ABSTRACT
The whole tragedy of Desdemona, of what she is and how she is caught, is given in a single simple sentence, of which anyone can make havoc in reading or speaking. Shakespeare does this, as it were, on two levels, one more intimate than the other. To the more intimate level belongs the drama of the handkerchief, the love token disregarded by the very motion of love. On that level it experience the operation of a true symbol, which is half-incorporate with the mystery it signifies, and this mystery of the true symbol is made more palpable by Othello's story of the magical origin of the handkerchief. Its origin is magical for it is a handkerchief dipped in the mystery of human love. A mere source of motive power whose function it is to bring the seed of death that is in the love of Othello and Desdemona to maturity within the compass of a play.
