OTHELLO
My life upon her faith!—Honest Iago,
My Desdemona must I leave to thee:
I pr’ythee, let thy wife attend on her;
And bring them after in the best advantage.—
Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour
Of love, of worldly matters and direction,
To spend with thee: we must obey the time.
[Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.]
RODERIGO
Iago,—
IAGO
What say’st thou, noble heart?
RODERIGO
What will I do, thinkest thou?
IAGO
Why, go to bed and sleep.
RODERIGO
I will incontinently drown myself.
IAGO
If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Why, thou silly gentleman!
RODERIGO
It is silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.
IAGO
O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times seven years, and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself. Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a Guinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon.
RODERIGO
What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it.
IAGO
Virtue! a fig! ‘Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect or scion.
RODERIGO
It cannot be.
IAGO
It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,—put money in thy purse,—nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration;—put but money in thy purse.—These Moors are changeable in their wills:—fill thy purse with money: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida. She must change for youth: when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice: she must have change, she must: therefore put money in thy purse.—If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst; if sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without her.
RODERIGO
Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on the issue?
IAGO
Thou art sure of me:—go, make money:—I have told thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I hate the Moor: my cause is hearted; thine hath no less reason. Let us be conjunctive in our revenge against him: if thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered. Traverse; go; provide thy money. We will have more of this tomorrow. Adieu.
RODERIGO
Where shall we meet i’ the morning?
IAGO
At my lodging.
RODERIGO
I’ll be with thee betimes.
IAGO
Go to; farewell. Do you hear, Roderigo?
RODERIGO
What say you?
IAGO
No more of drowning, do you hear?
RODERIGO
I am changed: I’ll go sell all my land.
[Exit.]
IAGO
Thus do I ever make my fool my purse;
For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane
If I would time expend with such a snipe
But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor;
And it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets
He has done my office: I know not if ‘t be true;
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety. He holds me well,
The better shall my purpose work on him.
Cassio’s a proper man: let me see now;
To get his place, and to plume up my will
In double knavery,—How, how?—Let’s see:—
After some time, to abuse Othello’s ear
That he is too familiar with his wife:—
He hath a person, and a smooth dispose,
To be suspected; fram’d to make women false.
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so;
And will as tenderly be led by the nose
As asses are.
I have’t;—it is engender’d:—hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.
[Exit.]
ACT II
SCENE I. A seaport in Cyprus. A Platform.
[Enter Montano and two Gentlemen.]
MONTANO
What from the cape can you discern at sea?
FIRST GENTLEMAN
Nothing at all: it is a high-wrought flood;
I cannot, ‘twixt the heaven and the main,
Descry a sail.
MONTANO
Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land;
A fuller blast ne’er shook our battlements:
If it hath ruffian’d so upon the sea,
What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them,
Can