William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ORSINO, Duke of Illyria

SEBASTIAN, brother to Viola

ANTONIO, a sea captain, friend to Sebastian

A SEA CAPTAIN, friend to Viola

VALENTINE, gentleman attending on the Duke

CURIO, gentleman attending on the Duke

SIR TOBY BELCH, uncle to Olivia

SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK

MALVOLIO, steward to Olivia

FABIAN, servant to Olivia

FESTE, a clown, servant to Olivia

OLIVIA, a rich countess

VIOLA

MARIA, Olivia’s waiting woman

Lords, Priests, Sailors, Officers, Musicians, and other Attendants

SCENE: A city in Illyria, and the sea-coast near it

ACT I.

SCENE I. An apartment in the DUKE’S palace.

  • DUKE
    If music be the food of love, play on;
  • Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
  • The appetite may sicken and so die.
  • That strain again! It had a dying fall;
  • O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
  • That breathes upon a bank of violets,
  • Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more;
  • ‘T is not so sweet now as it was before.
  • O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!
  • That, notwithstanding thy capacity
  • Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
  • Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
  • But falls into abatement and low price,
  • Even in a minute! so full of shapes is fancy
  • That it alone is high fantastical.
  • CURIO
    Will you go hunt, my lord?
  • DUKE
    What, Curio?
  • CURIO
    The hart.
  • DUKE
    Why, so I do, the noblest that I have.
  • O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
  • Methought she purg’d the air of pestilence!
  • That instant was I turn’d into a hart;
  • And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
  • E’er since pursue me.
  • How now! what news from her?
  • VALENTINE
    So please my lord, I might not be admitted,
  • But from her handmaid do return this answer:
  • The element itself, till seven years’ heat,
  • Shall not behold her face at ample view;
  • But, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk
  • And water once a day her chamber round
  • With eye-offending brine; all this to season
  • A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh
  • And lasting in her sad remembrance.
  • DUKE
    O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame
  • To pay this debt of love but to a brother,
  • How will she love when the rich golden shaft
  • Hath kill’d the flock of all affections else
  • That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart,
  • These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill’d–
  • Her sweet perfections — with one self king!
  • Away before me to sweet beds of flow’rs;
  • Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bow’rs.
    •

    SCENE II. The sea-coast.

  • VIOLA
    What country, friends, is this?
  • CAPTAIN
    This is Illyria, lady.
  • VIOLA
    And what should I do in Illyria?
  • My brother he is in Elysium.
  • Perchance he is not drown’d. What think you, sailors?
  • CAPTAIN
    It is perchance that you yourself were sav’d.
  • VIOLA
    O my poor brother! and so perchance may he be.
  • CAPTAIN
    True, madam: and, to comfort you with chance,
  • Assure yourself, after our ship did split,
  • When you, and those poor number sav’d with you,
  • Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,
  • Most provident in peril, bind himself,
  • Courage and hope both teaching him the practice,
  • To a strong mast that liv’d upon the sea;
  • Where, like Arion on the dolphin’s back,
  • I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves
  • So long as I could see.
  • VIOLA
    For saying so, there’s gold:
  • Mine own escape unfoldeth to my hope,
  • Whereto thy speech serves for authority,
  • The like of him. Know’st thou this country?
  • CAPTAIN
    Ay, madam, well; for I was bred and born
  • Not three hours’ travel from this very place.
  • VIOLA
    Who governs here?
  • CAPTAIN
    A noble duke, in nature as in name.
  • VIOLA
    What is his name?
  • CAPTAIN
    Orsino.
  • VIOLA
    Orsino! I have heard my father name him;
  • He was a bachelor then.
  • CAPTAIN
    And so is now, or was so very late;
  • For but a month ago I went from hence,
  • And then ’twas fresh in murmur–as, you know,
  • What great ones do the less will prattle of–
  • That he did seek the love of fair Olivia.
  • VIOLA
    What’s she?
  • CAPTAIN
    A virtuous maid, the daughter of a count
  • That died some twelvemonth since, then leaving her
  • In the protection of his son, her brother,
  • Who shortly also died; for whose dear love,
  • They say, she hath abjur’d the company
  • And sight of men.
  • VIOLA
    O that I serv’d that lady,
  • And might not be delivered to the world,
  • Till I had made mine own occasion mellow,
  • What my estate is!
  • CAPTAIN
    That were hard to compass,
  • Because she will admit no kind of suit,
  • No, not the duke’s.
  • VIOLA
    There is a fair behaviour in thee, captain;
  • And though that nature with a beauteous wall
  • Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee
  • I will believe thou hast a mind that suits
  • With this thy fair and outward character.
  • I prithee, and I’ll pay thee bounteously,
  • Conceal me what I am, and be my aid
  • For such disguise as haply shall become
  • The form of my intent. I’ll serve this duke:
  • Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him;
  • It may be worth thy pains, for I can sing
  • And speak to him in many sorts of music
  • That will allow me very worth his service.
  • What else may hap, to time I will commit;
  • Only shape thou silence to my wit.
  • CAPTAIN
    Be you his eunuch, and your mute I’ll be;
  • When my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see.
  • VIOLA
    I thank thee; lead me on.
    •

    SCENE III. OLIVIA’S house.

  • SIR TOBY
    What a plague means my niece, to take the death of her brother
  • thus? I am sure care’s an enemy to life.
  • MARIA
    By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o’ nights; your
  • cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.
  • SIR TOBY
    Why, let her except before excepted.
  • MARIA
    Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits of
  • order.
  • SIR TOBY
    Confine! I’ll confine myself no finer than I am. These clothes
  • are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too; and they
  • be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.
  • MARIA
    That quaffing and drinking will undo you. I heard my lady talk of
  • it yesterday, and of a foolish knight that you brought in one
  • night here to be her wooer.
  • SIR TOBY
    Who, Sir Andrew Aguecheek?
  • MARIA
    Ay, he.
  • SIR TOBY
    He’s as tall a man as any’s in Illyria.
  • MARIA
    What’s that to th’ purpose?
  • SIR TOBY
    Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.
  • MARIA
    Ay, but he’ll have but a year in all these ducats; he’s a very
  • fool and a prodigal.
  • SIR TOBY
    Fie, that you’ll say so! he plays o’ th’ viol-de-gamboys, and
  • speaks three or four languages word for word without book, and
  • hath all the good gifts of nature.
  • MARIA
    He hath indeed, almost natural; for, besides that he’s a fool,
  • he’s a great quarreller; and but that he hath the gift of a
  • coward to allay the gust he hath in quarrelling, ’tis thought
  • among the prudent he would quickly have the gift of a grave.
  • SIR TOBY
    By this hand, they are scoundrels and subtractors that say so of
  • him. Who are they?
  • MARIA
    They that add, moreover, he’s drunk nightly in your company.
  • SIR TOBY
    With drinking healths to my niece. I’ll drink to her as long as
  • there is a passage in my throat and drink in Illyria: he’s a
  • coward and a coystrill that will not drink to my niece
  • till his brains turn o’ th’ toe like a parish-top. What, wench!
  • Castiliano vulgo! for here comes Sir Andrew Agueface.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Sir Toby Belch; how now, Sir Toby Belch!
  • SIR TOBY
    Sweet Sir Andrew!
  • SIR ANDREW
    Bless you, fair shrew.
  • MARIA
    And you too, sir.
  • SIR TOBY
    Accost, Sir Andrew, accost.
  • SIR ANDREW
    What’s that?
  • SIR TOBY
    My niece’s chambermaid.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Good Mistress Accost, I desire better acquaintance.
  • MARIA
    My name is Mary, sir.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Good Mistress Mary Accost,–
  • SIR TOBY
    You mistake, knight; ‘accost’ is front her, board her, woo her,
  • assail her.
  • SIR ANDREW
    By my troth, I would not undertake her in this company. Is that
  • the meaning of ‘accost’?
  • MARIA
    Fare you well, gentlemen.
  • SIR TOBY
    An thou let part so, Sir Andrew, would thou mightst never draw
  • sword again.
  • SIR ANDREW
    And you part so, mistress, I would I might never draw sword
  • again. Fair lady, do you think you have fools in hand?
  • MARIA
    Sir, I have not you by th’ hand.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Marry, but you shall have; and here’s my hand.
  • MARIA
    Now, sir, ‘thought is free.’ I pray you, bring your hand to th’
  • buttery-bar and let it drink.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Wherefore, sweet-heart? what’s your metaphor?
  • MARIA
    It’s dry, sir.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Why, I think so; I am not such an ass but I can keep my hand dry.
  • But what’s your jest?
  • MARIA
    A dry jest, sir.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Are you full of them?
  • MARIA
    Ay, sir, I have them at my fingers’ ends; marry, now I let go
  • your hand, I am barren.
  • SIR TOBY
    O knight, thou lack’st a cup of canary; when did I see thee so
  • put down?
  • SIR ANDREW
    Never in your life, I think; unless you see canary put me down.
  • Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an
  • ordinary man has; but I am a great eater of beef, and I
  • believe that does harm to my wit.
  • SIR TOBY
    No question.
  • SIR ANDREW
    And I thought that, I’d forswear it. I’ll ride home to-morrow,
  • Sir Toby.
  • SIR TOBY
    Pourquoi, my dear knight?
  • SIR ANDREW
    What is ‘pourquoi’? do or not do? I would I had bestow’d that
  • time in the tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and
  • bear-baiting! O, had I but follow’d the arts!
  • SIR TOBY
    Then hadst thou had an excellent head of hair.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Why, would that have mended my hair?
  • SIR TOBY
    Past question; for thou seest it will not curl by nature.
  • SIR ANDREW
    But it becomes me well enough, does’t not?
  • SIR TOBY
    Excellent; it hangs like flax on a distaff.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Faith, I’ll home to-morrow, Sir Toby. Your niece will not be
  • seen; or, if she be, it’s four to one she’ll none of me: the
  • count himself here hard by wooes her.
  • SIR TOBY
    She’ll none o’ th’ count. She’ll not match above her degree,
  • neither in estate, years, nor wit; I have heard her swear’t. Tut,
  • there’s life in’t, man.
  • SIR ANDREW
    I’ll stay a month longer. I am a fellow o’ th’ strangest mind i’
  • th’ world; I delight in masques and revels sometimes altogether.
  • SIR TOBY
    Art thou good at these kickshawses, knight?
  • SIR ANDREW
    As any man in Illyria, whatsoever he be, under the degree of my
  • betters; and yet I will not compare with an old man.
  • SIR TOBY
    What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?
  • SIR ANDREW
    Faith, I can cut a caper.
  • SIR TOBY
    And I can cut the mutton to’t.
  • SIR ANDREW
    And I think I have the back-trick simply as strong as any man in
  • Illyria.
  • SIR TOBY
    Wherefore are these things hid? wherefore have these gifts a
  • curtain before ’em? are they like to take dust, like Mistress
  • Mall’s picture? why dost thou not go to church in a galliard, and
  • come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig. What dost
  • thou mean? is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think, by the
  • excellent constitution of thy leg, it was form’d under the star
  • of a galliard.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Ay, ‘t is strong, and it does indifferent well in flame-colour’d
  • stock. Shall we set about some revels?
  • SIR TOBY
    What shall we do else? were we not born under Taurus?
  • SIR ANDREW
    Taurus! That’s sides and heart.
  • SIR TOBY
    No, sir; it is legs and thighs. Let me see the caper. Ha! higher!
  • ha, ha, excellent!
    •

    SCENE IV. The DUKE’S palace.

