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
The inclining Desdemona to subdue
In any honest suit. She’s fram’d 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 enfetter’d 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.