Complete Plays, The (417 page)

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. 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 fun of peace as matter.

Olivia

Yet you began rudely. What are you? what would you?

Viola

The rudeness that hath appeared in me have I learned from my entertainment. What I am, and what I would, are as secret as maidenhead; to your ears, divinity, to any other’s, profanation.

Olivia

Give us the place alone: we will hear this divinity.

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. Look you, sir, such a one I was this present: is’t not well done?

Unveiling

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 crown’d
The nonpareil of beauty!

Olivia

How does he love me?

Viola

With adorations, fertile tears,
With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.

Olivia

Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him:
Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;
In voices well divulged, free, learn’d and valiant;
And in dimension and the shape of nature
A gracious person: but yet I cannot love him;
He might have took his answer long ago.

Viola

If I did love you in my master’s flame,
With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
In your denial I would find no sense;
I would not understand it.

Olivia

Why, what would you?

Viola

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
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: 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 fervor, 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!

Re-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 to-morrow,
I’ll give him reasons for’t: hie thee, Malvolio.

Malvolio

Madam, I will.

Exit

Olivia

I do I know not what, and fear to find
Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
Fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe;
What is decreed must be, and be this so.

Exit

A
CT
II

S
CENE
I. T
HE
SEA
-
COAST
.

Enter Antonio and Sebastian

Antonio

Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you?

Sebastian

By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me: the malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone: it were a bad recompense for your love, to lay any of them on you. Antonio: Let me yet know of you whither you are bound.

Sebastian

No, sooth, sir: my determinate voyage is mere extravagancy. But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty, that you will not extort from me what I am willing to keep in; therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express myself. You must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian, which I called Roderigo. My father was that Sebastian of Messaline, whom I know you have heard of. He left behind him myself and a sister, both born in an hour: if the heavens had been pleased, would we had so ended! but you, sir, altered that; for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was my sister drowned.

Antonio

Alas the day!

Sebastian

A lady, sir, though it was said she much resembled me, was yet of many accounted beautiful: but, though I could not with such estimable wonder overfar believe that, yet thus far I will boldly publish her; she bore a mind that envy could not but call fair. She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more.

Antonio

Pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment.

Sebastian

O good Antonio, forgive me your trouble.

Antonio

If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant.

Sebastian

If you will not undo what you have done, that is, kill him whom you have recovered, desire it not. Fare ye well at once: my bosom is full of kindness, and I am yet so near the manners of my mother, that upon the least occasion more mine eyes will tell tales of me. I am bound to the Count Orsino’s court: farewell.

Exit

Antonio

The gentleness of all the gods go with thee!
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

S
CENE
II. A
STREET
.

Enter Viola, Malvolio following

Malvolio

Were not you even now with the Countess Olivia?

Viola

Even now, sir; on a moderate pace I have since arrived but hither.

Malvolio

She returns this ring to you, sir: you might have saved me my pains, to have taken it away yourself. She adds, moreover, that you should put your lord into a desperate assurance she will none of him: and one thing more, that you be never so hardy to come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your lord’s taking of this. Receive it so.

Viola

She took the ring of me: I’ll none of it.

Malvolio

Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is, it should be so returned: if it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.

Exit

Viola

I left no ring with her: what means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her!
She made good view of me; indeed, so much,
That sure 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 to untie!

Exit

S
CENE
III. O
LIVIA
’
S
HOUSE
.

Enter Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew

Sir Toby Belch

Approach, Sir Andrew: not to be abed after midnight is to be up betimes; and ‘diluculo surgere,’ thou know’st,—

Sir Andrew

Nay, my troth, I know not: but I know, to be up late is to be up late.

Sir Toby Belch

A false conclusion: I hate it as an unfilled can. To be up after midnight and to go to bed then, is early: so that to go to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes. Does not our life consist of the four elements?

Sir Andrew

Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.

Sir Toby Belch

Thou’rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink.
Marian, I say! a stoup of wine!

Enter Clown

Sir Andrew

Here comes the fool, i’ faith.

Clown

How now, my hearts! did you never see the picture of ‘we three’?

Sir Toby Belch

Welcome, ass. Now let’s have a catch.

Sir Andrew

By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. I had rather than forty shillings I had such a leg, and so sweet a breath to sing, as the fool has. In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou spokest of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus: ’twas very good, i’ faith. I sent thee sixpence for thy leman: hadst it?

Clown

I did impeticos thy gratillity; for Malvolio’s nose is no whipstock: my lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses.

Sir Andrew

Excellent! why, this is the best fooling, when all is done. Now, a song.

Sir Toby Belch

Come on; there is sixpence for you: let’s have a song.

Sir Andrew

There’s a testril of me too: if one knight give a —

Clown

Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?

Sir Toby Belch

A love-song, a love-song.

Sir Andrew

Ay, ay: I care not for good life.

Clown

[Sings]
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.

Sir Andrew

Excellent good, i’ faith.

Sir Toby Belch

Good, good.

Clown