Othello by William Shakespeare (1604)

A handkerchief embroidered with strawberries, the first gift a husband ever gave his wife, becomes in another man's hands the single proof of a betrayal that never happened. That is all it takes. _Othello_ stages the most intimate murder in Shakespeare, and its horror is that you watch the poison enter drop by drop: Iago needs no real evidence, only a tone, a pause, the word 'honest' repeated until it curdles, and a great soldier who has faced armies finds he cannot withstand a whisper. The cruelty for an audience is total, because every lie is spoken to your face and invisible to the man it destroys, and Desdemona, who argued for this love before the Venetian Senate and followed it into war, keeps loving him as the ground gives way. When it is over, Iago is asked why, and he will not say. Shakespeare withholds the reason too, and the silence is the most frightening thing in the play.