Mojo, The Bard, & Me

The handkerchief!

 

-Othello

Othello                 Act III, scene iv Line 91

Well this is a fabulous line! The handkerchief! It’s just unbelievable how we manage to get to these places in completely random fashion. Sort of reminds me of life in general. But anyway, the line.

So for the uninitiated, this play is about the rat Iago making a mess of everyone’s lives. There are some earlier posts on this play if you go to the Will's Works/Pete's Posts tab. But for now, one of the main things Iago's going to do is convince Othello that his wife is having an affair with Michael Cassio. Iago’s going to do this by getting his hands on Desdemona’s hanky that her husband Othello gave her. Then he’s going to plant the hanky on Cassio, but in the meantime he’s going to tell Othello that Cassio’s got the hanky and that Cassio’s been getting more than that from Desdemona. At this point in the play Iago has the hanky and has told Othello that he’s seen Cassio with it. Now Othello is alone with Desdemona and he wants to find out that Iago’s wrong so he’s asking her to show him the hanky. She keeps putting him off, not realizing that he suspects infidelity. She doesn’t have the hanky with her, but doesn’t even realize yet that it’s gone from her possession. The conversation has devolved to the point where Desdemona is trying to sort of change the subject and Othello just keeps pushing back to the darn hanky. This is his second ‘The handkerchief!’, and there will be one more ‘The handkerchief!’ before he storms out. And it’s just a silly little hanky! It’s amazing that so much in this play hinges on that little square piece of cloth! Can you think of any other prop in a play or movie that's so small and yet so pivotal?

This is a picture of my brother Dave and my daughter Nina from a few years back. We were all away together on vacation and Dave decided that it would be fun to try to act out this very scene from Othello. So he wrapped this stuff around his head to make himself look like the Othello the Moor (or so he thought) and he hung the hanky on his glasses (obviously a twist from the original script). He tells Nina that she’s Desdemona, and then he keeps saying “The handkerchief!” I guess he thought it would help Nina if the handkerchief was right in front of her. But without knowing the play very well, of course it didn’t, and she just kept staring at Uncle Dave thinking ‘What the heck are you talking about?’ I guess we’ve all got an Uncle Dave in our family, don’t we.