Page 1439 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

What will I do, thinkest thou?

IAGO
Why, go to bed and sleep.

RODERIGO
I will incontinently drown myself. [305]

IAGO
Well, if thou doest, I shall never love thee after it. Why, thou silly gentleman?

RODERIGO
It is silliness to live, when to live is a torment; and then we have a
prescription to die, when death is our physician. [310]

IAGO
O villainous! I ha’ look’d upon the world for four times seven years, and since

I could distinguish between a benefit and an injury, I never found a man that
knew how to love himself: ere I would say I would drown myself, for the love
of a guineahen, I [315] 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 [320] 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 manur’d with industry, why, the power, and corrigible [325]
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 [330] raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts;
whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect, or scion.