  • VALENTINE
    If the duke continue these favours towards you, Cesario, you are
  • like to be much advanc’d. He hath known you but three days, and
  • already you are no stranger.
  • VIOLA
    You either fear his humour or my negligence, that you call in
  • question the continuance of his love. Is he inconstant, sir, in
  • his favours?
  • VALENTINE
    No, believe me.
  • VIOLA
    I thank you. Here comes the Count.
  • DUKE
    Who saw Cesario, ho?
  • VIOLA
    On your attendance, my lord; here.
  • DUKE
    Stand you awhile aloof. Cesario,
  • Thou know’st no less but all; I have unclasp’d
  • To thee the book even of my secret soul.
  • Therefore, good youth, address thy gait unto her;
  • Be not denied access, stand at her doors,
  • And tell them, there thy fixed foot shall grow
  • Till thou have audience.
  • VIOLA
    Sure, my noble lord,
  • If she be so abandon’d to her sorrow
  • As it is spoke, she never will admit me.
  • DUKE
    Be clamorous and leap all civil bounds
  • Rather than make unprofited return.
  • VIOLA
    Say I do speak with her, my lord, what then?
  • DUKE
    O, then unfold the passion of my love,
  • Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith!
  • It shall become thee well to act my woes;
  • She will attend it better in thy youth
  • Than in a nuncio’s of more grave aspect.
  • VIOLA
    I think not so, my lord.
  • DUKE
    Dear lad, believe it;
  • For they shall yet belie thy happy years,
  • That say thou art a man: Diana’s lip
  • Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe
  • Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound,
  • And all is semblative a woman’s part.
  • I know thy constellation is right apt
  • For this affair. Some four or five attend him;
  • All, if you will; for I myself am best
  • When least in company. Prosper well in this,
  • And thou shalt live as freely as thy lord,
  • To call his fortunes thine.
  • VIOLA
    I’ll do my best
  • To woo your lady,– [Aside] yet, a barful strife!
  • Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.
  • MARIA
    Nay, either tell me where thou hast been, or I will not open my
  • lips so wide as a bristle may enter in way of thy excuse. My lady
  • will hang thee for thy absence.
  • CLOWN
    Let her hang me. He that is well hang’d in this world needs to
  • fear no colours.
  • MARIA
    Make that good.
  • CLOWN
    He shall see none to fear.
  • MARIA
    A good lenten answer. I can tell thee where that saying was born,
  • of ‘I fear no colours.’
  • CLOWN
    Where, good Mistress Mary?
  • MARIA
    In the wars; and that may you be bold to say in your foolery.
  • CLOWN
    Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are
  • fools, let them use their talents.
  • MARIA
    Yet you will be hang’d for being so long absent; or to be turn’d
  • away, is not that as good as a hanging to you?
  • CLOWN
    Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage; and, for turning
  • away, let summer bear it out.
  • MARIA
    You are resolute, then?
  • CLOWN
    Not so, neither; but I am resolv’d on two points.
  • MARIA
    That, if one break, the other will hold; or, if both break, your
  • gaskins fall.
  • CLOWN
    Apt, in good faith; very apt. Well, go thy way; if Sir Toby would
  • leave drinking, thou wert as witty a piece of Eve’s flesh as any
  • in Illyria.
  • MARIA
    Peace, you rogue, no more o’ that. Here comes my lady; make your
  • excuse wisely, you were best.
  • CLOWN
    Wit, and ‘t be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits
  • that think they have thee do very oft prove fools; and I, that am
  • sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man: for what says
  • Quinapalus? ‘Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.’
  • God bless thee, lady!
  • OLIVIA
    Take the fool away.
  • CLOWN
    Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady.
  • OLIVIA
    Go to, you’re a dry fool; I’ll no more of you: besides, you grow
  • dishonest.
  • CLOWN
    Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend; for,
  • give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry: bid the
  • dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer
  • dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Any thing
  • that’s mended is but patch’d; virtue that transgresses is but
  • patch’d with sin; and sin that amends is but patch’d with virtue.
  • If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not,
  • what remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so
  • beauty’s a flower. The lady bade take away the fool; therefore, I
  • say again, take her away.
  • OLIVIA
    Sir, I bade them take away you.
  • CLOWN
    Misprision in the highest degree! Lady, cucullus non facit
  • monachum; that’s as much to say as I wear not motley in my brain.
  • Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.
  • OLIVIA
    Can you do it?
  • CLOWN
    Dexteriously, good madonna.
  • OLIVIA
    Make your proof.
  • CLOWN
    I must catechize you for it, madonna; good my mouse of virtue,
  • answer me.
  • OLIVIA
    Well, sir, for want of other idleness, I’ll bide your proof.
  • CLOWN
    Good madonna, why mourn’st thou?
  • OLIVIA
    Good fool, for my brother’s death.
  • CLOWN
    I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
  • OLIVIA
    I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
  • CLOWN
    The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul being in
  • heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.
  • OLIVIA
    What think you of this fool, Malvolio? doth he not mend?
  • MALVOLIO
    Yes, and shall do till the pangs of death shake him. Infirmity,
  • that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.
  • CLOWN
    God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing
  • your folly! Sir Toby will be sworn that I am no fox; but he will
  • not pass his word for twopence that you are no fool.
  • OLIVIA
    How say you to that, Malvolio?
  • MALVOLIO
    I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal; I
  • saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no
  • more brain than a stone. Look you now, he’s out of
  • his guard already; unless you laugh and minister occasion to him,
  • he is gagg’d. I protest, I take these wise men, that crow so at
  • these set kind of fools, no better than the fools’ zanies.
  • OLIVIA
    O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a
  • distemper’d appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free
  • disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem
  • cannon bullets. There is no slander in an allow’d fool, though he
  • do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man,
  • though he do nothing but reprove.
  • CLOWN
    Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou speak’st well of
  • fools!
  • MARIA
    Madam, there is at the gate a young gentleman much desires to
  • speak with you.
  • OLIVIA
    From the Count Orsino, is it?
  • MARIA
    I know not, madam; ‘t is a fair young man, and well attended.
  • OLIVIA
    Who of my people hold him in delay?
  • MARIA
    Sir Toby, madam, your kinsman.
  • OLIVIA
    Fetch him off, I pray you; he speaks nothing but madman: fie on
  • him! [Exit MARIA.] Go you, Malvolio: if it be a suit from the
  • count, I am sick, or not at home; what you will, to dismiss it.
  • [Exit MALVOLIO.] Now you see, sir, how your fooling grows old,
  • and people dislike it.
  • CLOWN
    Thou hast spoke for us, madonna, as if thy eldest son should be a
  • fool; whose skull Jove cram with brains! for– here he comes–
  • one of thy kin has a most weak pia mater.
  • OLIVIA
    By mine honour, half drunk. What is he at the gate, cousin?
  • SIR TOBY
    A gentleman.
  • OLIVIA
    A gentleman! what gentleman?
  • SIR TOBY
    ‘T is a gentleman here — a plague o’ these pickle-herring! How
  • now, sot!
  • CLOWN
    Good Sir Toby!
  • OLIVIA
    Cousin, cousin, how have you come so early by this lethargy?
  • SIR TOBY
    Lechery! I defy lechery. There’s one at the gate.
  • OLIVIA
    Ay, marry, what is he?
  • SIR TOBY
    Let him be the devil, and he will, I care not; give me faith, say
  • I. Well, it’s all one.
  • OLIVIA
    What’s a drunken man like, fool?
  • CLOWN
    Like a drown’d man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat
  • makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him.
  • OLIVIA
    Go thou and seek the crowner, and let him sit o’ my coz; for he’s
  • in the third degree of drink, he’s drown’d: go look after him.
  • CLOWN
    He is but mad yet, madonna; and the fool shall look to the
  • madman.
  • MALVOLIO
    Madam, yond young fellow swears he will speak with you. I told
  • him you were sick; he takes on him to understand so much, and
  • therefore comes to speak with you. I told him you were asleep; he
  • seems to have a foreknowledge of that too, and therefore comes to
  • speak with you. What is to be said to him, lady? he’s fortified
  • against any denial.
  • OLIVIA
    Tell him he shall not speak with me.
  • MALVOLIO
    Has been told so; and he says, he’ll stand at your door like a
  • sheriff’s post, and be the supporter to a bench, but he’ll speak
  • with you.
  • OLIVIA
    What kind o’ man is he?
  • MALVOLIO
    Why, of mankind.
  • OLIVIA
    What manner of man?
  • MALVOLIO
    Of very ill manner; he’ll speak with you, will you or no.
  • OLIVIA
    Of what personage and years is he?
  • MALVOLIO
    Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a
  • squash is before ‘t is a peascod, or a codling when ‘t is almost
  • an apple: ‘t is with him in standing water, between boy and man.
  • He is very well-favour’d, and he speaks very shrewishly; one
  • would think his mother’s milk were scarce out of him.
  • OLIVIA
    Let him approach. Call in my gentlewoman.
  • MALVOLIO
    Gentlewoman, my lady calls.
  • OLIVIA
    Give me my veil; come, throw it o’er my face;
  • We’ll once more hear Orsino’s embassy.
  • VIOLA
    The honourable lady of the house, which is she?
  • OLIVIA
    Speak to me; I shall answer for her. Your will?
  • VIOLA
    Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty,– I pray you,
  • tell me if this be the lady of the house, for I never saw her: I
  • would be loth to cast away my speech; for, besides that it is
  • excellently well penn’d, I have taken great pains to con it. Good
  • beauties, let me sustain no scorn; I am very comptible, even to
  • the least sinister usage.
  • OLIVIA
    Whence came you, sir?
  • VIOLA
    I can say little more than I have studied, and that question’s
  • out of my part. Good gentle one, give me modest assurance if you
  • be the lady of the house, that I may proceed in
  • my speech.
  • OLIVIA
    Are you a comedian?
  • VIOLA
    No, my profound heart; and yet, by the very fangs of malice I
  • swear, I am not that I play. Are you the lady of the house?
  • OLIVIA
    If I do not usurp myself, I am.
  • VIOLA
    Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp yourself; for what is
  • yours to bestow is not yours to reserve. But this is from my
  • commission. I will on with my speech in your praise, and then
  • show you the heart of my message.
  • OLIVIA
    Come to what is important in’t; I forgive you the praise.
  • VIOLA
    Alas, I took great pains to study it, and ‘t is poetical.
  • OLIVIA
    It is the more like to be feign’d; I pray you, keep it in. I
  • heard you were saucy at my gates, and allow’d your approach
  • rather to wonder at you than to hear you. If you be not mad, be
  • gone; if you have reason, be brief; ‘t is not that time of moon
  • with me to make one in so skipping a dialogue.
  • MARIA
    Will you hoist sail, sir? here lies your way.
  • VIOLA
    No, good swabber; I am to hull here a little longer. Some
  • mollification for your giant, sweet lady. Tell me your mind; I am
  • a messenger.
  • OLIVIA
    Sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver, when the courtesy
  • of it is so fearful. Speak your office.
  • VIOLA
    It alone concerns your ear. I bring no overture of war, no
  • taxation of homage: I hold the olive in my hand; my words are as
  • full of peace as matter.
  • OLIVIA
    Yet you began rudely. What are you? what would you?
  • VIOLA
    The rudeness that hath appear’d in me have I learn’d from my
  • entertainment. What I am, and what I would, are as secret as
  • maidenhead; to your ears, divinity; to any other’s, profanation.
  • OLIVIA
    Give us the place alone; we will hear this divinity.
  • [Exeunt MARIA and ATTENDANTS.] Now, sir, what is your text?
  • VIOLA
    Most sweet lady,–
  • OLIVIA
    A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it. Where lies
  • your text?
  • VIOLA
    In Orsino’s bosom.
  • OLIVIA
    In his bosom! In what chapter of his bosom?
  • VIOLA
    To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.
  • OLIVIA
    O, I have read it; it is heresy. Have you no more to say?
  • VIOLA
    Good madam, let me see your face.
  • OLIVIA
    Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face?
  • You are now out of your text; but we will draw the curtain, and
  • show you the picture. Look you, sir, such a one I was this
  • present; is ‘t not well done?
  • VIOLA
    Excellently done, if God did all.
  • OLIVIA
    ‘T is in grain, sir; ‘t will endure wind and weather.
  • VIOLA
    ‘T is beauty truly blent whose red and white
  • Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.
  • Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive,
  • If you will lead these graces to the grave,
  • And leave the world no copy.
  • OLIVIA
    O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out divers
  • schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried, and every
  • particle and utensil labell’d to my will: as, item, two lips,
  • indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item,
  • one neck, one chin, and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise
  • me?
  • VIOLA
    I see you what you are, you are too proud;
  • But, if you were the devil, you are fair.
  • My lord and master loves you; O, such love
  • Could be but recompens’d, though you were crown’d
  • The nonpareil of beauty!
  • OLIVIA
    How does he love me?
  • VIOLA
    With adorations, fertile tears,
  • With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.
  • OLIVIA
    Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him:
  • Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
  • Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;
  • In voices well divulg’d, free, learn’d, and valiant;
  • And, in dimension and the shape of nature,
  • A gracious person: but yet I cannot love him;
  • He might have took his answer long ago.
  • VIOLA
    If I did love you in my master’s flame,
  • With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
  • In your denial I would find no sense;
  • I would not understand it.
  • OLIVIA
    Why, what would you?
  • VIOLA
    Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
  • And call upon my soul within the house;
  • Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
  • And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
  • Halloo your name to the reverberate hills,
  • And make the babbling gossip of the air
  • Cry out, ‘Olivia!’ O, you should not rest
  • Between the elements of air and earth,
  • But you should pity me!
  • OLIVIA
    You might do much. What is your parentage?
  • VIOLA
    Above my fortunes, yet my state is well;
  • I am a gentleman.
  • OLIVIA
    Get you to your lord;
  • I cannot love him: let him send no more;
  • Unless, perchance, you come to me again,
  • To tell me how he takes it. Fare you well;
  • I thank you for your pains. Spend this for me.
  • VIOLA
    I am no fee’d post, lady; keep your purse:
  • My master, not myself, lacks recompense.
  • Love make his heart of flint that you shall love;
  • And let your fervour, like my master’s, be
  • Plac’d in contempt! Farewell, fair cruelty.
  • OLIVIA
    ‘What is your parentage?’
  • ‘Above my fortunes, yet my state is well;
  • I am a gentleman.’ I’ll be sworn thou art;
  • Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit,
  • Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast! Soft, soft!
  • Unless the master were the man. How now!
  • Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
  • Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections
  • With an invisible and subtle stealth
  • To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.
  • What ho, Malvolio!
  • MALVOLIO
    Here, madam, at your service.
  • OLIVIA
    Run after that same peevish messenger,
  • The county’s man: he left this ring behind him,
  • Would I or not; tell him I’ll none of it.
  • Desire him not to flatter with his lord,
  • Nor hold him up with hopes; I am not for him.
  • If that the youth will come this way to-morrow,
  • I’ll give him reasons for’t. Hie thee, Malvolio.
  • MALVOLIO
    Madam, I will.
  • OLIVIA
    I do I know not what; and fear to find
  • Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
  • Fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe;
  • What is decreed must be, and be this so!
    •

    ACT II.

