TWELFTH NIGHT

by Shakespeare · Cluster: Twelfth Night

Abstract

A festive romantic comedy of shipwreck, twins, cross-dressing disguise and mistaken identity in Illyria, where tangled love, music and folly resolve in marriage; a comedy turning on appearance versus reality.

Capitoli / Chapters

• Act I, Scene 1
• Act I, Scene 2
• Act I, Scene 3
• Act I, Scene 4
• Act I, Scene 5
• Act II, Scene 1
• Act II, Scene 2
• Act II, Scene 3
• Act II, Scene 4
• Act II, Scene 5
• Act III, Scene 1
• Act III, Scene 2
• Act III, Scene 3
• Act III, Scene 4
• Act IV, Scene 1
• Act IV, Scene 2
• Act IV, Scene 3
• Act V, Scene 1

Connections

Topoi: World Upside Down, Love as Religion Archetypes: Fool, Trickster, Lover Motifs: Concealment Hidden Identity, Music and Song, Letters and Writing, Sea, Clothing and Costume Themes & Concepts: Romantic Love, Identity, Appearance vs Reality, Deception, Satire of Society, Melancholy Forms & Genres: Comedy, Verse Drama Characters: Viola, Orsino, Olivia, Malvolio, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Feste, Maria, Sebastian

Testo integrale / Full text

TWELFTH NIGHT TWELFTH NIGHT, the end of the Christmas season, was traditionally a time of revelry and topsy-turvydom; Shakespeare’s title for a play in which a servant aspires to his mistress’s hand has no more specific reference. It was thought appropriate to the festive occasion of Candlemas (2 February) 1602 when, in the first known allusion to it, John Manningham, a law student of the Middle Temple in London, noted ‘at our feast we had a play called Twelfth Night, or What You Will’. References to ‘the Sophy’—the Shah of Persia (2.5.174; 3.4.271)—probably post-date Sir Robert Shirley’s return from Persia, in a ship named The Sophy, in 1599; and ‘the new map with the augmentation of the Indies’ (3.2.75) appears to be one published in 1599 and reissued in 1600. Shakespeare may have picked up the name Orsino for his young duke from a Tuscan nobleman whom Queen Elizabeth entertained at Whitehall with a play performed by Shakespeare’s company on Twelfth Night 1601. Probably he wrote Twelfth Night during that year. Twelfth Night’s romantic setting is Illyria, the Greek and Roman name for Adriatic territory roughly corresponding to the former Yugoslavia. Manningham had noted that the play was ‘much like The Comedy of Errors or Menaechmi in Plautus’, thinking no doubt of the confusions created by identical twins. Shakespeare may also have known an anonymous Italian comedy, GI’Ingannati (The Deceived Ones), acted in 1531 and first printed in 1537, which influenced a number of other plays and prose tales including Barnaby Riche’s story of Apolonius and Silla printed as part of Riche’s Farewell to Military Profession (1581). Riche gave Shakespeare his main plot of a shipwrecked girl (Viola) who, disguised as a boy (Cesario), serves a young Duke (Orsino) and undertakes love-errands on his behalf to a noble lady (Olivia) who falls in love with her but mistakenly marries her twin brother (Sebastian). Shakespeare idealizes Riche’s characters and purges the story of some of its explicit sexuality: Riche’s Olivia, for example, is pregnant before marriage, and his Viola reveals her identity, in a manner impractical for a boy actor, by stripping to the waist. Shakespeare complicates the plot by giving Olivia a reprobate uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and two additional suitors, the asinine Sir Andrew Aguecheek and her steward, Malvolio, tricked by members of her household into believing that she loves him. More important to the play than to the plot is the entirely Shakespearian clown, Feste, a wry and oblique commentator whose wit in folly is opposed to Malvolio’s folly in wit. Twelfth Night is the consummation of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, a play of wide emotional range, extending from the robust, brilliantly orchestrated humour of the scene of midnight revelry (2.2) to the rapt wonder of the antiphon of recognition (5.1.224-56) between the reunited twins. In performance the balance shifts, favouring sometimes the exposure and celebration of folly, at other times the poignancy of unattained love and of unheeded wisdom; but few other plays have so consistently provided theatrical pleasure of so high an order. THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY ORSINO, Duke of Illyria FIRST OFFICER SECOND OFFICER

VIOLA, a lady, later disguised as Cesario A CAPTAIN SEBASTIAN, her twin brother ANTONIO, another sea-captain OLIVIA, a Countess MARIA, her waiting-gentlewoman SIR TOBY Belch, Olivia’s kinsman SIR ANDREW Aguecheek, companion of Sir Toby MALVOLIO, Olivia’s steward FABIAN, a member of Olivia’s household FESTE the Clown, her jester A PRIEST A SERVANT of Olivia Musicians, sailors, lords, attendants

