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 yet 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!
|
Scene II
A street.
Enter Viola, Malvolio following. | |
Malvolio | Were not you 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?
|
Scene III
Olivia’s house.
Enter Sir Toby and Sir Andrew. | |
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 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 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! |
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 spokest 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.
|
Sir Andrew | Excellent good, i’ faith. |
Sir Toby | Good, good. |
Clown |
Sings.
|
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 | An 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 constrained in’t to call thee knave, knight. |
Sir Andrew | ’Tis not the first time I have constrained 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. |
Enter Maria. | |
Maria | What a caterwauling do you keep here! If my lady have not called 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? Tillyvally. 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 disposed, 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! |
Enter Malvolio. | |
Malvolio | My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have ye 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 kinsman, she’s nothing allied to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your misdemeanours, you are welcome to the house; if not, an 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 an 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’ the mouth too. |
Sir Toby | Thou’rt i’ the right. Go, sir, rub your chain with crums. A stoup of wine, Maria! |
Malvolio | Mistress Mary, if you prized 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. Exit. |
Maria | Go shake your ears. |
Sir Andrew | ’Twere 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 thy 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’ld 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 affectioned ass, that cons state without book and utters it by great swarths: the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, 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, ’twill 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. Exit. |
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 adored 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’ the 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; ’tis too late to go to bed now: come, knight; come, knight. Exeunt. |
Scene IV
The Duke’s palace.
Enter Duke, Viola, Curio, and others. | |
Duke |
Give me some music. Now, good morrow, friends.
|
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 |
Seek him out, and play the tune the while. Exit Curio. Music plays.
|
Viola |
It gives a very echo to the seat
|
Duke |
Thou dost speak masterly:
|
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
|
Viola | I think it well, my lord. |
Duke |
Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
|
Viola |
And so they are: alas, that they are so;
|
Re-enter Curio and Clown. | |
Duke |
O, fellow, come, the song we had last night.
|
Clown | Are you ready, sir? |
Duke | Ay; prithee, sing. Music. |
Song. | |
Clown |
|
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 everywhere; for that’s it that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell. Exit. |
Duke |
Let all the rest give place. Curio and Attendants retire. Once more, Cesario,
|
Viola | But if she cannot love you, sir? |
Duke | I cannot be so answer’d. |
Viola |
Sooth, but you must.
|
Duke |
There is no woman’s sides
|
Viola | Ay, but I know— |
Duke | What dost thou know? |
Viola |
Too well what love women to men may owe:
|
Duke | And what’s her history? |
Viola |
A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
|
Duke | But died thy sister of her love, my boy? |
Viola |
I am all the daughters of my father’s house,
|
Duke |
Ay, that’s the theme.
|
Scene V
Olivia’s garden.
Enter Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian. | |
Sir Toby | Come thy ways, Signior Fabian. |
Fabian | Nay, I’ll come: if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled 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 | An we do not, it is pity of our lives. |
Sir Toby | Here comes the little villain. |
Enter Maria. | |
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. Exit. |
Enter Malvolio. | |
Malvolio | ’Tis 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 advanced 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 branched 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 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; courtesies 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 ’twas 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: ’tis my lady. To whom should this be? |
Fabian | This wins him, liver and all. |
Malvolio |
Reads.
“No man must know.” What follows? the numbers altered! “No man must know:” if this should be thee, Malvolio? |
Sir Toby | Marry, hang thee, brock! |
Malvolio |
Reads.
|
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 dressed him! |
Sir Toby | And with what wing the staniel cheques 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.
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-gartered; 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-gartered, even with the swiftness of putting on. Jove and my stars be praised! Here is yet a postscript. Reads.
Jove, I thank thee: I will smile; I will do everything that thou wilt have me. Exit. |
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. |
Re-enter Maria. | |
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 ’tis a colour she abhors, and cross-gartered, 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. Exeunt. |