    SCENE I. The sea-coast

  • ANTONIO
    Will you stay no longer; nor will you not that I go with you?
  • SEBASTIAN
    By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me: the
  • malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours; therefore I
  • shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone: it
  • were a bad recompense for your love, to lay any of them on you.
  • ANTONIO
    Let me know of you whither you are bound.
  • SEBASTIAN
    No, sooth, sir; my determinate voyage is mere extravagancy. But I
  • perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty that you will not
  • extort from me what I am willing to
  • keep in; therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express
  • myself. You must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian,
  • which I called Roderigo. My father was that Sebastian of
  • Messaline whom I know you have heard of. He left behind him
  • myself and a sister, both born in an hour. If the heavens had
  • been pleas’d, would we had so ended! but you, sir, alter’d that;
  • for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was
  • my sister drown’d.
  • ANTONIO
    Alas the day!
  • SEBASTIAN
    A lady, sir, though it was said she much resembl’d me, was yet of
  • many accounted beautiful; but, though I could not, with such
  • estimable wonder, over-far believe that, yet thus far I will
  • boldly publish her: she bore mind that envy could not but call
  • fair. She is drown’d already, sir, with salt water, though I seem
  • to drown her remembrance again with more.
  • ANTONIO
    Pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment.
  • SEBASTIAN
    O good Antonio, forgive me your trouble!
  • ANTONIO
    If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant.
  • SEBASTIAN
    If you will not undo what you have done, that is, kill him whom
  • you have recover’d, desire it not. Fare ye well at once; my bosom
  • is full of kindness, and I am yet so near the manners of my
  • mother that upon the least occasion more mine eyes will tell
  • tales of me. I am bound to the Count Orsino’s court; farewell.
  • ANTONIO
    The gentleness of all the gods go with thee!
  • I have many enemies in Orsino’s court,
  • Else would I very shortly see thee there.
  • But, come what may, I do adore thee so
  • That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.
    •

    SCENE II. A street

  • MALVOLIO
    Were you not ev’n now with the Countess Olivia?
  • VIOLA
    Even now, sir; on a moderate pace I have since arriv’d but
  • hither.
  • MALVOLIO
    She returns this ring to you, sir; you might have sav’d me my
  • pains, to have taken it away yourself. She adds, moreover, that
  • you should put your lord into a desperate assurance she will none
  • of him; and one thing more, that you be never so hardy to come
  • again in his affairs, unless it be to report your lord’s taking
  • of this. Receive it so.
  • VIOLA
    She took the ring of me; I’ll none of it.
  • MALVOLIO
    Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is it
  • should be so return’d. If it be worth stooping for, there it lies
  • in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.
  • VIOLA
    I left no ring with her; what means this lady?
  • Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her!
  • She made good view of me; indeed, so much
  • That, methought, her eyes had lost her tongue,
  • For she did speak in starts distractedly.
  • She loves me, sure: the cunning of her passion
  • Invites me in this churlish messenger.
  • None of my lord’s ring! why, he sent her none.
  • I am the man. If it be so, as ‘t is,
  • Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
  • Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,
  • Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
  • How easy is it for the proper-false
  • In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms!
  • Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!
  • For such as we are made of, such we be.
  • How will this fadge? my master loves her dearly;
  • And I, poor monster, fond as much on him,
  • And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.
  • What will become of this? As I am man,
  • My state is desperate for my master’s love;
  • As I am woman– now, alas the day!–
  • What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!
  • O time, thou must untangle this, not I;
  • It is too hard a knot for me to untie!
    •

    SCENE III. OLIVIA’S house

  • SIR TOBY
    Approach, Sir Andrew: not to be a-bed after midnight is to be up
  • betimes; and ‘diluculo surgere,’ thou know’st–
  • SIR ANDREW
    Nay, by my troth, I know not; but I know, to be up late is to be
  • up late.
  • SIR TOBY
    A false conclusion; I hate it as an unfill’d can. To be up after
  • midnight, and to go to bed then, is early; so that to go to bed
  • after midnight is to go to bed betimes. Does not our life
  • consist of the four elements?
  • SIR ANDREW
    Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of eating and
  • drinking.
  • SIR TOBY
    Thou ‘rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I
  • say! a stoup of wine!
  • SIR ANDREW
    Here comes the fool, i’ faith.
  • CLOWN
    How now, my hearts! did you never see the picture of ‘We Three’?
  • SIR TOBY
    Welcome, ass. Now let’s have a catch.
  • SIR ANDREW
    By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. I had rather than
  • forty shillings I had such a leg, and so sweet a breath to sing,
  • as the fool has. In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling
  • last night, when thou spokest of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians
  • passing the equinoctial of Queubus; ‘t was very good, i’ faith. I
  • sent thee sixpence for thy leman; hadst it?
  • CLOWN
    I did impeticos thy gratillity; for Malvolio’s nose is no
  • whipstock; my lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no
  • bottle-ale houses.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Excellent! why, this is the best fooling, when all is done. Now,
  • a song.
  • SIR TOBY
    Come on; there is sixpence for you: let’s have a song.
  • SIR ANDREW
    There’s a testril of me too. If one knight give a–
  • CLOWN
    Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?
  • SIR TOBY
    A love-song, a love-song.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Ay, ay; I care not for good life.
  • CLOWN
    [Sings.]
  • O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
  • O, stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
  • That can sing both high and low:
  • Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
  • Journeys end in lovers meeting,
  • Every wise man’s son doth know.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Excellent good, i’ faith.
  • SIR TOBY
    Good, good.
  • CLOWN
    [Sings.]
  • What is love? ‘T is not hereafter;
  • Present mirth hath present laughter;
  • What’s to come is still unsure.
  • In delay there lies no plenty,
  • Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
  • Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
  • SIR ANDREW
    A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.
  • SIR TOBY
    A contagious breath.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Very sweet and contagious, i’ faith.
  • SIR TOBY
    To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall we make
  • the welkin dance indeed? shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch
  • that will draw three souls out of one weaver? shall we do that?
  • SIR ANDREW
    And you love me, let’s do ‘t; I am dog at a catch.
  • CLOWN
    By’r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Most certain. Let our catch be, ‘Thou knave.’
  • CLOWN
    ‘Hold thy peace, thou knave,’ knight? I shall be constrain’d in
  • ‘t to call thee knave, knight.
  • SIR ANDREW
    ‘Tis not the first time I have constrain’d one to call me knave.
  • Begin, fool: it begins, ‘Hold thy peace.’
  • CLOWN
    I shall never begin, if I hold my peace.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Good, i’ faith! Come, begin.
  • [Catch sung.]
  • MARIA
    What a caterwauling do you keep here! If my lady have not call’d
  • up her steward Malvolio, and bid him turn you out of doors,
  • never trust me.
  • SIR TOBY
    My lady’s a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio’s a
  • Peg-a-Ramsey, and ‘Three merry men be we.’
  • Am not I consanguineous? am I not of her blood? Tilly-vally;
  • lady! [Sings.] ‘There dwelt a man in Babylon, lady, lady!’
  • CLOWN
    Beshrew me, the knight’s in admirable fooling.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Ay, he does well enough if he be dispos’d, and so do I too; he
  • does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.
  • SIR TOBY
    [Sings]
  • ‘O, the twelfth day of December,’–
  • MARIA
    For the love o’ God, peace!
  • MALVOLIO
    My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have you no wit,
  • manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of
  • night? Do ye make an alehouse of my lady’s house, that ye squeak
  • out your coziers’ catches without any mitigation or remorse of
  • voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time, in you?
  • SIR TOBY
    We did keep time, sir, in our catches. Sneck up!
  • MALVOLIO
    Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My lady bade me tell you
  • that, though she harbours you as her kins-man, she’s nothing
  • allied to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your
  • misdemeanours, you are welcome to the house; if not, and it would
  • please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you
  • farewell.
  • SIR TOBY
    ‘Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone.’
  • MARIA
    Nay, good Sir Toby.
  • CLOWN
    ‘His eyes do show his days are almost done.’
  • MALVOLIO
    Is ‘t even so?
  • SIR TOBY
    ‘But I will never die.’
  • CLOWN
    Sir Toby, there you lie.
  • MALVOLIO
    This is much credit to you.
  • SIR TOBY
    ‘Shall I bid him go?’
  • CLOWN
    ‘What and if you do?’
  • SIR TOBY
    ‘Shall I bid him go, and spare not?’
  • CLOWN
    ‘O, no, no, no, no, you dare not.’
  • SIR TOBY
    Out o’ tune, sir? ye lie. Art any more than a steward? Dost thou
  • think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes
  • and ale?
  • CLOWN
    Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i’ th’ mouth too.
  • SIR TOBY
    Th ‘rt i’ th’ right. Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs. A
  • stoup of wine, Maria!
  • MALVOLIO
    Mistress Mary, if you priz’d my lady’s favour at any thing more
  • than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule.
  • She shall know of it, by this hand.
  • MARIA
    Go shake your ears.
  • SIR ANDREW
    ‘T were as good a deed as to drink when a man’s a-hungry, to
  • challenge him the field, and then to break promise with him and
  • make a fool of him.
  • SIR TOBY
    Do’t, knight: I’ll write thee a challenge; or I’ll deliver thy
  • indignation to him by word of mouth.
  • MARIA
    Sweet Sir Toby, be patient for to-night; since the youth of the
  • count’s was to-day with my lady, she is much out of quiet. For
  • Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him; if I do not gull him
  • into a nayword, and make him a common recreation, do not think I
  • have wit enough to lie straight in my bed: I know I can do it.
  • SIR TOBY
    Possess us, possess us; tell us something of him.
  • MARIA
    Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan.
  • SIR ANDREW
    O, if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog!
  • SIR TOBY
    What, for being a puritan? thy exquisite reason, dear knight?
  • SIR ANDREW
    I have no exquisite reason for ‘t, but I have reason good enough.
  • MARIA
    The devil a puritan that he is, or any thing constantly, but a
  • time-pleaser; an affection’d ass, that cons state without book,
  • and utters it by great swarths; the best persuaded of himself, so
  • cramm’d, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds
  • of faith that all that look on him love him; and on that vice in
  • him will my revenge find notable cause to work.
  • SIR TOBY
    What wilt thou do?
  • MARIA
    I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love; wherein, by
  • the colour of his beard, the shape of his leg, the manner of his
  • gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and
  • complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. I
  • can write very like my lady, your niece; on a forgotten matter we
  • can hardly make distinction of our hands.
  • SIR TOBY
    Excellent! I smell a device.
  • SIR ANDREW
    I have ‘t in my nose too.
  • SIR TOBY
    He shall think, by the letters that thou wilt drop, that they
  • come from my niece, and that she’s in love with him.
  • MARIA
    My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.
  • SIR ANDREW
    And your horse now would make him an ass.
  • MARIA
    Ass, I doubt not.
  • SIR ANDREW
    O, ‘t will be admirable!
  • MARIA
    Sport royal, I warrant you; I know my physic will work with him.
  • I will plant you two, and let the fool make a third, where he
  • shall find the letter; observe his construction of it. For
  • this night, to bed, and dream on the event. Farewell.
  • SIR TOBY
    Good night, Penthesilea.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Before me, she’s a good wench.
  • SIR TOBY
    She’s a beagle, true-bred, and one that adores me. What o’ that?
  • SIR ANDREW
    I was ador’d once too.
  • SIR TOBY
    Let’s to bed, knight. Thou hadst need send for more money.
  • SIR ANDREW
    If I cannot recover your niece, I am a foul way out.
  • SIR TOBY
    Send for money, knight; if thou hast her not i’ th’ end, call me
  • cut.
  • SIR ANDREW
    If I do not, never trust me; take it how you will.
  • SIR TOBY
    Come, come, I’ll go burn some sack; ‘t is too late to go to bed
  • now. Come, knight; come, knight.
    •

    SCENE IV. The DUKE’S palace

  • DUKE
    Give me some music. Now, good morrow, friends.
  • Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,
  • That old and antique song we heard last night;
  • Methought it did relieve my passion much,
  • More than light airs and recollected terms
  • Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.
  • Come, but one verse.
  • CURIO
    He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing it.
  • DUKE
    Who was it?
  • CURIO
    Feste, the jester, my lord; a fool that the lady Olivia’s father
  • took much delight in. He is about the house.
  • DUKE
    Go seek him out, and play the tune the while.
  • Come hither, boy. If ever thou shalt love,
  • In the sweet pangs of it remember me;
  • For such as I am all true lovers are,
  • Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
  • Save in the constant image of the creature
  • That is belov’d. How dost thou like this tune?
  • VIOLA
    It gives a very echo to the seat
  • Where Love is thron’d.
  • DUKE
    Thou dost speak masterly:
  • My life upon ‘t, young though thou art, thine eye
  • Hath stay’d upon some favour that it loves;
  • Hath it not, boy?
  • VIOLA
    A little, by your favour.
  • DUKE
    What kind of woman is ‘t?
  • VIOLA
    Of your complexion.
  • DUKE
    She is not worth thee, then. What years, i’ faith?
  • VIOLA
    About your years, my lord.
  • DUKE
    Too old, by heaven! let still the woman take
  • An elder than herself; so wears she to him,
  • So sways she level in her husband’s heart:
  • For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
  • Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
  • More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
  • Than women’s are.
  • VIOLA
    I think it well, my lord.
  • DUKE
    Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
  • Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;
  • For women are as roses, whose fair flower,
  • Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.
  • VIOLA
    And so they are: alas, that they are so;
  • To die, even when they to perfection grow!
  • DUKE
    O, fellow, come, the song we had last night.
  • Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;
  • The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
  • And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,
  • Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth,
  • And dallies with the innocence of love,
  • Like the old age.
  • CLOWN
    Are you ready, sir?
  • DUKE
    Ay; prithee, sing.
  • SONG
  • CLOWN
    Come away, come away, death,
  • And in sad cypress let me be laid;
  • Fly away, fly away, breath;
  • I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
  • My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
  • O, prepare it!
  • My part of death, no one so true
  • Did share it.
  • Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
  • On my black coffin let there be strown;
  • Not a friend, not a friend greet
  • My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.
  • A thousand thousand sighs to save,
  • Lay me, O, where
  • Sad true lover never find my grave,
  • To weep there!
  • DUKE
    There ‘s for thy pains.
  • CLOWN
    No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir.
  • DUKE
    I ‘ll pay thy pleasure, then.
  • CLOWN
    Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid one time or another.
  • DUKE
    Give me now leave to leave thee.
  • CLOWN
    Now the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy
  • doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. I
  • would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business
  • might be every thing, and their intent every where; for that ‘s
  • it that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell.
  • DUKE
    Let all the rest give place.
  • Once more, Cesario,
  • Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty.
  • Tell her my love, more noble than the world,
  • Prizes not quantity of dirty lands;
  • The parts that fortune hath bestow’d upon her,
  • Tell her, I hold as giddily as fortune;
  • But ‘t is that miracle and queen of gems
  • That Nature pranks her in attracts my soul.
  • VIOLA
    But if she cannot love you, sir?
  • DUKE
    I cannot be so answer’d.
  • VIOLA
    Sooth, but you must.
  • Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,
  • Hath for your love as great a pang of heart
  • As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her;
  • You tell her so; must she not, then, be answer’d?
  • DUKE
    There is no woman’s sides
  • Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
  • As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart
  • So big to hold so much; they lack retention.
  • Alas, their love may be call’d appetite–
  • No motion of the liver, but the palate–
  • That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;
  • But mine is all as hungry as the sea,
  • And can digest as much. Make no compare
  • Between that love a woman can bear me
  • And that I owe Olivia.
  • VIOLA
    Ay, but I know–
  • DUKE
    What dost thou know?
  • VIOLA
    Too well what love women to men may owe;
  • In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
  • My father had a daughter lov’d a man,
  • As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
  • I should your lordship.
  • DUKE
    And what’s her history?
  • VIOLA
    A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
  • But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud,
  • Feed on her damask cheek; she pin’d in thought,
  • And with a green and yellow melancholy,
  • She sat, like patience on a monument,
  • Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
  • We men may say more, swear more; but indeed
  • Our shows are more than will; for still we prove
  • Much in our vows, but little in our love.
  • DUKE
    But died thy sister of her love, my boy?
  • VIOLA
    I am all the daughters of my father’s house,
  • And all the brothers too; and yet I know not.
  • Sir, shall I to this lady?
  • DUKE
    Ay, that’s the theme.
  • To her in haste; give her this jewel; say,
  • My love can give no place, bide no denay.
    •

    SCENE V. OLIVIA’S garden.