Twelfth Night, or What You Will

Atto 1, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Music. Enter Orsino Duke of Illyria, Curio, and other lords
ORSINO	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, ’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
(didascalia)	Music ceases
ORSINO	O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there, Of what validity and pitch so e’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?
ORSINO	What, Curio?
CURIO	The hart.
ORSINO	Why so I do, the noblest that I have. O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first Methought she purged the air of pestilence; That instant was I turned into a hart, And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E’er since pursue me.
(didascalia)	Enter Valentine
ORSINO	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.
ORSINO	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 killed the flock of all affections else That live in her—when liver, brain, and heart, These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and filled Her sweet perfections with one self king! Away before me to sweet beds of flowers. Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Viola, a Captain, and sailors
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 drowned. What think you sailors?
CAPTAIN	It is perchance that you yourself were saved.
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 saved 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 lived 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	(giving money) 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 abjured the sight And company of men.
VIOLA	O that I served 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 pray thee—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 thy 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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby Belch and Maria
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; an 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 substractors 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 coistrel 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Andrew Aguecheek
SIR ANDREW	Sir Toby Belch! How now, Sir Toby Belch?
SIR TOBY	Sweet Sir Andrew.
SIR ANDREW	(to Maria) 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	An 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	(taking his hand) Now sir, thought is free. I pray you, bring your hand to th’ buttery-bar, and let it drink.
SIR ANDREW	Wherefore, sweetheart? 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. Exit
SIR TOBY	O knight, thou lackest 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	An I thought that, I’d forswear it. I’ll ride home tomorrow, Sir Toby.
SIR TOBY	Pourquoi, my dear knight?
SIR ANDREW	What is ‘Pourquoi’? Do, or not do? I would I had bestowed that time in the tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting. O, had I but followed 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, and I hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off.
SIR ANDREW	Faith, I’ll home tomorrow, 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 woos 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. I would not so much as make water but in a cinquepace. What dost thou mean? Is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think by the excellent constitution of thy leg it was formed under the star of a galliard.
SIR ANDREW	Ay, ’tis strong, and it does indifferent well in a divers-coloured 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 thee caper.
(didascalia)	Sir Andrew capers
SIR TOBY	Ha, higher! Ha ha, excellent.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Valentine, and Viola (as Cesario) in man’s attire
VALENTINE	If the Duke continue these favours towards you, Cesario, you are like to be much advanced. 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.
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke, Curio, and attendants
VIOLA	I thank you. Here comes the Count.
ORSINO	Who saw Cesario, ho?
VIOLA	On your attendance, my lord, here.
ORSINO	(to Curio and attendants) Stand you a while aloof. (To Viola) Cesario, Thou know’st no less but all. I have unclasped 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 abandoned to her sorrow As it is spoke, she never will admit me.
ORSINO	Be clamorous, and leap all civil bounds, Rather than make unprofited return.
VIOLA	Say I do speak with her, my lord, what then?
ORSINO	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.
ORSINO	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. (To Curio and attendants) Some four or five attend him. All if you will, for I myself am best When least in company. (To Viola) Prosper well in this And thou shalt live as freely as thy lord, To call his fortunes thine.
VIOLA	I’ll do my best
(didascalia)	To woo your lady—aside yet a barful strife—
VIOLA	Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 5

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Maria, and Feste, the clown
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.
FESTE	Let her hang me. He that is well hanged in this world needs to fear no colours.
MARIA	Make that good.
FESTE	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’.
FESTE	Where, good Mistress Mary?
MARIA	In the wars, and that may you be bold to say in your foolery.
FESTE	Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.
MARIA	Yet you will be hanged for being so long absent, or to be turned away—is not that as good as a hanging to you?
FESTE	Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage; and for turning away, let summer bear it out.
MARIA	You are resolute then?
FESTE	Not so neither, but I am resolved on two points.
MARIA	That if one break, the other will hold; or if both break, your gaskins fall.
FESTE	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 lllyria.
MARIA	Peace, you rogue, no more o’ that. Here comes my lady. Make your excuse wisely, you were best.
(didascalia)	Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Olivia, with Malvolio and attendants
(didascalia)	FESTE aside Wit, an’t be thy will, put me into good footing! 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.’ (To Olivia) God bless thee, lady.
OLIVIA	(to attendants) Take the fool away.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	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. Anything that’s mended is but patched. Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched 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.
FESTE	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?
FESTE	Dexteriously, good madonna.
OLIVIA	Make your proof.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	Good madonna, why mournest thou?
OLIVIA	Good fool, for my brother’s death.
FESTE	I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
OLIVIA	I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	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 gagged. 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 distempered appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition is to take those things for birdbolts that you deem cannon bullets. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove.
FESTE	Now Mercury indue thee with leasing, for thou speakest well of fools.
(didascalia)	Enter Maria
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. ’Tis 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. 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.
FESTE	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—
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby
FESTE	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	’Tis a gentleman here. (He belches) A plague o’ these pickle herring! (To Feste) How now, sot?
FESTE	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 an he will, I care not. Give me faith, say I. Well, it’s all one.
(didascalia)	Exit
OLIVIA	What’s a drunken man like, fool?
FESTE	Like a drowned 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 coroner, and let him sit o’ my coz, for he’s in the third degree of drink, he’s drowned. Go look after him.
FESTE	He is but mad yet, madonna, and the fool shall look to the madman.
(didascalia)	Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Malvolio
MALVOLIO	Madam, yon 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	He’s 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?
MALVOCIO	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 ‘tis a peascod, or a codling when ’tis almost an apple. ’Tis with him in standing water between boy and man. He is very well-favoured, 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.
(didascalia)	Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Maria
OLIVIA	Give me my veil. Come, throw it o’er my face. We’ll once more hear Orsino’s embassy.
(didascalia)	Enter Viola as Cesario
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 loath to cast away my speech, for besides that it is excellently well penned, I have taken great pains to con it. Good beauties, let me sustain no scorn; I am very ’countable, 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 ’tis poetical.
OLIVIA	It is the more like to be feigned, I pray you keep it in. I heard you were saucy at my gates, and allowed your approach rather to wonder at you than to hear you. If you be not mad, be gone. If you have reason, be brief. ’Tis 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. (To Olivia) 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 others’, profanation.
(didascalia)	OLIVIA (to Maria and attendants) Give us the place alone, we will hear this divinity.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Maria and attendants
VIOLA	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. She unveils 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 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 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 recompensed though you were crowned 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 divulged, free, learned, 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 contemnèd 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. (Offering a purse) 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 Placed 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.
(didascalia)	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.
(didascalia)	Exit at one door
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.
(didascalia)	Exit at another door

