TLN 3465: charm your tongue.

There is perhaps an echo here of the play's earlier associations among magic, talking, and women's behavior. In Act 1, when he imagines that Desdemona has been charmed into marriage by Othello, Brabantio introduces a masculinist fantasy in which women's actions are controlled not by their own desires but rather by magical forces under the control of men (see TLN 188-90, 291-3). In 3.4, the gendering of magical control is reversed as the "herstory" of the handkerchief is relayed and the figures of the Egyptian charmer and the Sybil are introduced (see TLN 2203-26). By this key moment in the play's fifth act, Iago's ability to charm his wife has clearly failed, and he resorts to commanding her to charm herself into silence, an order she feels bound not to follow, but to resist.