  • SIR TOBY
    Come thy ways, Signior Fabian.
  • FABIAN
    Nay, I’ll come: if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be
  • boil’d to death with melancholy.
  • SIR TOBY
    Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly rascally
  • sheep-biter come by some notable shame?
  • FABIAN
    I would exult, man; you know he brought me out o’ favour with my
  • lady about a bear-baiting here.
  • SIR TOBY
    To anger him, we’ll have the bear again; and we will fool him
  • black and blue: shall we not, Sir Andrew?
  • SIR ANDREW
    And we do not, it is pity of our lives.
  • [Enter MARIA.]
  • SIR TOBY
    Here comes the little villain.
  • How now, my metal of India!
  • MARIA
    Get ye all three into the box-tree; Malvolio’s coming down this
  • walk. He has been yonder i’ the sun practising behaviour to his
  • own shadow this half hour. Observe him, for the love of mockery;
  • for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him.
  • Close, in the name of jesting! Lie thou there [throws down a
  • letter], for here comes the trout that must be caught with
  • tickling.
  • [Enter MALVOLIO.]
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘T is but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told me she did
  • affect me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that, should
  • she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. Besides, she uses
  • me with a more exalted respect than any one else that follows
  • her. What should I think on ‘t?
  • SIR TOBY
    Here ‘s an overweening rogue!
  • FABIAN
    O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he
  • jets under his advanc’d plumes!
  • SIR ANDREW
    ‘Slight, I could so beat the rogue!
  • SIR TOBY
    Peace, I say.
  • MALVOLIO
    To be Count Malvolio!
  • SIR TOBY
    Ah, rogue!
  • SIR ANDREW
    Pistol him, pistol him.
  • SIR TOBY
    Peace, peace!
  • MALVOLIO
    There is example for’t: the lady of the Strachy married the
  • yeoman of the wardrobe.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Fie on him, Jezebel!
  • FABIAN
    O, peace! now he’s deeply in; look how imagination blows him.
  • MALVOLIO
    Having been three months married to her, sitting in my state,–
  • SIR TOBY
    O, for a stone-bow, to hit him in the eye!
  • MALVOLIO
    Calling my officers about me, in my branch’d velvet gown; having
  • come from a day-bed, where I have left Olivia sleeping,–
  • SIR TOBY
    Fire and brimstone!
  • FABIAN
    O, peace, peace!
  • MALVOLIO
    And then to have the humour of state; and, after a demure travel
  • of regard, telling them I know my place, as I would they should
  • do theirs, to ask for my kinsman Toby,–
  • SIR TOBY
    Bolts and shackles!
  • FABIAN
    O, peace, peace, peace! now, now.
  • MALVOLIO
    Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for him: I
  • frown the while; and perchance wind up my watch, or play with
  • my– some rich jewel. Toby approaches; curtsies there to me,–
  • SIR TOBY
    Shall this fellow live?
  • FABIAN
    Though our silence be drawn from us with cars, yet peace.
  • MALVOLIO
    I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an
  • austere regard of control,–
  • SIR TOBY
    And does not Toby take you a blow o’ the lips, then?
  • MALVOLIO
    Saying, ‘Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast me on your niece,
  • give me this prerogative of speech,’–
  • SIR TOBY
    What, what?
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘You must amend your drunkenness.’–
  • SIR TOBY
    Out, scab!
  • FABIAN
    Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot.
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a foolish
  • knight,’–
  • SIR ANDREW
    That’s me, I warrant you.
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘One Sir Andrew.’
  • SIR ANDREW
    I knew ‘t was I; for many do call me fool.
  • MALVOLIO
    What employment have we here?
  • [Taking up the letter.]
  • FABIAN
    Now is the woodcock near the gin.
  • SIR TOBY
    O, peace! and the spirit of humours intimate reading aloud to
  • him!
  • MALVOLIO
    By my life, this is my lady’s hand: these be her very C’s, her
  • U’s, and her T’s; and thus makes she her great P’s. It is, in
  • contempt of question, her hand.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Her C’s, her U’s, and her T’s; why that?
  • MALVOLIO
    [Reads]
  • To the unknown beloved, this, and my good wishes:– her very
  • phrases! By your leave, wax. Soft! and the impressure her
  • Lucrece, with which she uses to seal; ‘t is my lady. To whom
  • should this be?
  • FABIAN
    This wins him, liver and all.
  • MALVOLIO
    [Reads]
  • Jove knows I love;
  • But who?
  • Lips, do not move;
  • No man must know.
  • ‘No man must know.’ What follows? the numbers alter’d!
  • ‘No man must know.’ If this should be thee, Malvolio?
  • SIR TOBY
    Marry, hang thee, brock!
  • MALVOLIO
    [Reads]
  • I may command where I adore;
  • But silence, like a Lucrece knife,
  • With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore:
  • M, O, A, I, doth sway my life.
  • FABIAN
    A fustian riddle!
  • SIR TOBY
    Excellent wench, say I.
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘M, O, A, I, doth sway my life.’ Nay, but first, let me see, let
  • me see, let me see.
  • FABIAN
    What dish o’ poison has she dress’d him!
  • SIR TOBY
    And with what wing the staniel checks at it!
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘I may command where I adore.’ Why, she may command me; I serve
  • her; she is my lady. Why, this is evident to any formal capacity;
  • there is no obstruction in this: and the end,– what should that
  • alphabetical position portend? if I could make that resemble
  • something in me!– Softly! M, O, A, I,–
  • SIR TOBY
    O, ay, make up that; he is now at a cold scent.
  • FABIAN
    Sowter will cry upon ‘t for all this, though it be as rank as a
  • fox.
  • MALVOLIO
    M,– Malvolio; M,–why, that begins my name.
  • FABIAN
    Did not I say he would work it out? the cur is excellent at
  • faults.
  • MALVOLIO
    M,– but then there is no consonancy in the sequel; that suffers
  • under probation: A should follow, but O does.
  • FABIAN
    And O shall end, I hope.
  • SIR TOBY
    Ay, or I ‘ll cudgel him, and make him cry O!
  • MALVOLIO
    And then I comes behind.
  • FABIAN
    Ay, an you had any eye behind you, you might see more detraction
  • at your heels than fortunes before you.
  • MALVOLIO
    M, O, A, I; this simulation is not as the former; and yet, to
  • crush this a little, it would bow to me, for every one of these
  • letters are in my name. Soft! here follows prose.
  • — [Reads] ‘If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am
  • above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great,
  • some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.
  • Thy Fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace
  • them; and, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy
  • humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly
  • with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put
  • thyself into the trick of singularity: she thus advises thee that
  • sighs for thee. Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and
  • wish’d to see thee ever cross-garter’d. I say, remember. Go to,
  • thou art made, if thou desir’st to be so; if not, let me see thee
  • a steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch
  • Fortune’s fingers. Farewell. She that would alter services with
  • thee,
  • THE FORTUNATE-UNHAPPY.
    Daylight and champain discovers not more; this is open. I will be
  • proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I
  • will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-devise the very
  • man. I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me; for
  • every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me. She did
  • commend my yellow stockings of late, she did praise my leg being
  • cross-garter’d; and in this she manifests herself to my love, and
  • with a kind of injunction drives me to these habits of her
  • liking. I thank my stars, I am happy. I will be strange, stout,
  • in yellow stockings, and cross-garter’d, even with the swiftness
  • of putting on. Jove and my stars be praised! Here is yet a
  • postscript.
  • [Reads] Thou canst not choose but know who I am. If thou
  • entertain’st my love, let it appear in thy smiling; thy smiles
  • become thee well; therefore in my presence still smile, dear my
  • sweet, I prithee.
  • Jove, I thank thee. I will smile; I will do everything that thou
  • wilt have me.
  • FABIAN
    I will not give my part of this sport for a pension of thousands
  • to be paid from the Sophy.
  • SIR TOBY
    I could marry this wench for this device.
  • SIR ANDREW
    So could I too.
  • SIR TOBY
    And ask no other dowry with her but such another jest.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Nor I neither.
  • FABIAN
    Here comes my noble gull-catcher.
  • SIR TOBY
    Wilt thou set thy foot o’ my neck?
  • SIR ANDREW
    Or o’ mine either?
  • SIR TOBY
    Shall I play my freedom at tray-trip, and become thy bond-slave?
  • SIR ANDREW
    I’ faith, or I either?
  • SIR TOBY
    Why, thou hast put him in such a dream, that when the image of it
  • leaves him he must run mad.
  • MARIA
    Nay, but say true; does it work upon him?
  • SIR TOBY
    Like aqua-vitae with a midwife.
  • MARIA
    If you will then see the fruits of the sport, mark his first
  • approach before my lady. He will come to her in yellow stockings,
  • and ‘t is a colour she abhors; and cross-garter’d, a fashion she
  • detests; and he will smile upon her, which will now be so
  • unsuitable to her disposition, being addicted to a melancholy as
  • she is, that it cannot but turn him into a notable contempt. If
  • you will see it, follow me.
  • SIR TOBY
    To the gates of Tartar, thou most excellent devil of wit!
  • SIR ANDREW
    I’ll make one too.
    •

    ACT III.

    SCENE I. OLIVIA’S garden.

  • VIOLA
    Save thee, friend, and thy music! dost thou live by thy tabor?
  • CLOWN
    No, sir, I live by the church.
  • VIOLA
    Art thou a churchman?
  • CLOWN
    No such matter, sir: I do live by the church; for I do live at my
  • house, and my house doth stand by the church.
  • VIOLA
    So thou mayst say, the king lies by a beggar, if a beggar dwell
  • near him; or the church stands by thy tabor, if thy tabor stand
  • by the church.
  • CLOWN
    You have said, sir. To see this age! A sentence is but a cheveril
  • glove to a good wit; how quickly the wrong side may be turn’d
  • outward!
  • VIOLA
    Nay, that’s certain; they that dally nicely with words may
  • quickly make them wanton.
  • CLOWN
    I would, therefore, my sister had had no name, sir.
  • VIOLA
    Why, man?
  • CLOWN
    Why, sir, her name’s a word; and to dally with that word might
  • make my sister wanton. But, indeed, words are very rascals since
  • bonds disgrac’d them.
  • VIOLA
    Thy reason, man?
  • CLOWN
    Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words; and words are
  • grown so false, I am loth to prove reason with them.
  • VIOLA
    I warrant thou art a merry fellow, and car’st for nothing.
  • CLOWN
    Not so, sir; I do care for something; but in my conscience, sir,
  • I do not care for you: if that be to care for nothing, sir, I
  • would it would make you invisible.
  • VIOLA
    Art not thou the Lady Olivia’s fool?
  • CLOWN
    No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly: she will keep no
  • fool, sir, till she be married; and fools are as like husbands as
  • pilchards are to herrings, the husband’s the bigger. I am,
  • indeed, not her fool, but her corrupter of words.
  • VIOLA
    I saw thee late at the Count Orsino’s.
  • CLOWN
    Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines
  • everywhere. I would be sorry, sir, but the fool should be as oft
  • with your master as with my mistress. I think I saw your
  • wisdom there.
  • VIOLA
    Nay, and thou pass upon me, I’ll no more with thee. Hold,
  • there’s expenses for thee.
  • CLOWN
    Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard!
  • VIOLA
    By my troth, I’ll tell thee, I am almost sick for one; [Aside]
  • though I would not have it grow on my chin. Is thy lady within?
  • CLOWN
    Would not a pair of these have bred, sir?
  • VIOLA
    Yes, being kept together and put to use.
  • CLOWN
    I would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia, sir, to bring a Cressida
  • to this Troilus.
  • VIOLA
    I understand you, sir; ‘t is well begg’d.
  • CLOWN
    The matter, I hope, is not great, sir, begging but a beggar.
  • Cressida was a beggar. My lady is within, sir. I will construe to
  • them whence you come; who you are and what you would are out of
  • my welkin,– I might say ‘element,’ but the word is over-worn.
  • VIOLA
    This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
  • And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
  • He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
  • The quality of persons, and the time;
  • And, like the haggard, check at every feather
  • That comes before his eye. This is a practice
  • As full of labour as a wise man’s art:
  • For folly that he wisely shows is fit;
  • But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit.
  • SIR TOBY
    Save you, gentleman!
  • VIOLA
    And you, sir.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Dieu vous garde, monsieur.
  • VIOLA
    Et vous aussi; votre serviteur.
  • SIR ANDREW
    I hope, sir, you are; and I am yours.
  • SIR TOBY
    Will you encounter the house? my niece is desirous you should
  • enter, if your trade be to her.
  • VIOLA
    I am bound to your niece, sir; I mean, she is the list of my
  • voyage.
  • SIR TOBY
    Taste your legs, sir; put them to motion.
  • VIOLA
    My legs do better understand me, sir, than I understand what you
  • mean by bidding me taste my legs.
  • SIR TOBY
    I mean, to go, sir, to enter.
  • VIOLA
    I will answer you with gait and entrance. But we are prevented.
  • Most excellent accomplish’d lady, the heavens rain odours on you!
  • SIR ANDREW
    That youth’s a rare courtier. ‘Rain odours’; well.
  • VIOLA
    My matter hath no voice, lady, but to your own most pregnant and
  • vouchsafed ear.
  • SIR ANDREW
    ‘Odours,’ ‘pregnant,’ and ‘vouchsafed’: I’ll get ’em all three
  • all ready.
  • OLIVIA
    Let the garden door be shut, and leave me to my hearing.
  • [Exeunt SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW, and MARIA.] Give me your hand, sir.
  • VIOLA
    My duty, madam, and most humble service.
  • OLIVIA
    What is your name?
  • VIOLA
    Cesario is your servant’s name, fair princess.
  • OLIVIA
    My servant, sir! ‘T was never merry world
  • Since lowly feigning was call’d compliment;
  • You’re servant to the Count Orsino, youth.
  • VIOLA
    And he is yours, and his must needs be yours;
  • Your servant’s servant is your servant, madam.
  • OLIVIA
    For him, I think not on him; for his thoughts,
  • Would they were blanks, rather than fill’d with me!
  • VIOLA
    Madam, I come to whet your gentle thoughts
  • On his behalf.
  • OLIVIA
    O, by your leave, I pray you,
  • I bade you never speak again of him;
  • But, would you undertake another suit,
  • I had rather hear you to solicit that
  • Than music from the spheres.
  • VIOLA
    Dear lady,–
  • OLIVIA
    Give me leave, beseech you. I did send,
  • After the last enchantment you did here,
  • A ring in chase of you; so did I abuse
  • Myself, my servant, and, I fear me, you.
  • Under your hard construction must I sit,
  • To force that on you, in a shameful cunning,
  • Which you knew none of yours; what might you think?
  • Have you not set mine honour at the stake,
  • And baited it with all th’ unmuzzled thoughts
  • That tyrannous heart can think? To one of your receiving
  • Enough is shown. A cypress, not a bosom,
  • Hides my heart. So, let me hear you speak.
  • VIOLA
    I pity you.
  • OLIVIA
    That’s a degree to love.
  • VIOLA
    No, not a grize; for ‘t is a vulgar proof,
  • That very oft we pity enemies.
  • OLIVIA
    Why, then methinks ‘t is time to smile again.
  • O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!
  • If one should be a prey, how much the better
  • To fall before the lion than the wolf! [Clock strikes]
  • The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.
  • Be not afraid, good youth, I will not have you;
  • And yet, when wit and youth is come to harvest,
  • Your wife is like to reap a proper man.
  • There lies your way, due west.
  • VIOLA
    Then westward-ho! Grace and good disposition
  • Attend your ladyship!
  • You’ll nothing, madam, to my lord by me?
  • OLIVIA
    Stay:
  • I prithee, tell me what thou think’st of me.
  • VIOLA
    That you do think you are not what you are.
  • OLIVIA
    If I think so, I think the same of you.
  • VIOLA
    Then think you right; I am not what I am.
  • OLIVIA
    I would you were as I would have you be!
  • VIOLA
    Would it be better, madam, than I am?
  • I wish it might, for now I am your fool.
  • OLIVIA
    O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful
  • In the contempt and anger of his lip!
  • A murd’rous guilt shows not itself more soon
  • Than love that would seem hid; love’s night is noon.
  • Cesario, by the roses of the spring,
  • By maidhood, honour, truth, and every thing,
  • I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
  • Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.
  • Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,
  • For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause;
  • But rather reason thus with reason fetter,
  • Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
  • VIOLA
    By innocence I swear, and by my youth,
  • I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth,
  • And that no woman has; nor never none
  • Shall mistress be of it, save I alone.
  • And so adieu, good madam; never more
  • Will I my master’s tears to you deplore.
  • OLIVIA
    Yet come again; for thou perhaps mayst move
  • That heart, which now abhors, to like his love.
    •

