Chapter LXXXIX: The Folly of Intoxication. (322)

Iago. What, are you hurt, lieutenant? Cassio. Ay, past all surgery. Iago. Marry, heaven forbid! Cas. Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have 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 ways to recover the general again. Sue to him again, and he's
yours.

Cas. 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?

Cas. I know not.

Iago. Is't possible?

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

Iago. Why, but you are now well enough: how came you thus
recovered?

Cas. 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 moraler. 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.

Cas. 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! Oh 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.

Cas. 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. 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.

Cas. You advise me well.

Iago. I protest in the sincerity of love and honest kindness.

Cas. 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.

Cas. Good night, honest Iago.
Shakespeare.--Othello, Act ii, Scene iii.

NOTES.--Iago is represented as a crafty, unscrupulous villain. He applies for the position of lieutenant under Othello, but the latter has already appointed Cassio--who is honest, but of a weak character--to that position; he, however, makes Iago his ensign. Then Iago, to revenge himself for this and other fancied wrongs, enters upon a systematic course of villainy, part of which is to bring about the intoxication of Cassio, and his consequent discharge from the lieutenancy.

The Hydra was a fabled monster of Grecian mythology, having nine heads, one of which was immortal.

Desdemona was the wife of Othello.