From him that fled some strange indignity

Which patience could not pass.

OTHELLO I know, Iago,

Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter,

Making it light to Cassio. Cassio, I love thee,

But never more be officer of mine.

Enter Desdemona, attended

Look if my gentle love be not raised up.

I’ll make thee an example.

DESDEMONA What is the matter, dear?

OTHELLO All’s well now, sweeting.

Come away to bed. (To Montano) Sir, for your hurts

Myself will be your surgeon. (To attendants) Lead him

off.

Exeunt attendants with Montano

Iago, look with care about the town,

And silence those whom this vile brawl distracted.

Come, Desdemona. ’Tis the soldier’s life

To have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.

Exeunt all but Iago and Cassio

IAGO What, are you hurt, lieutenant?

CASSIO Ay, past all surgery.

IAGO Marry, God forbid.

CASSIO Reputation, reputation, reputation—O, I ha’ lost my reputation, I ha’ lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial! My reputation, Iago, my reputation.

IAGO As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound. There is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man, there are more ways to recover the general again. You are but now cast in his mood—a punishment more in policy than in malice, even so as one would beat his offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion. Sue to him again, and he’s yours.

CASSIO I will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. Drunk, and speak parrot, and squabble? Swagger, swear, and discourse fustian with one’s own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil.

IAGO What was he that you followed with your sword? What had he done to you?

CASSIO I know not.

IAGO Is’t possible?

CASSIO I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! That we should with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause transform ourselves into beasts!

IAGO Why, but you are now well enough. How came you thus recovered?

CASSIO It hath pleased the devil drunkenness to give place to the devil wrath. One unperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself.

IAGO Come, you are too severe a moraller. As the time, the place, and the condition of this country stands, I could heartily wish this had not befallen; but since it is as it is, mend it for your own good.

CASSIO I will ask him for my place again. He shall tell me I am a drunkard. Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! O, strange! Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil.

IAGO Come, come. Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used. Exclaim no more against it. And, good lieutenant, I think you think I love you.

CASSIO I have well approved it, sir—I drunk?

IAGO You or any man living may be drunk at a time, man. I’ll tell you what you shall do. Our general’s wife is now the general. I may say so in this respect, for that he hath devoted and given up himself to the contemplation, mark, and denotement of her parts and graces. Confess yourself freely to her. Importune her help to put you in your place again. She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. This broken joint between you and her husband entreat her to splinter, and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger than it was before.

CASSIO You advise me well.

IAGO I protest, in the sincerity of love and honest kindness.

CASSIO I think it freely, and betimes in the morning I will beseech the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me. I am desperate of my fortunes if they check me here.

IAGO You are in the right. Good night, lieutenant. I must to the watch.

CASSIO Good night, honest Iago.

Exit

IAGO

And what’s he then that says I play the villain,

When this advice is free I give, and honest,

Probal to thinking, and indeed the course

To win the Moor again? For ‘tis most easy

Th’inclining Desdemona to subdue

In any honest suit. She’s framed as fruitful

As the free elements; and then for her

To win the Moor, were’t to renounce his baptism,

All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,

His soul is so enfettered to her love

That she may make, unmake, do what she list,

Even as her appetite shall play the god

With his weak function. How am I then a villain,

To counsel Cassio to this parallel course

Directly to his good? Divinity of hell:

When devils will the blackest sins put on,

They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,

As I do now; for whiles this honest fool

Plies Desdemona to repair his fortune,

And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,

I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear:

That she repeals him for her body’s lust,

And by how much she strives to do him good

She shall undo her credit with the Moor.

So will I turn her virtue into pitch,

And out of her own goodness make the net

That shall enmesh them all.

Enter Roderigo

How now, Roderigo?

RODERIGO I do follow here in the chase, not like a hound that hunts, but one that fills up the cry. My money is almost spent, I ha’ been tonight exceedingly well cudgelled, and I think the issue will be I shall have so much experience for my pains: and so, with no money at all and a little more wit, return again to Venice.

IAGO

How poor are they that ha’ not patience!

What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

Thou know‘st we work by wit and not by witchcraft,

And wit depends on dilatory time.

Does’t not go well? Cassio hath beaten thee,

And thou by that small hurt hast cashiered Cassio.

Though other things grow fair against the sun,