    SCENE II. OLIVIA’S house

  • SIR ANDREW
    No, faith, I’ll not stay a jot longer.
  • SIR TOBY
    Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason.
  • FABIAN
    You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the count’s
  • serving-man than ever she bestow’d upon me; I saw ‘t i’ th’
  • orchard.
  • SIR TOBY
    Did she see thee the while, old boy? tell me that.
  • SIR ANDREW
    As plain as I see you now.
  • FABIAN
    This was a great argument of love in her toward you.
  • SIR ANDREW
    ‘Slight, will you make an ass o’ me?
  • FABIAN
    I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and
  • reason.
  • SIR TOBY
    And they have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was a sailor.
  • FABIAN
    She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to exasperate
  • you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your heart,
  • and brimstone in your liver. You should then have accosted her;
  • and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should
  • have bang’d the youth into dumbness. This was look’d for at your
  • hand, and this was balk’d: the double gilt of this opportunity
  • you let time wash off, and you are now sail’d into the north of
  • my lady’s opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on
  • Dutchman’s beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable
  • attempt either of valour or policy.
  • SIR ANDREW
    And’t be any way, it must be with valour; for policy I hate: I
  • had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.
  • SIR TOBY
    Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of valour.
  • Challenge me the count’s youth to fight with him; hurt him in
  • eleven places: my niece shall take note of it; and assure
  • thyself, there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in
  • man’s commendation with woman than report of valour.
  • FABIAN
    There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?
  • SIR TOBY
    Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no
  • matter how witty, so it be eloquent and full of invention; taunt
  • him with the license of ink; if thou thou’st him some
  • thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in
  • thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the
  • bed of Ware in England, set ’em down: go, about it. Let there be
  • gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no
  • matter: about it.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Where shall I find you?
  • SIR TOBY
    We’ll call thee at the cubiculo. Go.
  • FABIAN
    This is a dear manakin to you, Sir Toby.
  • SIR TOBY
    I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand strong, or so.
  • FABIAN
    We shall have a rare letter from him; but you’ll not deliver ‘t?
  • SIR TOBY
    Never trust me, then; and by all means stir on the youth to an
  • answer. I think oxen and wain-ropes cannot hale them together.
  • For Andrew, if he were open’d, and you find so much blood in his
  • liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I’ll eat the rest of th’
  • anatomy.
  • FABIAN
    And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great presage
  • of cruelty.
  • SIR TOBY
    Look where the youngest wren of nine comes.
  • MARIA
    If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into
  • stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is turn’d heathen, a very
  • renegado; for there is no Christian, that means to be sav’d by
  • believing rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages of
  • grossness. He’s in yellow stockings.
  • SIR TOBY
    And cross-garter’d?
  • MARIA
    Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i’ th’
  • church. I have dogg’d him, like his murderer. He does obey every
  • point of the letter that I dropp’d to betray him; he does smile
  • his face into more lines than is in the new map, with the
  • augmentation of the Indies: you have not seen such a thing as ‘t
  • is. I can hardly forbear hurling things at him. I know my lady
  • will strike him; if she do, he’ll smile, and take ‘t for a great
  • favour.
  • SIR TOBY
    Come, bring us, bring us where he is.
    •

    SCENE III. A street

  • SEBASTIAN
    I would not by my will have troubled you;
  • But, since you make your pleasure of your pains,
  • I will no further chide you.
  • ANTONIO
    I could not stay behind you: my desire,
  • More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth;
  • And not all love to see you, though so much
  • As might have drawn one to a longer voyage,
  • But jealousy what might befall your travel,
  • Being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger,
  • Unguided and unfriended, often prove
  • Rough and unhospitable. My willing love,
  • The rather by these arguments of fear,
  • Set forth in your pursuit.
  • SEBASTIAN
    My kind Antonio,
  • I can no other answer make but thanks,
  • And thanks, and ever thanks; too oft good turns
  • Are shuffl’d off with such uncurrent pay:
  • But, were my worth as is my conscience firm,
  • You should find better dealing. What’s to do?
  • Shall we go see the reliques of this town?
  • ANTONIO
    To-morrow, sir; best first go see your lodging.
  • SEBASTIAN
    I am not weary, and ‘t is long to night;
  • I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes
  • With the memorials and the things of fame
  • That do renown this city.
  • ANTONIO
    Would you’d pardon me;
  • I do not without danger walk these streets.
  • Once, in a sea-fight, ‘gainst the count his galleys
  • I did some service; of such note indeed,
  • That, were I ta’en here, it would scarce be answer’d.
  • SEBASTIAN
    Belike you slew great number of his people.
  • ANTONIO
    Th’ offence is not of such a bloody nature;
  • Albeit the quality of the time and quarrel
  • Might well have given us bloody argument.
  • It might have since been answer’d in repaying
  • What we took from them; which, for traffic’s sake,
  • Most of our city did: only myself stood out;
  • For which, if I be lapsed in this place,
  • I shall pay dear.
  • SEBASTIAN
    Do not then walk too open.
  • ANTONIO
    It doth not fit me. Hold, sir, here’s my purse.
  • In the south suburbs, at the Elephant,
  • Is best to lodge. I will bespeak our diet,
  • Whiles you beguile the time and feed your knowledge
  • With viewing of the town; there shall you have me.
  • SEBASTIAN
    Why I your purse?
  • ANTONIO
    Haply your eye shall light upon some toy
  • You have desire to purchase; and your store,
  • I think, is not for idle markets, sir.
  • SEBASTIAN
    I’ll be your purse-bearer, and leave you
  • For an hour.
  • ANTONIO
    To th’ Elephant.
  • SEBASTIAN
    I do remember.
    •

