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
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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.
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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 mad, be gone: if you have reason, be
brief: ’tis not that time of moon with me to make one
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in so skipping a dialogue.
MARIA Will you hoist sail, sir? Here lies your way.
VIOLA No, good swabber, I am to hull here a little
longer. Some mollification for your giant, sweet lady!
Tell me your mind, I am a messenger.
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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.
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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,
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divinity; to any other’s, profanation.
OLIVIA Give us the place alone: we will hear this
divinity. Exeunt Maria and attendants.
Now, sir, what is your text?
VIOLA Most sweet lady –
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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
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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
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negotiate with my face? You are now out of your text:
but we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.
[unveiling] Look you, sir, such a one I was this present.
Is’t not well done?
VIOLA Excellently done, if God did all.
230
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
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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
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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.
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My lord and master loves you: O, such love
Could be but recompens’d, though you were crown’d
The nonpareil of beauty!
OLIVIA How does he love me?
VIOLA a With adorations, fertile tears,
With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.
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OLIVIA
Your lord does know my mind, I cannot love him.
Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;
In voices well divulg’d, free, learn’d, and valiant,
And in dimension, and the shape of nature,
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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,
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I would not understand it.
OLIVIA Why, what would you?
VIOLA Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
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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.
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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,
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To tell me how he takes it. Fare you well:
I thank you for your pains: spend this for me.
VIOLA I am no fee’d post, lady; keep your purse;
My master, not myself, lacks recompense.
Love make his heart of flint that you shall love,
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And let your fervour like my master’s be,
Plac’d in contempt. Farewell, fair cruelty. Exit.
OLIVIA ‘What is your parentage?’
‘Above my fortunes, yet my state is well;
I am a gentleman.’ I’ll be sworn thou art:
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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
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With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.
What ho, Malvolio!
Enter MALVOLIO.
MALVOLIO Here, madam, at your service.
OLIVIA Run after that same peevish messenger
The County’s man: he left this ring behind him,
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Would I or not; tell him, I’ll none of it.
Desire him not to flatter with his lord,
Nor hold him up with hopes: I am not for him.
If that the youth will come this way to-morrow,
I’ll give him reasons for’t. Hie thee, Malvolio.
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MALVOLIO Madam, I will. Exit.
OLIVIA I do I know not what, and fear to find
Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe.
What is decreed, must be: and be this so. Exit.
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2.1 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
5
leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad<
br />
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
10
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
15
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
20
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:
25
but though I could not with such estimable wonder
overfar believe that, yet thus far I will boldly publish
her, she bore a mind that envy could not but call fair.
She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I
seem to drown her remembrance again with more.
30
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,
35
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:
40
farewell. Exit.
ANTONIO The gentleness of all the gods go with thee!
I have many enemies in Orsino’s court,
Else would I very shortly see thee there:
But come what may, I do adore thee so,
45
That danger shall seem sport, and I will go. Exit.
2.2 Enter VIOLA 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 She returns this ring to you, sir: you might
5
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
10
lord’s taking of this. Receive it so.
VIOLA She took the ring of me, I’ll none of it.
MALVOLIO Come sir, you peevishly threw it to her: and
her will is, it should be so returned. If it be worth
stooping for, there it lies, in your eye: if not, be it his
15
that finds it. Exit.
VIOLA I left no ring with her: what means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her!
She made good view of me, indeed so much,
That methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
20
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,
25
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!
30
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:
35
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,
40
It is too hard a knot for me t’untie. Exit.
2.3 Enter SIR TOBY and SIR ANDREW.
SIR TOBY Approach, Sir Andrew; not to be abed after
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 525
