Complete Plays, The (424 page)

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.

Duke Orsino

Come, away!

Olivia

Whither, my lord? Cesario, husband, stay.

Duke Orsino

Husband!

Olivia

 
Ay, husband: can he that deny?

Duke Orsino

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.

Enter Priest

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 pass’d between this youth and me.

Priest

A contract of eternal bond of love,
Confirm’d by mutual joinder of your hands,
Attested by the holy close of lips,
Strengthen’d by interchangement of your rings;
And all the ceremony of this compact
Seal’d in my function, by my testimony:
Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave
I have travell’d but two hours.

Duke Orsino

O thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou be
When time hath sow’d 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.

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 has 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.

Duke Orsino

My gentleman, Cesario?

Sir Andrew

’Od’s lifelings, here he is! 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 bespoke you fair, and hurt you not.

Sir Andrew

If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me: I think you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb.

Enter Sir Toby Belch and Clown

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.

Duke Orsino

How now, gentleman! how is’t with you?

Sir Toby Belch

That’s all one: has hurt me, and there’s the end on’t. Sot, didst see Dick surgeon, sot?

Clown

O, he’s drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes were set at eight i’ the morning.

Sir Toby Belch

Then he’s a rogue, and a passy measures panyn: 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 well be dressed together.

Sir Toby Belch

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 look’d to.

Exeunt Clown, Fabian, Sir Toby Belch, and Sir Andrew

Enter Sebastian

Sebastian

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.

Duke 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 rack’d 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 wonderful!

Sebastian

Do I stand there? I never had a brother;
Nor can there be that deity in my nature,
Of here and every where. I had a sister,
Whom the blind waves and surges have devour’d.
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 number’d 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 usurp’d 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 betroth’d both to a maid and man.

Duke Orsino

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 those swearings keep as true in soul
As doth that orbed continent the fire
That severs day from night.

Duke 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 distract.

Re-enter Clown with a letter, and Fabian

A most extracting frenzy of mine own
From my remembrance clearly banish’d his.
How does he, sirrah?

Clown

Truly, madam, he holds Belzebub at the staves’s end as well as a man in his case may do: has here writ a letter to you; I should have given’t you to-day 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.

Clown

Look then to be well edified when the fool delivers the madman.

Reads

‘By the Lord, madam,’—

Olivia

How now! art thou mad?

Clown

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.

Clown

So I do, madonna; but to read his right wits is to read thus: therefore perpend, my princess, and give ear.

Olivia

Read it you, sirrah.

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?

Clown

Ay, madam.

Duke Orsino

This savours not much of distraction.

Olivia

See him deliver’d, Fabian; bring him hither.

Exit Fabian

My lord so please you, these things further thought on,
To think me as well a sister as a wife,
One day shall crown the alliance on’t, so please you,
Here at my house and at my proper cost.

Duke Orsino

Madam, I am most apt to 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 call’d me master for so long,
Here is my hand: you shall from this time be
Your master’s mistress.

Olivia

A sister! you are she.

Re-enter Fabian, with Malvolio

Duke 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

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, nor 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-garter’d 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 suffer’d me to be imprison’d,
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
And made the most notorious geck and gull
That e’er invention play’d 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 camest in smiling,
And in such forms which here were presupposed
Upon thee in the letter. Prithee, be content:
This practise hath most shrewdly pass’d 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 wonder’d 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 follow’d,
May rather pluck on laughter than revenge;
If that the injuries be justly weigh’d
That have on both sides pass’d.

Olivia

Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee!

Clown

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.

Duke Orsino

Pursue him and entreat him to a peace:
He hath not told us of the captain yet:
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.

Exeunt all, except Clown

Clown

[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, & c.
’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain, & c.
But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, & c.
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain, & c.
But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, & c.
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain, & c.
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, & c.
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day.