    SCENE IV. OLIVIA’S garden

  • OLIVIA
    I have sent after him; he says he’ll come.
  • How shall I feast him? what bestow of him?
  • For youth is bought more oft than begg’d or borrow’d.
  • I speak too loud.
  • Where’s Malvolio? He is sad and civil,
  • And suits well for a servant with my fortunes.
  • Where is Malvolio?
  • MARIA
    He’s coming, madam, but in very strange manner.
  • He is, sure, possess’d, madam.
  • OLIVIA
    Why, what’s the matter? does he rave?
  • MARIA
    No, madam, he does nothing but smile. Your ladyship were best to
  • have some guard about you, if he come; for, sure, the man is
  • tainted in’s wits.
  • OLIVIA
    Go call him hither.
  • I am as mad as he,
  • If sad and merry madness equal be.
  • How now Malvolio!
  • MALVOLIO
    Sweet lady, ho, ho.
  • OLIVIA
    Smil’st thou?
  • I sent for thee upon a sad occasion.
  • MALVOLIO
    Sad, lady! I could be sad; this does make some obstruction in the
  • blood, this cross-gartering; but what of that? if it please the
  • eye of one, it is with me as the very true
  • sonnet is, ‘Please one, and please all.’
  • OLIVIA
    Why, how dost thou, man? what is the matter with thee?
  • MALVOLIO
    Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs. It did come to
  • his hands, and commands shall be executed; I think we do know the
  • sweet Roman hand.
  • OLIVIA
    Wilt thou go to bed, Malvolio?
  • MALVOLIO
    To bed! ay, sweet-heart, and I’ll come to thee.
  • OLIVIA
    God comfort thee! Why dost thou smile so and kiss thy hand so
  • oft?
  • MARIA
    How do you, Malvolio?
  • MALVOLIO
    At your request! yes; nightingales answer daws.
  • MARIA
    Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness before my lady?
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘Be not afraid of greatness’; ’twas well writ.
  • OLIVIA
    What mean’st thou by that, Malvolio?
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘Some are born great,’–
  • OLIVIA
    Ha!
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘Some achieve greatness,’–
  • OLIVIA
    What say’st thou?
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘And some have greatness thrust upon them.’
  • OLIVIA
    Heaven restore thee!
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘Remember who commended thy yellow stockings,’–
  • OLIVIA
    Thy yellow stockings!
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘And wish’d to see thee cross-garter’d.’
  • OLIVIA
    Cross-garter’d!
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘Go to, thou art made, if thou desir’st to be so;’–
  • OLIVIA
    Am I made?
  • MALVOLIO
    ‘If not, let me see thee a servant still.’
  • OLIVIA
    Why, this is very midsummer madness.
  • SERVANT
    Madam, the young gentleman of the Count Orsino’s is return’d: I
  • could hardly entreat him back: he attends your ladyship’s
  • pleasure.
  • OLIVIA
    I’ll come to him. [Exit SERVANT] Good Maria, let this fellow be
  • look’d to. Where’s my cousin Toby? Let some of my people have a
  • special care of him; I would not have him miscarry for the half
  • of my dowry.
  • MALVOLIO
    O, ho! do you come near me now? no worse man than Sir Toby to
  • look to me! This concurs directly with the letter: she sends him
  • on purpose, that I may appear stubborn to him; for she incites me
  • to that in the letter. ‘Cast thy humble slough,’ says she; ‘be
  • opposite with kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang
  • with arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of
  • singularity’; and, consequently, sets down the manner how; as, a
  • sad face, a reverend carriage, a slow tongue, in the habit of
  • some sir of note, and so forth. I have lim’d her; but it is
  • Jove’s doing, and Jove make me thankful! And when she went away
  • now, ‘Let this fellow be look’d to’; fellow! not Malvolio, nor
  • after my degree, but fellow. Why, every thing adheres together,
  • that no dram of a scruple, no scruple of a scruple, no obstacle,
  • no incredulous or unsafe circumstance,– what can be said?
  • Nothing that can be can come between me and the full prospect of
  • my hopes. Well, Jove, not I, is the doer of this, and he is to be
  • thank’d.
  • SIR TOBY
    Which way is he, in the name of sanctity? If all the devils of
  • hell be drawn in little, and Legion himself possessed him, yet I
  • ‘ll speak to him.
  • FABIAN
    Here he is, here he is. How is ‘t with you, sir? how is ‘t with
  • you, man?
  • MALVOLIO
    Go off; I discard you: let me enjoy my private; go off.
  • MARIA
    Lo, how hollow the fiend speaks within him! did not I tell you?
  • Sir Toby, my lady prays you to have a care of him.
  • MALVOLIO
    Ah, ha! does she so?
  • SIR TOBY
    Go to, go to; peace, peace; we must deal gently with him: let me
  • alone. How do you, Malvolio? how is ‘t with you? What, man! defy
  • the devil; consider, he ‘s an enemy to mankind.
  • MALVOLIO
    Do you know what you say?
  • MARIA
    La you, and you speak ill of the devil, how he takes it at heart!
  • Pray God, he be not bewitch’d! My lady would not lose him for
  • more than I ‘ll say.
  • MALVOLIO
    How now, mistress!
  • MARIA
    O Lord!
  • SIR TOBY
    Prithee, hold thy peace; this is not the way: do you not see you
  • move him? let me alone with him.
  • FABIAN
    No way but gentleness; gently, gently: the fiend is rough, and
  • will not be roughly us’d.
  • SIR TOBY
    Why, how now, my bawcock! how dost thou, chuck?
  • MALVOLIO
    Sir!
  • SIR TOBY
    Ay, Biddy, come with me. What, man! ‘t is not for gravity to play
  • at cherry-pit with Satan. Hang him, foul collier!
  • MARIA
    Get him to say his prayers; good Sir Toby, get him to pray.
  • MALVOLIO
    My prayers, minx!
  • MARIA
    No, I warrant you, he will not hear of godliness.
  • MALVOLIO
    Go, hang yourselves all! you are idle shallow things. I am not of
  • your element; you shall know more hereafter.
  • SIR TOBY
    Is ‘t possible?
  • FABIAN
    If this were play’d upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an
  • improbable fiction.
  • SIR TOBY
    His very genius hath taken the infection of the device, man.
  • MARIA
    Nay, pursue him now, lest the device take air and taint.
  • FABIAN
    Why, we shall make him mad indeed.
  • MARIA
    The house will be the quieter.
  • SIR TOBY
    Come, we ‘ll have him in a dark room and bound. My niece is
  • already in the belief that he ‘s mad: we may carry it thus, for
  • our pleasure and his penance, till our very pastime, tired out of
  • breath, prompt us to have mercy on him; at which time we will
  • bring the device to the bar, and crown thee for a finder of
  • madmen. But see, but see.
  • FABIAN
    More matter for a May morning.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Here ‘s the challenge, read it; I warrant there ‘s vinegar and
  • pepper in ‘t.
  • FABIAN
    Is ‘t so saucy?
  • SIR ANDREW
    Ay, is ‘t, I warrant him; do but read.
  • SIR TOBY
    Give me. [Reads] Youth, whatsoever thou art, thou art but a
  • scurvy fellow.
  • FABIAN
    Good and valiant.
  • SIR TOBY
    [Reads] Wonder not, nor admire not in thy mind, why I do call
  • thee so, for I will show thee no reason for ‘t.
  • FABIAN
    A good note; that keeps you from the blow of the law.
  • SIR TOBY
    [Reads] Thou com’st to the lady Olivia, and in my sight she uses
  • thee kindly: but thou liest in thy throat; that is not the matter
  • I challenge thee for.
  • FABIAN
    Very brief, and to exceeding good sense– less.
  • SIR TOBY
    [Reads] I will waylay thee going home; where if it be thy chance
  • to kill me,–
  • FABIAN
    Good.
  • SIR TOBY
    [Reads.] Thou kill ‘st me like a rogue and a villain.
  • FABIAN
    Still you keep o’ th’ windy side of the law; good.
  • SIR TOBY
    [Reads] Fare thee well; and God have mercy upon one of our souls!
  • He may have mercy upon mine; but my hope is better, and so look
  • to thyself. Thy friend, as thou usest him, and thy sworn enemy,
  • ANDREW AGUECHEEK.
  • If this letter move him not, his legs cannot; I’ll give ‘t him.
  • MARIA
    You may have very fit occasion for ‘t; he is now in some commerce
  • with my lady, and will by and by depart.
  • SIR TOBY
    Go, Sir Andrew; scout me for him at the corner of the orchard,
  • like a bum-baily. So soon as ever thou see’st him, draw; and as
  • thou drawest, swear horrible; for it comes to pass oft, that a
  • terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twang’d off,
  • gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have
  • earn’d him. Away!
  • SIR ANDREW
    Nay, let me alone for swearing.
  • SIR TOBY
    Now will not I deliver his letter; for the behaviour of the young
  • gentleman gives him out to be of good capacity and breeding; his
  • employment between his lord and my niece confirms no less:
  • therefore this letter, being so excellently ignorant, will breed
  • no terror in the youth; he will find it comes from a clodpole.
  • But, sir, I will deliver his challenge by word of mouth; set upon
  • Aguecheek a notable report of valour; and drive the gentleman, as
  • I know his youth will aptly receive it, into a most hideous
  • opinion of his rage, skill, fury, and impetuosity. This will so
  • fright them both, that they will kill one another by the look,
  • like cockatrices.
  • FABIAN
    Here he comes with your niece; give them way till he take leave,
  • and presently after him.
  • SIR TOBY
    I will meditate the while upon some horrid message for a
  • challenge.
  • OLIVIA
    I have said too much unto a heart of stone,
  • And laid mine honour too unchary out.
  • There ‘s something in me that reproves my fault;
  • But such a headstrong potent fault it is,
  • That it but mocks reproof.
  • VIOLA
    With the same haviour that your passion bears,
  • Goes on my master’s grief.
  • OLIVIA
    Here, wear this jewel for me, ‘t is my picture:
  • Refuse it not; it hath no tongue to vex you:
  • And I beseech you come again to-morrow.
  • What shall you ask of me that I ‘ll deny,
  • That honour sav’d may upon asking give?
  • VIOLA
    Nothing but this,– your true love for my master.
  • OLIVIA
    How with mine honour may I give him that
  • Which I have given to you?
  • VIOLA
    I will acquit you.
  • OLIVIA
    Well, come again to-morrow; fare thee well.
  • A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.
  • SIR TOBY
    Gentleman, God save thee!
  • VIOLA
    And you, sir.
  • SIR TOBY
    That defence thou hast, betake thee to ‘t. Of what nature the
  • wrongs are thou hast done him, I know not; but thy intercepter,
  • full of despite, bloody as the hunter, attends thee at the
  • orchard-end. Dismount thy tuck, be yare in thy preparation; for
  • thy assailant is quick, skilful, and deadly.
  • VIOLA
    You mistake, sir; I am sure no man hath any quarrel to me: my
  • remembrance is very free and clear from any image of offence done
  • to any man.
  • SIR TOBY
    You’ll find it otherwise, I assure you. Therefore, if you hold
  • your life at any price, betake you to your guard; for your
  • opposite hath in him what youth, strength, skill, and wrath can
  • furnish man withal.
  • VIOLA
    I pray you, sir, what is he?
  • SIR TOBY
    He is knight, dubb’d with unhatch’d rapier and on carpet
  • consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and
  • bodies hath he divorc’d three; and his incensement at this moment
  • is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of
  • death and sepulchre. Hob, nob, is his word; give ‘t or take ‘t.
  • VIOLA
    I will return again into the house and desire some conduct of the
  • lady. I am no fighter. I have heard of some kind of men that put
  • quarrels purposely on others, to taste their valour; belike this
  • is a man of that quirk.
  • SIR TOBY
    Sir, no; his indignation derives itself out of a very competent
  • injury. Therefore get you on and give him his desire. Back you
  • shall not to the house, unless you undertake that with
  • me which with as much safety you might answer him. Therefore on,
  • or strip your sword stark naked; for meddle you must, that ‘s
  • certain, or forswear to wear iron about you.
  • VIOLA
    This is as uncivil as strange. I beseech you, do me this
  • courteous office, as to know of the knight what my offence to him
  • is; it is something of my negligence, nothing of my purpose.
  • SIR TOBY
    I will do so. Signior Fabian, stay you by this gentleman till my
  • return.
  • VIOLA
    Pray you, sir, do you know of this matter?
  • FABIAN
    I know the knight is incens’d against you, even to a mortal
  • arbitrement; but nothing of the circumstance more.
  • VIOLA
    I beseech you, what manner of man is he?
  • FABIAN
    Nothing of that wonderful promise, to read him by his form, as
  • you are like to find him in the proof of his valour. He is,
  • indeed, sir, the most skilful, bloody, and fatal opposite that
  • you could possibly have found in any part of Illyria. Will you
  • walk towards him? I will make your peace with him, if I can.
  • VIOLA
    I shall be much bound to you for ‘t. I am one that had rather go
  • with sir priest than sir knight; I care not who knows so much of
  • my mettle.
  • SIR TOBY
    Why, man, he’s a very devil; I have not seen such a firago. I had
  • a pass with him, rapier, scabbard, and all, and he gives me the
  • stuck in with such a mortal motion that it is
  • inevitable; and, on the answer, he pays you as surely as your
  • feet hit the ground they step on. They say he has been fencer to
  • the Sophy.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Pox on ‘t, I’ll not meddle with him.
  • SIR TOBY
    Ay, but he will not now be pacified; Fabian can scarce hold him
  • yonder.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Plague on ‘t; and I thought he had been valiant and so cunning in
  • fence, I’d have seen him damn’d ere I ‘d have challeng’d him. Let
  • him let the matter slip, and I ‘ll give him my horse, gray
  • Capilet.
  • SIR TOBY
    I ‘ll make the motion. Stand here, make a good show on ‘t; this
  • shall end without the perdition of souls. [Aside] Marry, I ‘ll
  • ride your horse as well as I ride you.
  • [To FABIAN] I have his horse to take up the quarrel; I have
  • persuaded him the youth ‘s a devil.
  • FABIAN
    He is as horribly conceited of him; and pants and looks pale, as
  • if a bear were at his heels.
  • SIR TOBY
    [To VIOLA] There ‘s no remedy, sir: he will fight with you for ‘s
  • oath sake. Marry, he hath better bethought him of his quarrel,
  • and he finds that now scarce to be worth talking of: therefore
  • draw, for the supportance of his vow; he protests he will not
  • hurt you.
  • VIOLA
    [Aside] Pray God defend me! A little thing would make me tell
  • them how much I lack of a man.
  • FABIAN
    Give ground, if you see him furious.
  • SIR TOBY
    Come, Sir Andrew, there’s no remedy; the gentleman will, for his
  • honour’s sake, have one bout with you; he cannot by the duello
  • avoid it; but he has promis’d me, as he is a gentleman and a
  • soldier, he will not hurt you. Come on; to ‘t.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Pray God, he keep his oath!
  • VIOLA
    I do assure you ‘t is against my will. [They draw]
  • [Enter ANTONIO.]
  • ANTONIO
    Put up your sword. If this young gentleman
  • Have done offence, I take the fault on me;
  • If you offend him, I for him defy you.
  • SIR TOBY
    You, sir! why, what are you?
  • ANTONIO
    One, sir, that for his love dares yet do more
  • Than you have heard him brag to you he will.
  • SIR TOBY
    Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you.
  • [They draw]
  • FABIAN
    O good Sir Toby, hold! here come the officers.
  • SIR TOBY
    I ‘ll be with you anon.
  • VIOLA
    Pray, sir, put your sword up, if you please.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Marry, will I, sir; and, for that I promis’d you, I ‘ll be as
  • good as my word; he will bear you easily, and reins well.
  • 1 OFFICER
    This is the man; do thy office.
  • 2 OFFICER
    Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit
  • Of Count Orsino.
  • ANTONIO
    You do mistake me, sir.
  • 1 OFFICER
    No, sir, no jot; I know your favour well,
  • Though now you have no sea-cap on your head.
  • Take him away; he knows I know him well.
  • ANTONIO
    I must obey. [To VIOLA] This comes with seeking you:
  • But there’s no remedy; I shall answer it.
  • What will you do, now my necessity
  • Makes me to ask you for my purse? It grieves me
  • Much more for what I cannot do for you
  • Than what befalls myself. You stand amaz’d;
  • But be of comfort.
  • 2 OFFICER
    Come, sir, away.
  • ANTONIO
    I must entreat of you some of that money.
  • VIOLA
    What money, sir?
  • For the fair kindness you have show’d me here,
  • And, part, being prompted by your present trouble,
  • Out of my lean and low ability
  • I ‘ll lend you something. My having is not much;
  • I ‘ll make division of my present with you:
  • Hold, there ‘s half my coffer.
  • ANTONIO
    Will you deny me now?
  • Is ‘t possible that my deserts to you
  • Can lack persuasion? Do not tempt my misery,
  • Lest that it make me so unsound a man
  • As to upbraid you with those kindnesses
  • That I have done for you.
  • VIOLA
    I know of none;
  • Nor know I you by voice or any feature.
  • I hate ingratitude more in a man
  • Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
  • Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption
  • Inhabits our frail blood.
  • ANTONIO
    O heavens themselves!
  • 2 OFFICER
    Come, sir, I pray you, go.
  • ANTONIO
    Let me speak a little. This youth that you see here
  • I snatch’d one half out of the jaws of death,
  • Reliev’d him with such sanctity of love,
  • And to his image, which methought did promise
  • Most venerable worth, did I devotion.
  • 1 OFFICER
    What ‘s that to us? The time goes by; away!
  • ANTONIO
    But O how vile an idol proves this god!
  • Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame.
  • In nature there ‘s no blemish but the mind;
  • None can be call’d deform’d but the unkind.
  • Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous evil
  • Are empty trunks, o’erflourish’d by the devil.
  • 1 OFFICER
    The man grows mad; away with him!
  • Come, come, sir.
  • ANTONIO
    Lead me on.
  • VIOLA
    Methinks his words do from such passion fly
  • That he believes himself; so do not I.
  • Prove true, imagination, O, prove true,
  • That I, dear brother, be now ta’en for you!
  • SIR TOBY
    Come hither, knight; come hither, Fabian; we ‘ll whisper o’er a
  • couplet or two of most sage saws.
  • VIOLA
    He nam’d Sebastian. I my brother know
  • Yet living in my glass; even such and so
  • In favour was my brother; and he went
  • Still in this fashion, colour, ornament,
  • For him I imitate. O, if it prove,
  • Tempests are kind, and salt waves fresh in love!
  • SIR TOBY
    A very dishonest paltry boy, and more a coward than a hare: his
  • dishonesty appears in leaving his friend here in necessity and
  • denying him; and for his cowardship, ask Fabian.
  • FABIAN
    A coward, a most devout coward, religious in it.
  • SIR ANDREW
    ‘Slid, I’ll after him again and beat him.
  • SIR TOBY
    Do; cuff him soundly, but never draw thy sword.
  • SIR ANDREW
    And I do not,–
  • FABIAN
    Come, let’s see the event.
  • SIR TOBY
    I dare lay any money ‘t will be nothing yet.
    •

    ACT IV.

    SCENE I. Before OLIVIA’S house.

