IAGO. If she be black, and thereto have a wit, She’ll find a white that shall her blackness fit. 

DESDEMONA. Worse and worse. 

EMILIA. How if fair and foolish? 

IAGO. She never yet was foolish that was fair, For even her folly help’d her to an heir. 

DESDEMONA. These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i’ the alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that’s foul and foolish? 

IAGO. There’s none so foul and foolish thereunto, But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do. 

DESDEMONA. O heavy ignorance! Thou praisest the worst best. But what praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed, one that in the authority of her merit did justly put on the vouch of very malice itself? 

IAGO. She that was ever fair and never proud, Had tongue at will and yet was never loud, Never lack’d gold and yet went never gay, Fled from her wish, and yet said, “Now I may”; She that, being anger’d, her revenge being nigh, Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly; She that in wisdom never was so frail To change the cod’s head for the salmon’s tail; She that could think and ne’er disclose her mind, See suitors following and not look behind; She was a wight, if ever such wight were— 

DESDEMONA. To do what? 

IAGO. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer. 

DESDEMONA. O most lame and impotent conclusion!—Do not learn of him, Emilia, though he be thy husband.—How say you, Cassio? is he not a most profane and liberal counsellor? 

CASSIO. He speaks home, madam. You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar. 

IAGO. [Aside.] He takes her by the palm. Ay, well said, whisper. With as little a web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do. I will gyve thee in thine own courtship. You say true, ’tis so, indeed. If such tricks as these strip you out of your lieutenantry, it had been better you had not kissed your three fingers so oft, which now again you are most apt to play the sir in. Very good; 

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