Atto 2, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	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 over-far 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.
(didascalia)	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

Atto 2, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Viola as Cesario, and Malvolio, at several doors
MALVOLIO	Were not you ev’n now with the Countess Olivia?
VIOLA	Even now, sir, on a moderate pace, I have since arrived but hither.
MALVOLIO	(offering a ring) 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. He throws the ring down If it be worth stooping for, there it lies, in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it. Exit
VIOLA	(picking up the ring) I left no ring with her. What means this lady? Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her. She made good view of me, indeed so much That straight 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

Atto 2, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby and Sir Andrew
SIR TOBY	Approach, Sir Andrew. Not to be abed after midnight is to be up betimes, and diliculo surgere, thou knowest.
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	Thou’rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say, a stoup of wine.
(didascalia)	Enter Feste, the clown
SIR ANDREW	Here comes the fool, i’faith.
FESTE	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?
FESTE	I did impeticos thy gratility; 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	(to Feste) Come on, there is sixpence for you. Let’s have a song.
SIR ANDREW	(to Feste) There’s a testril of me, too. If one knight give a—
FESTE	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.
FESTE	(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.
FESTE	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 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.
FESTE	By’r Lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.
SIR ANDREW	Most certain. Let our catch be ‘Thou knave’.
FESTE	‘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’.
FESTE	I shall never begin if I hold my peace.
SIR ANDREW	Good, i’faith. Come, begin. They sing the catch.
(didascalia)	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 Cathayan, we are politicians, Malvolio’s a Peg-o‘-Ramsey, and ‘hree merry men be we’. Am not I consanguineous? Am I not of her blood? Tilly-vally—‘lady’! ‘There dwelt a man in Babylon, lady, lady.’
FESTE	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	‘O’the twelfth day of December’—
MARIA	For the love o’ God, peace.
(didascalia)	Enter Malvolio
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 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.
FESTE	‘His eyes do show his days are almost done.’
MALVOLIO	Is’t even so?
SIR TOBY	‘But I will never die.’
FESTE	‘Sir Toby, there you lie.’
MALVOLIO	This is much credit to you.
SIR TOBY	‘Shall I bid him go?’
FESTE	‘What an if you do?’
SIR TOBY	‘Shall I bid him go, and spare not?’
FESTE	‘O no, no, no, no, you dare not.’
SIR TOBY	Out o’ tune, sir, ye lie. (To Malvolio) Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?
FESTE	Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i’th’ mouth, too.
SIR TOBY	Thou‘rt i’th’ right. (To Malvolio) Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs. (To Maria) A stoup of wine, Maria.
MALVOLIO	Mistress Mary, if you prized my lady’s favour at anything 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 tonight. Since the youth of the Count’s was today 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 dev’l a puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass that cons state without book and utters it by great swathes; 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’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, ’tis too late to go to bed now. Come knight, come knight. Exeunt

Atto 2, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke, Viola as Cesario, Curio, and others
ORSINO	Give me some music. Now good morrow, friends. Now good Cesario, but that piece of song, That old and antic 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.
ORSINO	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.
ORSINO	Seek him out, and play the tune the while. Exit Curio
(didascalia)	Music plays
ORSINO	(To Viola) 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 beloved. How dost thou like this tune?
VIOLA	It gives a very echo to the seat Where love is throned.
ORSINO	Thou dost speak masterly. My life upon’t, young though thou art thine eye Hath stayed upon some favour that it loves. Hath it not, boy?
VIOLA	A little, by your favour.
ORSINO	What kind of woman is’t?
VIOLA	Of your complexion.
ORSINO	She is not worth thee then. What years, i’faith?
VIOLA	About your years, my lord.
ORSINO	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.
ORSINO	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 displayed, doth fall that very hour.
VIOLA	And so they are. Alas that they are so: To die even when they to perfection grow.
(didascalia)	Enter Curio and Feste the clown
ORSINO	(to Feste) 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.
FESTE	Are you ready, sir?
ORSINO	I prithee, sing.
(didascalia)	Music
FESTE	(sings) Come away, come away death, And in sad cypress let me be laid. Fie away, fie 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 strewn. 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	(giving money) There’s for thy pains.
FESTE	No pains, sir. I take pleasure in singing, sir.
ORSINO	I’ll pay thy pleasure then.
FESTE	Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or another.
ORSINO	Give me now leave to leave thee.
FESTE	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 everything, and their intent everywhere, for that’s it that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell. Exit
ORSINO	Let all the rest give place: Exeunt Curio and others Once more, Cesario, Get thee to yon same sovereign cruelty. Tell her my love, more noble than the world, Prizes not quantity of dirty lands. The parts that fortune hath bestowed upon her Tell her I hold as giddily as fortune; But ’tis that miracle and queen of gems That nature pranks her in attracts my soul.
VIOLA	But if she cannot love you, sir?
ORSINO	I cannot be so answered.
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 answered?
ORSINO	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 called 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—
ORSINO	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 loved a man As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman I should your lordship.
ORSINO	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 pined 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.
ORSINO	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?
ORSINO	Ay, that’s the theme, To her in haste. Give her this jewel. Say My love can give no place, bide no denay.
(didascalia)	Exeunt severally

