Othello Quote Log: Act 3, Scene 4

"That’s a fault. That handkerchief / Did an Egyptian to my mother give, / She was a charmer and could almost read / The thoughts of people. 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 gift of it, my father’s eye  / Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt  / After new fancies. She, dying, gave it me  / And bid me, when my fate would have me wived,  / To give it her. I did so; and take heed on ’t,  / Make it a darling like your precious eye.  / To lose ’t or give ’t away were such perdition / As nothing else could match" (3.4. 65-79)

 

Othello wants Desdemona to be as nervous as he is, this is why he tells her that the handkerchief was made by a 200 year old witch and that it's magical. He probably doesn't believe this himself, but his jealousy is causing him to greatly stretch the truth. He is basically saying that by losing the handkerchief, Desdemona will bring on Othello's hatred and he will no longer love her. He wants to scare her into caring more and to admit any wrong doings she may have committed. He wants to know how angry he is and how much more he will become if Desdemona has lost the handkerchief.