The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  Exit

  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.

  Exit

  Enter Maria

  OLIVIA

  Give me my veil. Come, throw it o’er my face.

  We’ll once more hear Orsino’s embassy.

  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.

  OLIVIA (to Maria ⌈and attendants⌉) Give us the place alone, we will hear this divinity.

  Exeunt Maria ⌈and attendants⌉

  Now sir, what is your text?

  VIOLA Most sweet lady—

  OLIVIA A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it. Where lies your text?

  VIOLA In Orsino’s bosom.

  OLIVIA In his bosom? In what chapter of his bosom?

  VIOLA To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.

  OLIVIA O, I have read it. It is heresy. Have you no more to say?

  VIOLA Good madam, let me see your face.

  OLIVIA Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face? You are now out of your text. But we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.

  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.

  Enter Malvolio

  MALVOLIO

  Here, madam, at your service.

  OLIVIA

  Run after that same peevish messenger

  The County’s man. He left this ring behind him,

  Would I or not. Tell him I’ll none of it.

  Desire him not to flatter with his lord,

  Nor hold him up with hopes. I am not for him.

  If that the youth will come this way tomorrow,

  I’ll give him reasons for’t. Hie thee, Malvolio.

  MALVOLIO Madam, I will.

  Exit 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.

  Exit at another door

  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 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.

  ⌈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

  2.2 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

  2.3 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.

  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 fur
ther, 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.

  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.

  Enter Malvolio