Atto 2, Scena 5

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian
SIR TOBY	Come thy ways, Signor 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Maria with a letter
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! The men hide. Maria places the letter Lie thou there, for here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.
(didascalia)	Exit
(didascalia)	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 anyone else that follows her. What should I think on’t?
SIR TOBY	Here’s an overweening rogue.
FABIAN	O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkeycock 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 Strachey 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 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—(touching his chain) 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 ’twas I, for many do call me fool.
MALVOLIO	(seeing the letter) What employment have we here? FABIAN Now is the woodcock near the gin.
SIR TOBY	O peace, and the spirit of humours intimate reading aloud to him.
MALVOLIO	(taking up the letter) 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! (Opening the letter) 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	‘Jove knows I love, But who? Lips do not move, No man must know.’ ‘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	‘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 dressed 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: ‘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 wished to see thee ever cross-gartered. I say remember, go to, thou art made if thou desirest 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 champaign 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-device 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. ‘Thou canst not choose but know who I am. If thou entertainest 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.
(didascalia)	Exit
MALVOLIO	Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian come from hiding
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.
(didascalia)	Enter Maria
SIR ANDREW	Nor I neither.
FABIAN	Here comes my noble gull-catcher.
SIR TOBY	(to Maria) Wilt thou set thy foot o’ my neck?
SIR ANDREW	(to Maria) Or o’ mine either?
SIR TOBY	(to Maria) Shall I play my freedom at tray-trip, and become thy bondslave?
SIR ANDREW	(to Maria) I’faith, or I either?
SIR TOBY	(to Maria) 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

Atto 3, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Viola as Cesario and Feste the clown, with pipe and tabor
VIOLA	Save thee, friend, and thy music. Dost thou live by thy tabor?
FESTE	No, sir, I live by the church.
VIOLA	Art thou a churchman?
FESTE	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.
FESTE	You have said, sir. To see this age!—A sentence is but a cheverel glove to a good wit, how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward.
VIOLA	Nay, that’s certain. They that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton.
FESTE	I would therefore my sister had had no name, sir.
VIOLA	Why, man?
FESTE	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 disgraced them.
VIOLA	Thy reason, man?
FESTE	Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false I am loath to prove reason with them.
VIOLA	I warrant thou art a merry fellow, and carest for nothing.
FESTE	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?
FESTE	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.
FESTE	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, an thou pass upon me, I’ll no more with thee. (Giving money) Hold, there’s expenses for thee.
FESTE	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, though I would not have it grow on my chin. Is thy lady within?
FESTE	Would not a pair of these have bred, sir?
VIOLA	Yes, being kept together and put to use.
FESTE	I would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia, sir, to bring a Cressida to this Troilus.
VIOLA	(giving money) I understand you, sir, ’tis well begged.
FESTE	The matter I hope is not great, sir; begging but a beggar—Cressida was a beggar. My lady is within, sir. I will conster 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. Exit
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.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby and Sir Andrew
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.
(didascalia)	Enter Olivia, and Maria, her gentlewoman
VIOLA	But we are prevented. (To Olivia) Most excellent accomplished lady, the heavens rain odours on you.
SIR ANDREW	(to Sir Toby) 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	(to Sir Toby) ‘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? ’Twas never merry world Since lowly feigning was called 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 filled 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 grece, for ’tis a vulgar proof That very oft we pity enemies.
OLIVIA	Why then, methinks ’tis 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	(aside) 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. (To Viola) Cesario, by the roses of the spring, By maidhood, honour, truth, and everything, 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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt
(didascalia)	severally

Atto 3, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian
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 servingman than ever she bestowed 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 judgement 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 banged the youth into dumbness. This was looked for at your hand, and this was balked. The double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sailed into the north of my lady’s opinion, where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt either of valour or policy.
SIR ANDREW	An’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 licence 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.
(didascalia)	Exit Sir Andrew
FABIAN	This is a dear manikin 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 opened 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Maria
SIR TOBY	Look where the youngest wren of nine comes.
MARIA	If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me. Yon gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very renegado, for there is no Christian that means to be saved by believing rightly can ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. He’s in yellow stockings.
SIR TOBY	And cross-gartered?
MARIA	Most villainously, like a pedant that keeps a school i‘th’ church. I have dogged him like his murderer. He does obey every point of the letter that I dropped 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 ’tis. 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. Exeunt

