William Shakespeare: Othello, Moor of Venice

ACT II. 3. SCENE III. A Hall in the Castle. (continued)

CASSIO.
Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, 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: you are but now cast in
his mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice; even so as
one would beat his offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion:
sue to him again, and he is yours.

CASSIO.
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?

CASSIO.
I know not.

IAGO.
Is't possible?

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

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

CASSIO.
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.