Rod.

Jago.

Jago.

What sayest thou, noble heart?

Rod.

What will I do, thinkest thou?

Jago.

Why, go to bed and sleep.

Rod.

I will incontinently drown my self.

Jago.

If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Why, thou silly gentleman!

Rod.

It is silliness to live, when to live is a torment; and then have we a prescription to dye, when death is our physician.

Jago.

O villanous! I have look'd 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 my self for the love of a Guinney-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon.

Rod.

What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it.

Jago.

Virtue? a fig, 'tis in our selves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardiners. So that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettice; set hyssop, and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs,

or distract it with many; either have it steril with idleness, or manured with industry; why the power and corrigible authority of this lyes in our will. If the ballance 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 syen.

Rod.

It cannot be.

Jago.

It is meerly a lust of the blood, and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thy self? drown cats and blind puppies. I have profest me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving, with cables of perdurable toughness. I could never better steed thee than now. Put mony in thy purse; follow thou these wars, † ^notedefeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put mony in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor—put mony in thy purse —nor he his to her. It was a violent commencement in her, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration,—but put mony in thy purse.—These Moors are changeable in their wills;— fill thy purse with mony. The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall shortly be as bitter as coloquintida. She must change for youth; when she is sated with his body, she will find the errors of her choice—Therefore put mony in thy purse—If thou wilt needs damn thy self, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the mony 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 mony. A pox of drowning thy self, it is clean out of the way. Seek thou rather to be hang'd in compassing thy joy, than to be drown'd and go without her.

Rod.

Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on the issue?

Jago.

Thou art sure of me.—Go, make mony.—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 thy self a pleasure, me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time, which will be delivered. Traverse, go, provide thy mony. We will have more of this to-morrow. Adieu.

Rod.

Where shall we meet i'th' morning?

Jago.

At my lodging.

Rod.

I'll be with thee betimes.

Jago.

Go to, farewel. Do you hear, Rodorigo!

Rod.

I'll sell all my land.