"Well," Iago said quietly, Roderigo's indignant words ringing through his ears. You cannot possibly understand my torment...drown myself for grief... You have never loved as I do now-I am sure of it; I would bet my life upon it...I will hear no more of them... "Go to. You wish not to hear empty consolations?" Then to speak more of them I will not endeavor doing, for that is all they are... "Very well."
Attempts to console, indeed...for they were all in all mere attempts, some device aimed to daff the fool from insight...but that Roderigo could now see them for the half-hearted assays they were...that, in faith, was worrisome in the extreme. That he slighted Iago in the doing, undermining his depth of sentiment...that was nearly worse.
How dare he speak of what he does not know? How dare he presume to know your mind...MY mind...and say your love is but a farce...? No matter if it WAS; is that not past falsehood now? Is it not? Or do you disillusion yourself, insisting you hold no affection, no feeling, no LOVE for Emilia? ...And not only Emilia! He insults the depth of your agony, for God's sake: the one thing you know without doubt to be even now an indisputable truth...!
His hand, yet caught in Roderigo's weak grasp, flipped over suddenly to grab the young man's soft one, twisting it in a bruising hold as his other hand came to rest, knifelike, in the joint of Roderigo's wrist. The blonde fop was brought to his knees with a quick turn of the hands, and Iago wrenched the feeble white wrist behind Roderigo's stooped back as he bent, eyes gleaming with deadly cold, to whisper in the boy's ear.
"You think I cannot understand?" he hissed, his voice nearly a soft caress, tinged with indomitable steel. "You think I cannot possibly know what pain, what sorrow love can bring? You think I cannot know what it is to be denied, to be spurned, cast aside in the face of my greatest desire? You think I know not what torment is? You think I do not breathe it, live it, at this very moment?"
He wrested the abused wrist higher, sharply, so that Roderigo's face nearly touched the ground, and brought one foot up into the shoulder socket, debating with appalling frigidity the wisdom of dislocating it. The thought was tempting, too tempting...but then...he had need of Roderigo yet...and to hurt another would be to destroy yourself; do you truly WISH to become the monster you think yourself to be?
With dread finality in his voice, he whispered, "Do not speak of what you do not know." And he let the man go, satisfied with and loathing of himself in equal stead.