Atto 3, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sebastian and Antonio
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 filèd 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 oft good turns Are shuffled 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 relics of this town?
ANTONIO	Tomorrow, sir. Best first go see your lodging.
SEBASTIAN	I am not weary, and ’tis 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 answered.
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 answered 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 latched 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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt severally

Atto 3, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Olivia and Maria
OLIVIA	(aside) 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 begged or borrowed. I speak too loud. (To Maria) Where’s Malvolio? He is sad and civil, 5 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 possessed, 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. Exit Maria I am as mad as he, If sad and merry madness equal be.
(didascalia)	Enter Malvolio, cross-gartered and wearing yellow stockings, with Maria
OLIVIA	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’.
(didascalia)	OLIVIA
MALVOLIO	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	(kissing his hand) To bed? ’Ay, sweetheart, 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 meanest thou by that, Malvolio?
MALVOLIO	‘Some are born great’—
OLIVIA	Ha?
MALVOLIO	‘Some achieve greatness’—
OLIVIA	What sayst 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 wished to see thee cross-gartered.’
OLIVIA	‘Cross-gartered’?
MALVOLIO	‘Go to, thou art made, if thou desirest to be so.’
OLIVIA	Am I made?
MALVOLIO	‘If not, let me see thee a servant still.’
OLIVIA	Why, this is very midsummer madness.
(didascalia)	Enter a Servant
SERVANT	Madam, the young gentleman of the Count Orsino’s is returned. 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 looked 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. Exeunt Olivia and Maria, severally
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 a kinsman, surly with servants, let thy tongue tang 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 limed her, but it is Jove’s doing, and Jove make me thankful. And when she went away now, ‘let this fellow be looked to’. Fellow!—not ‘Malvolio’, nor after my degree, but ‘fellow’. Why, everything 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 thanked.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby, Fabian, and Maria
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. (To Malvolio) 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	Aha, 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, an you speak ill of the devil, how he takes it at heart. Pray God he be not bewitched.
FABIAN	Carry his water to th’ wise woman.
MARIA	Marry, and it shall be done tomorrow morning, if I live. 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 used.
SIR TOBY	Why how now, my bawcock? How dost thou, chuck?
MALVOLIO	Sir!
SIR TOBY	Ay, biddy, come with me. What man, ’tis 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. Exit
SIR TOBY	Is’t possible?
FABIAN	If this were played 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Andrew with a paper
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	‘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	‘Thou comest 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.’ 155
FABIAN	Very brief, and to exceeding good sense (aside) -less.
SIR TOBY	‘I will waylay thee going home, where if it be thy chance to kill me’—
FABIAN	Good.
SIR TOBY	‘Thou killest me like a rogue and a villain.’
FABIAN	Still you keep o’th’ windy side of the law—good.
SIR TOBY	‘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 seest him, draw, and as thou drawest, swear horrible, for it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him. Away.
SIR ANDREW	Nay, let me alone for swearing.
(didascalia)	Exit
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 clodpoll. 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Olivia, and Viola as Cesario
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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Sir Toby, Fabian, and Maria
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 griefs.
OLIVIA	(giving a jewel) Here, wear this jewel for me, ’tis my picture— Refuse it not, it hath no tongue to vex you— And I beseech you come again tomorrow. What shall you ask of me that I’ll deny, That honour, saved, 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 tomorrow. Fare thee well. A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.
(didascalia)	Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby and Fabian
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 dubbed with unhatched rapier and on carpet consideration, but he is a devil in private brawl. Souls and bodies hath he divorced 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. Signor Fabian, stay you by this gentleman till my return. Exit
VIOLA	Pray you, sir, do you know of this matter?
FABIAN	I know the knight is incensed 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.
(didascalia)	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. Exeunt
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby and Sir Andrew
SIR TOBY	Why, man, he’s a very devil, I have not seen such a virago. 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 hits 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, an I thought he had been valiant and so cunning in fence I’d have seen him damned ere I’d have challenged him. Let him let the matter slip and I’ll give him my horse, grey Capulet.
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.
(didascalia)	Enter Fabian, and Viola as Cesario
SIR TOBY	[Aside to Fabian] I have his horse to take up the quarrel, I have persuaded him the youth’s a devil.
FABIAN	(aside to Sir Toby) 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	(to Sir Andrew) 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 promised 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Antonio
VIOLA	I do assure you ’tis against my will. Sir Andrew and Viola draw their swords
ANTONIO	(drawing his sword, to Sir Andrew) 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	(drawing his sword) Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you.
(didascalia)	Enter Officers
FABIAN	O, good Sir Toby, hold. Here come the officers.
SIR TOBY	(to Antonio) I’ll be with you anon.
VIOLA	(to Sir Andrew) Pray, sir, put your sword up if you please.
SIR ANDREW	Marry will I, sir, and for that I promised you I’ll be as good as my word. He will bear you easily, and reins well. Sir Andrew and Viola put up their swords
FIRST OFFICER	This is the man, do thy office.
