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RV 216 (Rh) addition that he was not quite so honest as he seemed, for he had often begged her to steal Desdemona’s handkerchief. But Emilia’s nature was not very delicate or scrupulous about trifles. She thought her husband odd and ‘wayward,’ and looked on his fancy for the handkerchief as an instance of this ( iii. 292); but she never dreamed he was a villain, and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of her belief that he was heartily sorry for Cassio’s disgrace. Her failure, on seeing Othello’s agitation about the handkerchief, to form any suspicion of an intrigue, shows how little she doubted her husband. Even when, later, the idea strikes her that some scoundrel has poisoned Othello’s mind, the tone of all her speeches, and her mention of the rogue who (she believes) had stirred up Iago’s jealousy of her, prove beyond doubt that the thought of Iago’s being the scoundrel has not crossed her mind ( ii. 115–147). And if any hesitation on the subject could remain, surely it must be dispelled by the thrice-repeated cry of astonishment and horror, ‘My husband!’, which follows Othello’s words, ‘Thy husband knew it all’; and by the choking indignation and desperate hope which we hear in her appeal when Iago comes in:

Even if Iago had betrayed much more of his true self to his wife than to others, it would make no difference to the contrast between his true self and the self he presented to the world in general. But he never did so. Only the feeble eyes of the poor gull Roderigo were allowed a glimpse into that pit.

The bearing of this contrast upon the apparently excessive credulity of Othello has been already