Rod. Iago![5258] 300
Iago. What say'st thou, noble heart?
Rod. What will I do, thinkest thou?[5259]
Iago. Why, go to bed and sleep.
Rod. I will incontinently drown myself.
Iago. If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Why,[5260] 305
thou silly gentleman![5261]
Rod. It is silliness to live when to live is torment; and[5262]
then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.[5263]
Iago. O villanous! I have looked upon the world for[5264] 310
four times seven years; and since I could distinguish betwixt[5265]
a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew[5266]
how to love himself. Ere I would say I would drown myself
for the love of a guinea-hen, I would change my humanity[5267]
with a baboon. 315
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.
Iago. Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are gardens; to the which our wills[5268]
are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, 320
set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one[5269]
gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have[5270]
it sterile with idleness or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If[5271]
the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise[5272] 325
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,[5273]
our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love,[5274]
to be a sect or scion.[5275] 330