I can’t find the original reference, but Friday on Twitter I saw somebody say something like “by that logic Iago would be 408 years old.”
And I thought, “You know, Iago never actually dies at the end of the play. They just take him away to be tortured. How cool would it be if he was in fact immortal?”
The plot of a horror movie formed in my brain. Bunch of college kids over in Italy (American kids studying abroad, of course), working on Othello. Over study group they have the “Iago didn’t die” conversation. “You know this is based on a true story, right?” one of the kids says. “And it took place not too far from here…” It’s only a matter of time before they’re crawling around centuries-old tunnels, until they reach the very chamber where Iago was brought so long ago…
…what happens next? And where my screenwriters at? Make it happen!
So, is the twist that their professor is secretly Iago?
ALL of the secondary characters are secretly Iago.