  • CLOWN
    Will you make me believe that I am not sent for you?
  • SEBASTIAN
    Go to, go to, thou art a foolish fellow;
  • Let me be clear of thee.
  • CLOWN
    Well held out, i’ faith! No, I do not know you; nor I am not sent
  • to you by my lady, to bid you come speak with her; nor your name
  • is not Master Cesario; nor this is not my nose neither. Nothing
  • that is so is so.
  • SEBASTIAN
    I prithee, vent thy folly somewhere else;
  • Thou know’st not me.
  • CLOWN
    Vent my folly! He has heard that word of some great man, and now
  • applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I am afraid this great
  • lubber, the world, will prove a cockney. I prithee now, ungird
  • thy strangeness, and tell me what I shall vent to my lady; shall
  • I vent to her that thou art coming?
  • SEBASTIAN
    I prithee, foolish Greek, depart from me.
  • There ‘s money for thee; if you tarry longer,
  • I shall give worse payment.
  • CLOWN
    By my troth, thou hast an open hand. These wise men that give
  • fools money get themselves a good report after fourteen years’
  • purchase.
  • SR ANDREW.
  • Now, sir, have I met you again? there ‘s for you.
  • SEBASTIAN
    Why, there ‘s for thee, and there, and there.
  • Are all the people mad?
  • SIR TOBY
    Hold, sir, or I ‘ll throw your dagger o’er the house.
  • CLOWN
    This will I tell my lady straight. I would not be in some of your
  • coats for twopence.
  • SIR TOBY
    Come on, sir; hold.
  • SIR ANDREW
    Nay, let him alone: I ‘ll go another way to work with him; I ‘ll
  • have an action of battery against him, if there be any law in
  • Illyria: though I struck him first, yet it ‘s no matter for
  • that.
  • SEBASTIAN
    Let go thy hand.
  • SIR TOBY
    Come, sir, I will not let you go. Come, my young soldier, put up
  • your iron: you are well flesh’d; come on.
  • SEBASTIAN
    I will be free from thee. What wouldst thou now?
  • If thou dar’st tempt me further, draw thy sword.
  • SIR TOBY
    What, what? Nay, then I must have an ounce or two of this
  • malapert blood from you.
  • OLIVIA
    Hold, Toby; on thy life, I charge thee, hold!
  • SIR TOBY
    Madam!
  • OLIVIA
    Will it be ever thus? Ungracious wretch,
  • Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves,
  • Where manners ne’er were preach’d! Out of my sight!
  • Be not offended, dear Cesario.
  • Rudesby, be gone!
  • I prithee, gentle friend,
  • Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion, sway
  • In this uncivil and unjust extent
  • Against thy peace. Go with me to my house;
  • And hear thou there how many fruitless pranks
  • This ruffian hath botch’d up, that thou thereby
  • Mayst smile at this: thou shalt not choose but go;
  • Do not deny. Beshrew his soul for me,
  • He started one poor heart of mine in thee.
  • SEBASTIAN
    What relish is in this? how runs the stream?
  • Or I am mad, or else this is a dream.
  • Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep;
  • If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!
  • OLIVIA
    Nay, come, I prithee. Would thou’dst be rul’d by me!
  • SEBASTIAN
    Madam, I will.
  • OLIVIA
    O, say so, and so be!
    •

    SCENE II. OLIVIA’S house.

  • MARIA
    Nay, I prithee, put on this gown and this beard; make him believe
  • thou art Sir Topas the curate: do it quickly; I ‘ll call Sir Toby
  • the whilst.
  • CLOWN
    Well, I ‘ll put it on, and I will dissemble myself in ‘t; and I
  • would I were the first that ever dissembl’d in such a gown. I am
  • not tall enough to become the function well, nor lean enough to
  • be thought a good student; but to be said an honest man and a
  • good housekeeper goes as fairly as to say a careful man and a
  • great scholar. The competitors enter.
  • SIR TOBY
    Jove bless thee, master parson!
  • CLOWN
    Bonos dies, Sir Toby: for, as the old hermit of Prague, that
  • never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to niece of King
  • Gorboduc, ‘That that is is’; so I, being master parson, am master
  • parson; for, what is ‘that’ but ‘that,’ and ‘is’ but ‘is’?
  • SIR TOBY
    To him, Sir Topas.
  • CLOWN
    What, ho, I say, peace in this prison!
  • SIR TOBY
    The knave counterfeits well; a good knave.
  • MALVOLIO
    [Within] Who calls there?
  • CLOWN
    Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Malvolio the lunatic.
  • MALVOLIO
    Sir Topas, Sir Topas, good Sir Topas, go to my lady.
  • CLOWN
    Out, hyperbolical fiend! how vexest thou this man! talkest thou
  • nothing but of ladies?
  • SIR TOBY
    Well said, master parson.
  • MALVOLIO
    Sir Topas, never was man thus wrong’d; good Sir Topas, do not
  • think I am mad: they have laid me here in hideous darkness.
  • CLOWN
    Fie, thou dishonest Satan! I call thee by the most modest terms;
  • for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself
  • with courtesy. Say’st thou that house is dark?
  • MALVOLIO
    As hell, Sir Topas.
  • CLOWN
    Why, it hath bay-windows transparent as barricadoes, and the
  • clerestories toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony; and
  • yet complainest thou of obstruction?
  • MALVOLIO
    I am not mad, Sir Topas; I say to you, this house is dark.
  • CLOWN
    Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness but ignorance;
  • in which thou art more puzzl’d than the Egyptians in their fog.
  • MALVOLIO
    I say, this house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were
  • as dark as hell; and I say, there was never man thus abus’d. I am
  • no more mad than you are; make the trial of it in any constant
  • question.
  • CLOWN
    What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?
  • MALVOLIO
    That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
  • CLOWN
    What think’st thou of his opinion?
  • MALVOLIO
    I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.
  • CLOWN
    Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness; thou shalt hold
  • th’ opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear
  • to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy
  • grandam. Fare thee well.
  • MALVOLIO
    Sir Topas, Sir Topas!
  • SIR TOBY
    My most exquisite Sir Topas!
  • CLOWN
    Nay, I am for all waters.
  • MARIA
    Thou mightst have done this without thy beard and gown; he sees
  • thee not.
  • SIR TOBY
    To him in thine own voice, and bring me word how thou find’st
  • him; I would we were well rid of this knavery. If he may be
  • conveniently deliver’d, I would he were, for I am now so far in
  • offence with my niece that I cannot pursue with any safety this
  • sport to the upshot. Come by and by to my chamber.
  • CLOWN
    [Singing] Hey, Robin, jolly Robin,
  • Tell me how thy lady does.
  • MALVOLIO
    Fool,–
  • CLOWN
    My lady is unkind, perdy.
  • MALVOLIO
    Fool,–
  • CLOWN
    Alas, why is she so?
  • MALVOLIO
    Fool, I say,–
  • CLOWN
    She loves another– Who calls, ha?
  • MALVOLIO
    Good fool, as ever thou wilt deserve well at my hand, help me to
  • a candle, and pen, ink, and paper; as I am a gentleman, I will
  • live to be thankful to thee for’t.
  • CLOWN
    Master Malvolio?
  • MALVOLIO
    Ay, good fool.
  • CLOWN
    Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?
  • MALVOLIO
    Fool, there was never man so notoriously abus’d; I am as well in
  • my wits, fool, as thou art.
  • CLOWN
    But as well? then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in your
  • wits than a fool.
  • MALVOLIO
    They have here propertied me; keep me in darkness, send ministers
  • to me, asses, and do all they can to face me out of my wits.
  • CLOWN
    Advise you what you say; the minister is here. Malvolio,
  • Malvolio, thy wits the heavens restore! endeavour thyself to
  • sleep, and leave thy vain bibble babble.
  • MALVOLIO
    Sir Topas!
  • CLOWN
    Maintain no words with him, good fellow. Who, I, sir? not I, sir.
  • God be wi’ you, good Sir Topas! Marry, amen. I will, sir, I
  • will.
  • MALVOLIO
    Fool, fool, fool, I say!
  • CLOWN
    Alas, sir, be patient. What say you, sir? I am shent for speaking
  • to you.
  • MALVOLIO
    Good fool, help me to some light and some paper. I tell thee, I
  • am as well in my wits as any man in Illyria.
  • CLOWN
    Well-a-day that you were, sir!
  • MALVOLIO
    By this hand, I am. Good fool, some ink, paper, and light; and
  • convey what I will set down to my lady. It shall advantage thee
  • more than ever the bearing of letter did.
  • CLOWN
    I will help you to ‘t. But tell me true, are you not mad indeed,
  • or do you but counterfeit?
  • MALVOLIO
    Believe me, I am not; I tell thee true.
  • CLOWN
    Nay, I’ll ne’er believe a madman till I see his brains. I will
  • fetch you light and paper and ink.
  • MALVOLIO
    Fool, I ‘ll requite it in the highest degree; I prithee, be gone.
  • CLOWN
    [Singing]
  • I am gone, sir,
  • And anon, sir,
  • I ‘ll be with you again,
  • In a trice,
  • Like to the old Vice,
  • Your need to sustain;
  • Who, with dagger of lath,
  • In his rage and his wrath,
  • Cries, ah, ha! to the devil:
  • Like a mad lad,
  • Pare thy nails, dad;
  • Adieu, goodman devil.
    •

    SCENE III. OLIVIA’S garden.

  • SEBASTIAN
    This is the air; that is the glorious sun;
  • This pearl she gave me, I do feel ‘t and see ‘t;
  • And though ‘t is wonder that enwraps me thus,
  • Yet ‘t is not madness. Where ‘s Antonio, then?
  • I could not find him at the Elephant:
  • Yet there he was; and there I found this credit,
  • That he did range the town to seek me out.
  • His counsel now might do me golden service;
  • For though my soul disputes well with my sense,
  • That this may be some error, but no madness,
  • Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
  • So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
  • That I am ready to distrust mine eyes
  • And wrangle with my reason, that persuades me
  • To any other trust but that I am mad,
  • Or else the lady ‘s mad; yet if ‘t were so,
  • She could not sway her house, command her followers,
  • Take and give back affairs and their dispatch
  • With such a smooth, discreet, and stable bearing
  • As I perceive she does. There ‘s something in ‘t
  • That is deceivable. But here the lady comes.
  • OLIVIA
    Blame not this haste of mine. If you mean well,
  • Now go with me and with this holy man
  • Into the chantry by. There, before him,
  • And underneath that consecrated roof,
  • Plight me the full assurance of your faith;
  • That my most jealous and too doubtful soul
  • May live at peace. He shall conceal it
  • Whiles you are willing it shall come to note,
  • What time we will our celebration keep
  • According to my birth. What do you say?
  • SEBASTIAN
    I ‘ll follow this good man, and go with you;
  • And, having sworn truth, ever will be true.
  • OLIVIA
    Then lead the way, good father; and heavens so shine
  • That they may fairly note this act of mine!
    •

    ACT V.

    SCENE I. Before OLIVIA’s house.

