DESDEMONA.
What's the matter?
OTHELLO.
All's well now, sweeting; come away to bed.
[To Montano, who is led off.]
Sir, for your hurts, myself will be your surgeon:
Lead him off.
Iago, look with care about the town,
And silence those whom this vile brawl distracted. —
Come, Desdemona: 'tis the soldiers' life
To have their balmy slumbers wak'd with strife.
[Exeunt all but Iago and Cassio.]
IAGO.
What, are you hurt, lieutenant?
CASSIO.
Ay, past all surgery.
IAGO.
Marry, heaven forbid!
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.
