SOURCE: Andrews, Michael C. “Honest Othello: The Handkerchief Once More.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 13, no. 2 (spring 1973): 273-84.

In the following essay, Andrews examines the different accounts that Othello gives of the handkerchief's origins in Othello, maintaining that the first account is true and that the second account is false. The critic contends that Othello changes his story in order to downplay his superstitious beliefs, which would have been viewed negatively by the Venetians.

The fact that Othello gives two different versions of the history of the fatal handkerchief has, predictably, not passed unnoticed.¹ In his first and more elaborate account (III.iv.53ff.), Othello tells Desdemona that the handkerchief is a love-controling talisman his mother received from an Egyptian “charmer”:

                    she told her, while she kept it 'Twould make her amiable, and subdue my father Entirely to her love: but if she lost it, Or made a...