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Othello gives his wife, Desdemona, a rare handkerchief. Iago urges his own wife, who is Desdemona's maid, to pilfer this and bring it to him. When he gets it, he leaves it in Cassio's room. Cassio was an intimate friend of Othello's, one, indeed, who had gone with him when he went to woo Desdemona, and who, by Iago's machinations, had been suspended from his office of Othello's chief lieutenant.

"Within three days let me hear that Cassio is dead." Iago's next step was to leave Desdemona's handkerchief in Cassio's room. Cassio saw it, and knew it was not his, but he liked the strawberry pattern on it, and he gave it to his sweetheart Bianca and asked her to copy it for him.

The handkerchief is merely a trick, though a very pretty trick; but there are no other circumstances of reasonable suspicion, except what is related by Iago of Cassio's warm expressions concerning Desdemona in his sleep; and that depended entirely upon the assertion of one man. No, Sir, I think Othello has more moral than almost any play.

After returning the welcomes of his friends he enters the castle with Cassio and Montano. The conspiracy at once begins by the disclosure of Iago to Roderigo of the means by which Cassio's ruin may be compassed. Then follows the quarrel, which is interrupted by the appearance of Othello, who deprives Cassio of his office.