Enter RODERIGO and IAGO

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RODERIGO

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Tush! never tell me; I take it much unkindly
That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse
As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.

IAGO

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‘Sblood, but you will not hear me:
If ever I did dream of such a matter, Abhor me.

RODERIGO

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Thou told’st me thou didst hold him in thy hate.

 
Two Palm Trees that represent Iago and Roderigo


IAGO

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Despise me, if I do not. Thee great ones of the city,
In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,
Off-capp’d to him: and, by the faith of man,
I know my price, I am worth no worse a place:
But he; as loving his own pride and purposes,
Evades them, with a bombast circumstance
Horrible stuff’d with epithets of war;
And, in conclusion,
Nonsuits my mediators; for, ‘Certes,’ says he,
‘I have already chose my officer.’
And what was he?
Forsooth, a great arithmetician,
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,
A fellow almost damn’d in a fair wife;
That never set a squadron in the field,
Nor the division of a battle knows
More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric,
Wherein the toged consuls can propose
As masterly as he: mere prattle, without practice,
Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election:
And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof
At Rhodes, at Cyprus and on other grounds
Christian and heathen, must be be-lee’d and calm’d
By debitor and creditor: this counter-caster,
He, in good time, must his lieutenant be,
And I -- God bless the mark! -- his Moorship’s ancient. [1]


<references>

  1. ^ Russell, G.W.; Lambert, W.B. "Sherlock Holmes Meets Othello: A MDS Analysis of Literary Characters." British Journal of Educational Psychology,,1980, p.277-288.