SECOND OFFICER	Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit of Count Orsino.
ANTONIO	You do mistake me, sir.
FIRST OFFICER	No, sir, no jot. I know your favour well, Though now you have no seacap on your head. (To Second Officer) 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 amazed, But be of comfort.
SECOND OFFICER	Come, sir, away.
ANTONIO	(to Viola) I must entreat of you some of that money.
VIOLA	What money, sir? For the fair kindness you have showed 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, (offering money) 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!
SECOND OFFICER	Come, sir, I pray you go.
ANTONIO	Let me speak a little. This youth that you see here I snatched one half out of the jaws of death, Relieved him with such sanctity of love, And to his image, which methought did promise Most venerable worth, did I devotion.
FIRST 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 called deformed but the unkind. Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil Are empty trunks o’er-flourished by the devil.
FIRST OFFICER	The man grows mad, away with him. Come, come, sir.
ANTONIO	Lead me on.
(didascalia)	Exit with Officers
VIOLA	(aside) 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. They stand aside
VIOLA	He named 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! Exit
SIR TOBY	(to Sir Andrew) 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	An I do not—
(didascalia)	Exit
FABIAN	Come, let’s see the event.
SIR TOBY	I dare lay any money ’twill be nothing yet.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sebastian and Feste, the clown
FESTE	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.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	By my troth, thou hast an open hand. These wise men that give fools money get themselves a good report, after fourteen years’ purchase.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Andrew, Sir Toby, and Fabian
SIR ANDREW	(to Sebastian) Now, sir, have I met you again? (Striking him) There’s for you.
SEBASTIAN	[striking Sir Andrew with his dagger] Why, there’s for thee, and there, and there. Are all the people mad?
SIR TOBY	(to Sebastian, holding him back) Hold, sir, or I’ll throw your dagger o’er the house.
FESTE	This will I tell my lady straight, I would not be in some of your coats for twopence. Exit
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 fleshed. Come on.
SEBASTIAN	(freeing himself) 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. Sir Toby and Sebastian draw their swords.
(didascalia)	Enter Olivia
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 preached—out of my sight! Be not offended, dear Cesario. (To Sir Toby) Rudesby, be gone.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian
OLIVIA	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 botched 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 ruled by me.
SEBASTIAN	Madam, I will.
OLIVIA	O, say so, and so be.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 4, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Maria carrying a gown and false beard, and Feste, the clown
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. Exit
FESTE	Well, I’ll put it on, and I will dissemble myself in’t, and I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown. He disguises himself 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby and Maria
SIR TOBY	Jove bless thee, Master Parson.
FESTE	Bonos dies, Sir Toby, for, as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a 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.
FESTE	What ho, I say, peace in this prison.
SIR TOBY	The knave counterfeits well—a good knave. Malvolio within
MALVOLIO	Who calls there?
FESTE	Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Malvolio the lunatic.
MALVOLIO	Sir Topas, Sir Topas, good Sir Topas, go to my lady.
FESTE	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 wronged. Good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad. They have laid me here in hideous darkness.
FESTE	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. Sayst thou that house is dark?
MALVOLIO	As hell, Sir Topas.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	Madman, thou errest. I say there is no darkness but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled 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 abused. I am no more mad than you are. Make the trial of it in any constant question.
FESTE	What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wildfowl?
MALVOLIO	That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
FESTE	What thinkest thou of his opinion?
MALVOLIO	I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	Nay, I am for all waters.
MARIA	Thou mightst have done this without thy beard and gown, he sees thee not.
(didascalia)	SIR TOBY (to Feste) To him in thine own voice, and bring me word how thou findest him. I would we were well rid of this knavery. If he may be conveniently delivered, 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. To Maria Come by and by to my chamber.
(didascalia)	Exit With Maria
FESTE	(sings) ‘Hey Robin, jolly Robin, Tell me how thy lady does.’
MALVOLIO	Fool!
FESTE	‘My lady is unkind, pardie.’
MALVOLIO	Fooll
FESTE	‘Alas, why is she so?’
MALVOLIO	Fool, I say!
FESTE	‘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.
FESTE	Master Malvolio?
MALVOLIO	Ay, good fool.
FESTE	Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?
MALVOLIO	Fool, there was never man so notoriously abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	Advise you what you say, the minister is here. (As Sir Topas) Malvolio, Malvolio, thy wits the heavens restore. Endeavour thyself to sleep, and leave thy vain bibble-babble.
MALVOLIO	Sir Topas.
FESTE	(as Sir Topas) Maintain no words with him, good fellow. (As himself) Who I, sir? Not I, sir. God b’wi’ you, good Sir Topas. (As Sir Topas) Marry, amen. (As himself) I will, sir, I will.
MALVOLIO	Fool, fool, fool, I say.
FESTE	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. no
FESTE	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.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	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.
FESTE	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 ‘Aha,’ to the devil, Like a mad lad, ‘Pare thy nails, dad, Adieu, goodman devil.’ Exit

Atto 4, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Sebastian
SEBASTIAN	This is the air, that is the glorious sun. This pearl she gave me, I do feel’t and see‘t, And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus, Yet ‘tis 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 ’twere 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Olivia and a Priest
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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt

