SOURCE: Kirschbaum, Leo. “The Modern Othello.” ELH 11, no. 4 (December 1944): 283-96.

In the following essay, Kirschbaum argues that many modern critics have misread Othello's character by viewing him as an essentially noble figure who is misled by others. Instead, Kirschbaum contends that Shakespeare intended Othello to be a tragically noble figure whose fate is attributable to his own character flaws.

Is the Othello of modern critics Shakespeare's Othello?

Here are three representative opinions. To Sir Edmund Chambers, Othello is “the simple open-hearted soldier,” “a gracious and doomed creature” who is an “easy victim.”¹ For Kittredge, he is “an heroic and simple nature, putting full trust in two friends, both of whom betray him, the one in angry malice, the other by weakness and self-seeking.”² Stoll sees him as a very noble dramatic puppet who evinces no psychological consistency in his passage from love to sudden jealousy and who must...