  • FABIAN
    Now, as thou lov’st me, let me see his letter.
  • CLOWN
    Good Master Fabian, grant me another request.
  • FABIAN
    Any thing.
  • CLOWN
    Do not desire to see this letter.
  • FABIAN
    This is, to give a dog, and in recompense desire my dog again.
  • DUKE
    Belong you to the Lady Olivia, friends?
  • CLOWN
    Ay, sir; we are some of her trappings.
  • DUKE
    I know thee well; how dost thou, my good fellow?
  • CLOWN
    Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my friends.
  • DUKE
    Just the contrary; the better for thy friends.
  • CLOWN
    No, sir, the worse.
  • DUKE
    How can that be?
  • CLOWN
    Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me. Now my foes
  • tell me plainly I am an ass: so that by my foes, sir, I profit in
  • the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abus’d:
  • so that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make
  • your two affirmatives, why, then the worse for my friends and the
  • better for my foes.
  • DUKE
    Why, this is excellent.
  • CLOWN
    By my troth, sir, no; though it please you to be one of my
  • friends.
  • DUKE
    Thou shalt not be the worse for me; there’s gold.
  • CLOWN
    But that it would be double-dealing, sir, I would you could make
  • it another.
  • DUKE
    O, you give me ill counsel.
  • CLOWN
    Put your grace in your pocket, sir, for this once, and let your
  • flesh and blood obey it.
  • DUKE
    Well, I will be so much a sinner to be a double-dealer; there’s
  • another.
  • CLOWN
    Primo, secundo, tertio, is a good play; and the old saying is,
  • the third pays for all: the triplex, sir, is a good tripping
  • measure; or the bells of Saint Bennet, sir, may put you in mind;
  • one, two, three.
  • DUKE
    You can fool no more money out of me at this throw; if you will
  • let your lady know I am here to speak with her, and bring her
  • along with you, it may awake my bounty further.
  • CLOWN
    Marry, sir, lullaby to your bounty till I come again. I go, sir;
  • but I would not have you to think that my desire of having is the
  • sin of covetousness: but, as you say, sir, let your bounty take a
  • nap, I will awake it anon.
  • VIOLA
    Here comes the man, sir, that did rescue me.
  • DUKE
    That face of his I do remember well;
  • Yet, when I saw it last, it was besmear’d
  • As black as Vulcan in the smoke of war.
  • A baubling vessel was he captain of,
  • For shallow draught and bulk unprizable;
  • With which such scathful grapple did he make
  • With the most noble bottom of our fleet
  • That very envy and the tongue of loss
  • Cried fame and honour on him. What ‘s the matter?
  • 1 OFFICER
    Orsino, this is that Antonio
  • That took the Phoenix and her fraught from Candy;
  • And this is he that did the Tiger board,
  • When your young nephew Titus lost his leg.
  • Here in the streets, desperate of shame and state,
  • In private brabble did we apprehend him.
  • VIOLA
    He did me kindness, sir; drew on my side;
  • But in conclusion put strange speech upon me;
  • I know not what ‘t was but distraction.
  • DUKE
    Notable pirate! thou salt-water thief!
  • What foolish boldness brought thee to their mercies,
  • Whom thou, in terms so bloody and so dear,
  • Hast made thine enemies?
  • ANTONIO
    Orsino, noble sir,
  • Be pleas’d that I shake off these names you give me;
  • Antonio never yet was thief or pirate,
  • Though, I confess, on base and ground enough,
  • Orsino’s enemy. A witchcraft drew me hither:
  • That most ingrateful boy there by your side,
  • From the rude sea’s enrag’d and foamy mouth
  • Did I redeem; a wreck past hope he was.
  • His life I gave him, and did thereto ad
  • My love, without retention or restraint,
  • All his in dedication; for his sake
  • Did I expose myself, pure for his love,
  • Into the danger of this adverse town;
  • Drew to defend him when he was beset:
  • Where being apprehended, his false cunning,
  • Not meaning to partake with me in danger,
  • Taught him to face me out of his acquaintance,
  • And grew a twenty years removed thing
  • While one would wink; denied me mine own purse,
  • Which I had recommended to his use
  • Not half an hour before.
  • VIOLA
    How can this be?
  • DUKE
    When came he to this town?
  • ANTONIO
    To-day, my lord; and for three months before,
  • No interim, not a minute’s vacancy,
  • Both day and night did we keep company.
  • DUKE
    Here comes the countess; now heaven walks on earth.
  • But for thee, fellow,– fellow, thy words are madness;
  • Three months this youth hath tended upon me;
  • But more of that anon. Take him aside.
  • OLIVIA
    What would my lord, but that he may not have,
  • Wherein Olivia may seem serviceable?
  • Cesario, you do not keep promise with me.
  • VIOLA
    Madam!
  • DUKE
    Gracious Olivia,–
  • OLIVIA
    What do you say, Cesario? Good my lord,–
  • VIOLA
    My lord would speak; my duty hushes me.
  • OLIVIA
    If it be aught to the old tune, my lord,
  • It is as fat and fulsome to mine ear
  • As howling after music.
  • DUKE
    Still so cruel?
  • OLIVIA
    Still so constant, lord.
  • DUKE
    What, to perverseness? you uncivil lady,
  • To whose ingrate and unauspicious altars
  • My soul the faithfull’st off’rings have breath’d out
  • That e’er devotion tender’d! What shall I do?
  • OLIVIA
    Even what it please my lord that shall become him.
  • DUKE
    Why should I not, had I the heart to do it,
  • Like to th’ Egyptian thief at point of death,
  • Kill what I love?– a savage jealousy
  • That sometime savours nobly. But hear me this:
  • Since you to non-regardance cast my faith,
  • And that I partly know the instrument
  • That screws me from my true place in your favour,
  • Live you the marble-breasted tyrant still;
  • But this your minion, whom I know you love,
  • And whom, by heaven I swear, I tender dearly,
  • Him will I tear out of that cruel eye,
  • Where he sits crowned in his master’s spite.
  • Come, boy, with me; my thoughts are ripe in mischief;
  • I ‘ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love,
  • To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.
  • VIOLA
    And I, most jocund, apt, and willingly,
  • To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.
  • OLIVIA
    Where goes Cesario?
  • VIOLA
    After him I love
  • More than I love these eyes, more than my life,
  • More, by all mores, than ere I shall love wife.
  • If I do feign, you witnesses above,
  • Punish my life for tainting of my love!
  • OLIVIA
    Ay me, detested! how am I beguil’d!
  • VIOLA
    Who does beguile you? who does do you wrong?
  • OLIVIA
    Hast thou forgot thyself? is it so long?
  • Call forth the holy father.
  • DUKE
    Come, away!
  • OLIVIA
    Whither, my lord? Cesario, husband, stay.
  • DUKE
    Husband!
  • OLIVIA
    Ay, husband! can he that deny?
  • DUKE
    Her husband, sirrah!
  • VIOLA
    No, my lord, not I.
  • OLIVIA
    Alas, it is the baseness of thy fear
  • That makes thee strangle thy propriety.
  • Fear not, Cesario; take thy fortunes up;
  • Be that thou know’st thou art, and then thou art
  • As great as that thou fear’st.
  • O, welcome, father!
  • Father, I charge thee, by thy reverence,
  • Here to unfold, though lately we intended
  • To keep in darkness what occasion now
  • Reveals before ‘t is ripe, what thou dost know
  • Hath newly pass’d between this youth and me.
  • PRIEST
    A contract of eternal bond of love,
  • Confirm’d by mutual joinder of your hands,
  • Attested by the holy close of lips,
  • Strengthen’d by interchangement of your rings;
  • And all the ceremony of this compact
  • Seal’d in my function, by my testimony;
  • Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave
  • I have travell’d but two hours.
  • DUKE
    O thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou be
  • When time hath sow’d a grizzle on thy case?
  • Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow
  • That thine own trip shall be thine overthrow?
  • Farewell, and take her; but direct thy feet
  • Where thou and I henceforth may never meet.
  • VIOLA
    My lord, I do protest,–
  • OLIVIA
    O, do not swear!
  • Hold little faith, though thou has too much fear.
  • SIR ANDREW
    For the love of God, a surgeon! Send one presently to Sir Toby.
  • OLIVIA
    What ‘s the matter?
  • SIR ANDREW
    Has broke my head across and has given Sir Toby a bloody coxcomb
  • too; for the love of God, your help! I had rather than forty
  • pound I were at home.
  • OLIVIA
    Who has done this, Sir Andrew?
  • SIR ANDREW
    The count’s gentleman, one Cesario; we took him for a coward, but
  • he ‘s the very devil incardinate.
  • DUKE
    My gentleman Cesario?
  • SIR ANDREW
    ‘Od’s lifelings, here he is! You broke my head for nothing; and
  • that that I did, I was set on to do ‘t by Sir Toby.
  • VIOLA
    Why do you speak to me? I never hurt you.
  • You drew your sword upon me without cause;
  • But I bespake you fair, and hurt you not.
  • SIR ANDREW
    If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me; I think you set
  • nothing by a bloody coxcomb.
  • Here comes Sir Toby halting; you shall hear more: but if he had
  • not been in drink, he would have tickl’d you othergates than he
  • did.
  • DUKE
    How now, gentleman! how is ‘t with you?
  • SIR TOBY
    That ‘s all one. Has hurt me, and there ‘s th’ end on ‘t. Sot,
  • didst see Dick Surgeon, sot?
  • CLOWN
    O, he ‘s drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes were set at
  • eight i’ th’ morning.
  • SIR TOBY
    Then he ‘s a rogue, and a passy measures pavin. I hate a drunken
  • rogue.
  • OLIVIA
    Away with him! Who hath made this havoc with them?
  • SIR ANDREW
    I ‘ll help you, Sir Toby, because we ‘ll be dress’d together.
  • SIR TOBY
    Will you help? an ass-head and a coxcomb and a knave! a
  • thin-fac’d knave, a gull!
  • OLIVIA
    Get him to bed, and let his hurt be look’d to.
  • SEBASTIAN
    I am sorry, madam, I have hurt your kinsman
  • But, had it been the brother of my blood,
  • I must have done no less with wit and safety.
  • You throw a strange regard upon me, and by that
  • I do perceive it hath offended you;
  • Pardon me, sweet one, even for the vows
  • We made each other but so late ago.
  • DUKE
    One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons,
  • A natural perspective, that is and is not!
  • SEBASTIAN
    Antonio, O my dear Antonio!
  • How have the hours rack’d and tortur’d me,
  • Since I have lost thee!
  • ANTONIO
    Sebastian are you?
  • SEBASTIAN
    Fear’st thou that, Antonio?
  • ANTONIO
    How have you made division of yourself?
  • An apple cleft in two is not more twin
  • Than these two creatures. Which is Sebastian?
  • OLIVIA
    Most wonderful!
  • SEBASTIAN
    Do I stand there? I never had a brother;
  • Nor can there be that deity in my nature,
  • Of here and everywhere. I had a sister,
  • Whom the blind waves and surges have devour’d.
  • Of charity, what kin are you to me?
  • What countryman? what name? what parentage?
  • VIOLA
    Of Messaline: Sebastian was my father;
  • Such a Sebastian was my brother too,
  • So went he suited to his watery tomb.
  • If spirits can assume both form and suit,
  • You come to fright us.
  • SEBASTIAN
    A spirit I am indeed;
  • But am in that dimension grossly clad
  • Which from the womb I did participate.
  • Were you a woman, as the rest goes even,
  • I should my tears let fall upon your cheek,
  • And say, ‘Thrice-welcome, drowned Viola!’
  • VIOLA
    My father had a mole upon his brow.
  • SEBASTIAN
    And so had mine.
  • VIOLA
    And died that day when Viola from her birth
  • Had numb’red thirteen years.
  • SEBASTIAN
    O, that record is lively in my soul!
  • He finished, indeed, his mortal act
  • That day that made my sister thirteen years.
  • VIOLA
    If nothing lets to make us happy both
  • But this my masculine usurp’d attire,
  • Do not embrace me till each circumstance
  • Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump
  • That I am Viola: which to confirm,
  • I ‘ll bring you to a captain in this town,
  • Where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help
  • I was preserv’d to serve this noble count.
  • All the occurrence of my fortune since
  • Hath been between this lady and this lord.
  • SEBASTIAN
    [To OLIVIA] So comes it, lady, you have been mistook;
  • But nature to her bias drew in that.
  • You would have been contracted to a maid;
  • Nor are you therein, by my life, deceiv’d,
  • You are betroth’d both to a maid and man.
  • DUKE
    Be not amaz’d; right noble is his blood.
  • If this be so, as yet the glass seems true,
  • I shall have share in this most happy wreck.
  • [To VIOLA] Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times
  • Thou never shouldst love woman like to me.
  • VIOLA
    And all those sayings will I over-swear;
  • And all those swearings keep as true in soul
  • As doth that orbed continent the fire
  • That severs day from night.
  • DUKE
    Give me thy hand;
  • And let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds.
  • VIOLA
    The captain that did bring me first on shore
  • Hath my maid’s garments; he, upon some action,
  • Is now in durance, at Malvolio’s suit,
  • A gentleman and follower of my lady’s.
  • OLIVIA
    He shall enlarge him. Fetch Malvolio hither;
  • And yet, alas, now I remember me,
  • They say, poor gentleman, he ‘s much distract.
  • A most extracting frenzy of mine own
  • From my remembrance clearly banish’d his.
  • How does he, sirrah?
  • CLOWN
    Truly, madam, he holds Belzebub at the stave’s end as well as a
  • man in his case may do. Has here writ a letter to you; I should
  • have given ‘t you to-day morning; but as a madman’s
  • epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are
  • deliver’d.
  • OLIVIA
    Open ‘t, and read it.
  • CLOWN
    Look then to be well edified when the fool delivers the madman.
  • [Reads] By the Lord, madam,–
  • OLIVIA
    How now! art thou mad?
  • CLOWN
    No, madam, I do but read madness: and your ladyship will have it
  • as it ought to be, you must allow Vox.
  • OLIVIA
    Prithee, read i’ thy right wits.
  • CLOWN
    So I do, madonna; but to read his right wits is to read thus:
  • therefore perpend, my princess, and give ear.
  • OLIVIA
    [To FABIAN] Read it you, sirrah.
  • FABIAN
    [Reads] By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and the world shall
  • know it; though you have put me into darkness and given your
  • drunken cousin rule over me, yet have I the benefit of my senses
  • as well as your ladyship. I have your own letter that induc’d me
  • to the semblance I put on; with the which I doubt not but to do
  • myself much right, or you much shame. Think of me as you please.
  • I leave my duty a little unthought of, and speak out of
  • my injury. THE MADLY-US’D MALVOLIO.
  • OLIVIA
    Did he write this?
  • CLOWN
    Ay, madam.
  • DUKE
    This savours not much of distraction.
  • OLIVIA
    See him deliver’d, Fabian; bring him hither.
  • [Exit FABIAN.]
  • My lord, so please you, these things further thought on,
  • To think me as well a sister as a wife,
  • One day shall crown th’ alliance on ‘t, so please you,
  • Here at my house, and at my proper cost.
  • DUKE
    Madam, I am most apt t’ embrace your offer.
  • [To VIOLA] Your master quits you; and, for your service done him,
  • So much against the mettle of your sex,
  • So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,
  • And since you call’d me master for so long,
  • Here is my hand; you shall from this time be
  • Your master’s mistress.
  • OLIVIA
    A sister! you are she.
  • DUKE
    Is this the madman?
  • OLIVIA
    Ay, my lord, this same.
  • How now, Malvolio!
  • MALVOLIO
    Madam, you have done me wrong,
  • Notorious wrong.
  • OLIVIA
    Have I, Malvolio? no.
  • MALVOLIO
    Lady, you have. Pray you peruse that letter.
  • You must not now deny it is your hand;
  • Write from it, if you can, in hand or phrase;
  • Or say ‘t is not your seal, not your invention:
  • You can say none of this. Well, grant it then;
  • And tell me, in the modesty of honour,
  • Why you have given me such clear lights of favour,
  • Bade me come smiling and cross-garter’d to you,
  • To put on yellow stockings, and to frown
  • Upon Sir Toby and the lighter people;
  • And, acting this in an obedient hope,
  • Why have you suffer’d me to be imprison’d,
  • Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
  • And made the most notorious geck and gull
  • That e’er invention play’d on? tell me why.
  • OLIVIA
    Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing,
  • Though, I confess, much like the character;
  • But out of question ‘t is Maria’s hand.
  • And now I do bethink me, it was she
  • First told me thou wast mad; then cam’st in smiling,
  • And in such forms which here were presuppos’d
  • Upon thee in the letter. Prithee, be content:
  • This practice hath most shrewdly pass’d upon thee,
  • But when we know the grounds and authors of it,
  • Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge
  • Of thine own cause.
  • FABIAN
    Good madam, hear me speak;
  • And let no quarrel nor no brawl to come
  • Taint the condition of this present hour,
  • Which I have wond’red at. In hope it shall not,
  • Most freely I confess myself and Toby
  • Set this device against Malvolio here,
  • Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts
  • We had conceiv’d against him. Maria writ
  • The letter at Sir Toby’s great importance;
  • In recompense whereof he hath married her.
  • How with a sportful malice it was follow’d
  • May rather pluck on laughter than revenge;
  • If that the injuries be justly weigh’d
  • That have on both sides pass’d.
  • OLIVIA
    Alas, poor fool, how have they baffl’d thee!
  • CLOWN
    Why, ‘some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have
  • greatness thrown upon them.’ I was one, sir, in this interlude;
  • one Sir Topas, sir; but that ‘s all one. ‘By the Lord,
  • fool, I am not mad’; but do you remember? ‘Madam, why laugh you
  • at such a barren rascal? and you smile not, he ‘s gagg’d’: and
  • thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
  • MALVOLIO
    I ‘ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you.
  • OLIVIA
    He hath been most notoriously abus’d.
  • DUKE
    Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace.
  • He hath not told us of the captain yet;
  • When that is known, and golden time convents,
  • A solemn combination shall be made
  • Of our dear souls. Meantime, sweet sister,
  • We will not part from hence. Cesario, come;
  • For so you shall be, while you are a man;
  • But, when in other habits you are seen,
  • Orsino’s mistress and his fancy’s queen.
  • CLOWN
    [Sings.]
  • When that I was and a little tiny boy,
  • With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
  • A foolish thing was but a toy,
  • For the rain it raineth every day.
  • But when I came to man’s estate,
  • With hey, ho,
  • ‘Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
  • For the rain,
  • But when I came, alas! to wive,
  • With hey, ho,
  • By swaggering could I never thrive,
  • For the rain,
  • But when I came unto my beds,
  • With hey, ho,
  • With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
  • For the rain,
  • A great while ago the world begun,
  • With hey, ho,
  • But that’s all one, our play is done,
  • And we’ll strive to please you every day.
    •

    Source:

    Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Ed. Edgar Coit Morris. Boston: Silver, 1914. HathiTrust. Web. 12 April 2016. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t8mc9mf8x>

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    Anthology of Medieval Literature Copyright © 2021 by Christian Beck is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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