William Shakespeare: Othello, Moor of Venice

ACT III. 4. SCENE IV. Cyprus. Before the Castle. (continued)

OTHELLO.
That is 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 a 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 wive,
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.

DESDEMONA.
Is't possible?

OTHELLO.
'Tis true: there's magic in the web of it:
A sibyl, that had number'd in the world
The sun to course two hundred compasses,
In her prophetic fury sew'd the work;
The worms were hallow'd that did breed the silk;
And it was dy'd in mummy which the skillful
Conserv'd of maiden's hearts.

DESDEMONA.
Indeed! is't true?

OTHELLO.
Most veritable; therefore look to't well.

DESDEMONA.
Then would to God that I had never seen't!

OTHELLO.
Ha! wherefore?

DESDEMONA.
Why do you speak so startingly and rash?

OTHELLO.
Is't lost? is't gone? speak, is it out of the way?

DESDEMONA.
Heaven bless us!

OTHELLO.
Say you?

DESDEMONA.
It is not lost; but what an if it were?

OTHELLO.
How!

DESDEMONA.
I say, it is not lost.

OTHELLO.
Fetch't, let me see't.