Atto 5, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Feste the clown and Fabian
FABIAN	Now, as thou lovest me, let me see his letter.
FESTE	Good Master Fabian, grant me another request.
FABIAN	Anything.
FESTE	Do not desire to see this letter.
FABIAN	This is to give a dog, and in recompense desire my dog again.
(didascalia)	Enter the Duke, Viola as Cesario, Curio, and lords
ORSINO	Belong you to the Lady Olivia, friends?
FESTE	Ay, sir, we are some of her trappings.
ORSINO	I know thee well. How dost thou, my good fellow? FESTE Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my friends.
ORSINO	Just the contrary—the better for thy friends.
FESTE	No, sir, the worse.
ORSINO	How can that be?
FESTE	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 abused; 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.
ORSINO	Why, this is excellent.
FESTE	By my troth, sir, no, though it please you to be one of my friends.
ORSINO	(giving money) Thou shalt not be the worse for me. There’s gold.
FESTE	But that it would be double-dealing, sir, I would you could make it another.
ORSINO	O, you give me ill counsel.
FESTE	Put your grace in your pocket, sir, for this once, and let your flesh and blood obey it.
ORSINO	Well, I will be so much a sinner to be a double-dealer. (Giving money) There’s another.
FESTE	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’.
ORSINO	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.
FESTE	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.
(didascalia)	Exit
(didascalia)	Enter Antonio and Officers
VIOLA	Here comes the man, sir, that did rescue me.
ORSINO	That face of his I do remember well, Yet when I saw it last it was besmeared 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 scatheful 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?
FIRST OFFICER	Orsino, this is that Antonio That took the Phoenix and her freight 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 ’twas but distraction.
ORSINO	(to Antonio) 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 pleased 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 enraged and foamy mouth Did I redeem. A wreck past hope he was. His life I gave him, and did thereto add 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?
ORSINO	When came he to this town?
ANTONIO	Today, my lord, and for three months before, No int’rim, not a minute’s vacancy, Both day and night did we keep company.
(didascalia)	Enter Olivia and attendants
ORSINO	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—
ORSINO	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.
ORSINO	Still so cruel?
OLIVIA	Still so constant, lord.
ORSINO	What, to perverseness? You uncivil lady, To whose ingrate and unauspicious altars My soul the faithfull‘st off’rings hath breathed out That e’er devotion tendered—what shall I do?
OLIVIA	Even what it please my lord that shall become him.
ORSINO	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. (To Viola) 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 e’er 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 beguiled!
VIOLA	Who does beguile you? Who does do you wrong?
OLIVIA	Hast thou forgot thyself? Is it so long? Call forth the holy father. Exit an attendant
ORSINO	(to Viola) Come, away.
OLIVIA	Whither, my lord? Cesario, husband, stay.
ORSINO	Husband?
OLIVIA	Ay, husband. Can he that deny?
ORSINO	(to Viola) 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.
(didascalia)	Enter the Priest
OLIVIA	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 ’tis ripe—what thou dost know Hath newly passed between this youth and me.
PRIEST	A contract of eternal bond of love, Confirmed by mutual joinder of your hands, Attested by the holy close of lips, Strengthened by interchangement of your rings, And all the ceremony of this compact Sealed in my function, by my testimony; Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave I have travelled but two hours.
ORSINO	(to Viola) O thou dissembling cub, what wilt thou be When time hath sowed 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 hast too much fear.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Andrew
SIR ANDREW	For the love of God, a surgeon—send one presently to Sir Toby.
OLIVIA	What’s the matter?
SIR ANDREW	He’s 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.
ORSINO	My gentleman, Cesario?
SIR ANDREW	’Od’s lifelings, here he is. (To Viola) 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.
(didascalia)	Enter Sir Toby and Feste, the clown
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 tickled you othergates than he did.
ORSINO	(to Sir Toby) How now, gentleman? How is’t with you?
SIR TOBY	That’s all one, he’s hurt me, and there’s th’end on’t. (To Feste) Sot, didst see Dick Surgeon, sot?
FESTE	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 pavan. 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 dressed together.
SIR TOBY	Will you help—an ass-head, and a coxcomb, and a knave; a thin-faced knave, a gull?
OLIVIA	Get him to bed, and let his hurt be looked to.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Feste, and Fabian
(didascalia)	Enter Sebastian
SEBASTIAN	(to Olivia) 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.
ORSINO	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 racked and tortured 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 wonderfull
SEBASTIAN	(seeing Viola) 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 devoured. 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 numbered 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 usurped 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 preserved 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, deceived. You are betrothed both to a maid and man.
ORSINO	(to Olivia) Be not amazed. 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 overswear, And all those swearings keep as true in soul As doth that orbed continent the fire That severs day from night.
ORSINO	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 distraught.
(didascalia)	Enter Feste the clown with a letter, and Fabian
OLIVIA	A most extracting frenzy of mine own From my remembrance clearly banished his. How does he, sirrah?
FESTE	Truly, madam, he holds Beelzebub at the stave’s end as well as a man in his case may do. He’s here writ a letter to you. I should have given’t you today morning. But as a madman’s epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are delivered.
OLIVIA	Open’t and read it.
FESTE	Look then to be well edified when the fool delivers the madman. (Reads) ‘By the Lord, madam’—
OLIVIA	How now, art thou mad?
FESTE	No, madam, I do but read madness. An your ladyship will have it as it ought to be you must allow vox.
