Honest Othello: The Handkerchief Once More

There are two accounts of the handkerchief in Othello. In the first, Othello warns Desdemona that it is a love-charm with "magic in the web," given to his mother by an Egyptian; in the second, he tells Gratiano it was "an antique token/ My father gave my mother." Contrary to current opinion, the first version carries conviction. As with Othello's suicide speech, Shakespeare gives his protagonist such hypnotic eloquence that an actor would have great difficulty making the audience realize Othello is not telling the truth. There is no indication that Othello is lying, nor is he elsewhere characterized as an able dissembler. Unwillingness to believe that Shakespeare could have conceived of Othello as genuinely superstitious may reflect the same racial self-consciousness that has on occasion led to a denial of the importance of Othello's racial background. A close examination of the text suggests that Othello does indeed impute magical properties to the handkerchief. The first version is not discredited by the second; the differences may be explained on the basis of the dramatic context, or as a careless error on the part of Shakespeare.