What comfort to this great decay may come,
Shall be applied. For us, we will resign,
During the life of this old majesty,

To him our absolute power:-You, to your rights;
[To EDGAR and KENT.
With boot, and such addition as your honours
Have more then merited.-All friends shall taste
The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The

cup of their deservings.-O, see, see! Lear. And my poor fool is hanged! No, no, no life:

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no

Kent. Vex not his ghost: O let him pass! he hates him

That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer.

Edg.

O, he is gone, indeed. Kent. The wonder is he hath endured so long: He but usurped his life.

Alb. Bear them from hence.-Our present business

Is general woe.-Friends of my soul, you twain [To KENT and EDGAR. Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain. Kent. I have a journey, sir, shortly to go: My master calls, and I must not say, no.

Alb. The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

[Exeunt, with a dead march.

Ia personal suit to make me his lieutenant,
Oft capped 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,
Horribly stuffed with epithets of war;
And, in conclusion, nonsuits my mediators:
"For certes," says he, "I have already
Chosen my
officer." And what was he?
Forsooth, a great arithmetician;
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,

A fellow almost damned 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 togéd 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
calmed

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.

Rod. By heaven, I rather would have been his

hangman.

Iago. But there's no remedy; 'tis the curse

of service:

Preferment goes by letter and affection,
Not by the old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to the first. Now, sir, be judge yourself
Whether I in any just term am affined

To love the Moor.

Rod.

I would not follow him, then. Iago. O, sir, content you;

asters

I follow him to serve my turn upon him:
We cannot all be masters, nor
Cannot be truly followed. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master's ass,
For nought but provender; and when he's old,
cashiered:

Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are,
Who, trimmed in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves;
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them; and, when they have lined
their coats,

Do themselves homage: these fellows have some

soul;

And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir,
It is as sure as you are Roderigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago.
In following him, I follow but myself: