Twelfth Night
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 appeared in me have I learned 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.
[_Exit Maria._]
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. [_Unveiling._] Look you, sir, such a one I was this present.
Is’t not well done?
VIOLA.
Excellently done, if God did all.
OLIVIA.
’Tis in grain, sir; ’twill endure wind and weather.
VIOLA.
’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.
Lady, you are the cruel’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
labelled 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 suff’ring, 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;
Hallow 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.
[_Exit._]
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!
Enter 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 tomorrow,
I’ll give him reasons for’t. Hie thee, Malvolio.
MALVOLIO.
Madam, I will.
[_Exit._]
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!
[_Exit._]
ACT II.
SCENE I. The sea-coast.
Enter Antonio and Sebastian.
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 pleased, would we had so ended! But you, sir, altered that,
for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was my
sister drowned.
ANTONIO.
Alas the day!
SEBASTIAN.
A lady, sir, though it was said she much resembled me, was yet of many
accounted beautiful. But though I could not with such estimable wonder
overfar believe that, yet thus far I will boldly publish her, she bore
a mind that envy could not but call fair. She is drowned 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 recovered, 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.
[_Exit._]
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.
[_Exit._]
SCENE II. A street.
Enter Viola; Malvolio at several doors.
MALVOLIO.
Were you not even now with the Countess Olivia?
VIOLA.
Even now, sir; on a moderate pace I have since arrived but hither.
MALVOLIO.
She returns this ring to you, sir; you might have saved 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 returned. If it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye; if
not, be it his that finds it.
[_Exit._]
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 ’tis,
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 t’untie!
[_Exit._]
SCENE III. A Room in Olivia’s House.
Enter Sir Toby and Sir Andrew.
SIR TOBY.
Approach, Sir Andrew; not to be abed 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 unfilled 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 lives consist of the
four elements?
SIR ANDREW.
Faith, so they say, but I think it rather consists of eating and
drinking.
SIR TOBY.
Th’art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink.
Marian, I say! a stoup of wine.
Enter Clown.
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
spok’st of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of
Queubus; ’twas 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.
_What is love? ’Tis 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