator, then to provoke Cassio and, finally, to ambush him. Roderigo never gets anything. He is killed by Iago in Act V, Scene 1, and the letters found in his pocket give away the plot.
Trajectory
In Act I, Scene 1, he complains to Iago, who used his purse and knew everything without warning him. Brabantio recognizes him and rebukes him: he reminds him that he had already forbidden him to lurk at the door and that his daughter was not for him. Roderigo and Iago shout under the window and, when the father returns, Roderigo goes with him after Othello. In Act I, Scene 2, he arrives with the senator and the armed men, and Iago pulls him to his side.
In Act I, Scene 3, alone with Iago, he considers drowning himself out of lovesick despair. Iago persuades him to sell his lands and follow to Cyprus, promising to help him win Desdemona: it is pure deception, and the money is bait. In Act II, Scene 1, Iago convinces Roderigo that Desdemona will tire of the Moor and prefer Cassio, and instructs him to provoke Cassio on the watch. Roderigo says he will do whatever Iago commands if Iago arranges the occasion. In Act II, Scene 3, he is the one who provokes Cassio, who chases him and wounds Montano.
In Act IV, Scene 2, Roderigo demands from Iago the jewels he entrusted to him to give to Desdemona, half of which would have been enough to corrupt a nun, and threatens to present himself to Desdemona herself to ask for them back. Iago disarms him with praise and proposes the way out: kill Cassio, whom a commission from Venice wants to put in Othello's place, so that Othello and Desdemona do not leave Cyprus. Roderigo says he wants to hear more reasons.
In Act V, Scene 1, posted in the street to ambush Cassio, he says in an aside that he has no great devotion to the deed. Iago, in another aside, calculates that he gains if one kills the other and that a living Roderigo would demand from him the gold and jewels he filched from him (ll. 14-17). The phrase "he must die" (l. 22) closes the reasoning about Cassio, not about Roderigo.
Roderigo attacks Cassio and is wounded by him, and Iago stabs him, and Roderigo, fallen, calls him a bestial dog. In Act V, Scene 2, Lodovico shows three papers found in his pocket: two letters, one of them about Cassio's death, which he was to carry out, and a sheet full of complaints against Iago, which he wanted to send. Cassio adds that, before dying, Roderigo said Iago had instigated and wounded him.
Themes Embodied
What Roderigo spends, purse, jewels, lands, is what finances Iago's plan without yielding anything to the payer. His speech in Act IV, Scene 2 does the accounting: the jewels that should have bought Desdemona never arrived, and it is Iago who, so as not to lose him, diverts him toward Cassio's death.
Roderigo's letters are material proof of the plot against Iago, and it is through them, with what Roderigo says before dying, that Lodovico and Cassio reconstruct the plot.
Iago's plan collapses by chance: a failed ambush leaves Roderigo alive long enough to speak, and the letters were not lost. Roderigo's Love is the inverted image of Othello's: he wants possession without being seen and pays for promises that Iago never needs to keep. He is the first to be used and, the moment he demands what he is owed, the first condemned.
Relationships
- Iago: the partner and de facto creditor, who lives off Roderigo's purse and kills him to keep him from talking.
- Desdemona: the woman he desires and to whom he never manages to speak, and whose jewels stay with Iago.
- Brabantio: the senator who forbade him to lurk around the house and takes him along after Othello.
- Cassio: the rival manufactured by Iago, whom Roderigo provokes in Act II, Scene 3 and tries to kill in Act V, Scene 1.
- Othello: Desdemona's husband, whom Roderigo goes after in Act I, Scene 2 and who understands the plot through Emilia's mouth and then through his letters, in Act V, Scene 2.