SOURCE: Gerard, Albert. “‘Egregiously an Ass’: The Dark Side of the Moor. A View of Othello's Mind.” In Aspects of Othello: Articles Reprinted from Shakespeare Survey, edited by Kenneth Muir and Philip Edwards, pp. 12-20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

In the following essay, originally published in 1957, Gerard evaluates Othello as a “barbarian” figure by considering the Moor's failure to intellectually assess his own flaws, which ultimately leads to his “tragedy of groundless jealousy.”

It is through the malice of this earthly air, that only by being guilty of Folly does mortal man in many cases arrive at the perception of sense.

Herman Melville

There are three schools of Othello criticism. The most recent of these is the symbolic school, chiefly represented by G. Wilson Knight and J. I. M. Stewart, who have endeavoured to explain away the difficulties inherent in the traditional psychological interpretation of the Moor by...