[Lewis wrote in a deliberately provocative style and outside the mainstream of Shakespearean criticism. The majority of his work on Shakespeare is included in his unusual study The Lion and the Fox (l927). In the following excerpt from that work, Lewis argues that Othello depicts "the race of men at war with the race of titans" and that the gods have predetermined that Iago, the petty Everyman, will triumph over the grandeur of Othello. The critic assesses the Moor as the most typical of Shakespeare's colossi, or giants, "because he is the simplest" and emphasizes his pure, guileless, generous nature and the childlike, defenseless quality of his soul. Lewis considers Iago "no great devil, " but instead claims that he represents an ordinary, average, little man. For further commentary on Othello's character, see the excerpts by.....