OLIVIA	Prithee, read i’thy right wits.
FESTE	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. Feste gives the letter to Fabian
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 induced 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-used Malvolio.’
OLIVIA	Did he write this?
FESTE	Ay, madam.
ORSINO	This savours not much of distraction.
OLIVIA	See him delivered, Fabian, bring him hither. 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.
ORSINO	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 called me master for so long, Here is my hand. You shall from this time be Your master’s mistress.
OLIVIA	(to Viola) A sister, you are she.
(didascalia)	Enter Malvolio
ORSINO	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	(showing a letter) 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 ‘tis 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-gartered 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 suffered me to be imprisoned, Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest, And made the most notorious geck and gull That e’er invention played on? Tell me why?
OLIVIA	Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing, Though I confess much like the character, But out of question, ‘tis 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 presupposed Upon thee in the letter. Prithee be content; This practice hath most shrewdly passed 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 wondered 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 conceived 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 followed May rather pluck on laughter than revenge If that the injuries be justly weighed That have on both sides passed.
OLIVIA	(to Malvolio) Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee!
FESTE	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, an you smile not, he’s gagged’—and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
MALVOLIO	I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you. Exit
OLIVIA	He hath been most notoriously abused.
ORSINO	Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace. He hath not told us of the captain yet.
(didascalia)	Exit one or more
ORSINO	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.
(didascalia)	Exeunt all but Feste
FESTE	(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, the wind and the rain, ’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came, alas, to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came unto my beds, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, With tosspots still had drunken heads, For the rain it raineth every day. A great while ago the world begun, With hey ho, the wind and the rain, But that’s all one, our play is done, And we’ll strive to please you every day.
(didascalia)	Exit
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA	Troilus and Cressida, first heard of in a Stationers’ Register entry of 7 February 1603, was probably written within the previous eighteen months. This entry did not result in publication; the play was re-entered on 28 January 1609, and a quarto appeared during that year. The version printed in the 1623 Folio adds a Prologue, and has many variations in dialogue. It includes the epilogue spoken by Pandarus (which we print as an Additional Passage), but certain features of the text suggest that it does so by accident, and that the epilogue had been marked for omission. Our text is based in substance on the Folio in the belief that this represents the play in its later, revised form. The story of the siege of Troy was the main subject of one of the greatest surviving works of classical literature, Homer’s Iliad, probably Shakespeare read George Chapman’s 1598 translation of Books 1―2 and 7―11. The story also figures prominently in Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, both of which Shakespeare knew well. The war between Greece and Troy had been provoked by the abduction of the Grecian Helen (better, if confusingly, known as Helen of Troy) by the Trojan hero Paris, son of King Priam. Shakespeare’s play opens when the Greek forces, led by Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, have already been besieging Troy for seven years. Shakespeare concentrates on the opposition between the Greek hero Achilles and the Trojan Hector. In the Folio, Troilus and Cressida is printed among the tragedies; if there is a tragic hero, it is Hector. Shakespeare also shows how the war caused by one love affair destroys another. The stories of the love between the Trojan Troilus and the Grecian Cressida, encouraged by her uncle Pandarus, and of Cressida’s desertion of Troilus for the Greek Diomedes, are medieval additions to the heroic narrative. Chaucer’s long poem Troilus and Criseyde was already a classic, and Shakespeare would also have known Robert Henryson’s continuation, The Testament of Cresseid, in which Cressida, deserted by Diomedes, dwindles into a leprous beggar. Troilus and Cressida is a demanding play, Shakespeare’s third longest, highly philosophical in tone and with an exceptionally learned vocabulary. Possibly (as has often been conjectured) he wrote it for private performance; the 1603 Stationers’ Register entry says it had been acted by the King’s Men, and the original title-page of the 1609 quarto repeats this claim, but while the edition was being printed this title-page was replaced by one that does not mention performance, and an epistle was added claiming that it was ‘a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar’. An adaptation by John Dryden of 1679 was successfully acted from time to time for half a century, but the first verified performance of Shakespeare’s play was in Germany in 1898, and that was heavily adapted. Troilus and Cressida came into its own in the twentieth century, when its deflation of heroes, its radical questioning of human values (especially in relation to love and war), and its remorseless examination of the frailty of human aspirations in the face of the destructive powers of time seemed particularly apposite to modern intellectual and ethical preoccupations.
THE PERSONS OF THE	PLAY
PROLOGUE	Trojans PRIAM, King of Troy CASSANDRA, Priam’s daughter, a prophetess ANDROMACHE, wife of Hector PANDARUS, a lord CRESSIDA, his niece CALCHAS, her father, who has joined the Greeks HELEN, wife of Menelaus, now living with Paris ALEXANDER, servant of Cressida Servants of Troilus, musicians, soldiers, attendants Greeks AGAMEMNON, Commander-in-Chief MENELAUS, his brother
ACHILLES	PATROCLUS, his companion
THERSITES	MYRMIDONS, soldiers of Achilles Servants of Diomedes, soldiers