The arden shakespeare co.., p.527
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, page 527
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,
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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.
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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 display’d, doth fall that very hour.
VIOLA And so they are: alas, that they are so:
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To die, even when they to perfection grow!
Enter CURIO and Clown.
ORSINO 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
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Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.
CLOWN Are you ready, sir?
ORSINO Ay, prithee sing. [Music.]
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The Clown’s Song
CLOWN
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,
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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:
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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,
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To weep there.
ORSINO There’s for thy pains. [giving him money]
CLOWN No pains, sir, I take pleasure in singing, sir.
ORSINO I’ll pay thy pleasure then.
CLOWN Truly sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or
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another.
ORSINO Give me now leave to leave thee.
CLOWN 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
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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,
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Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty.
Tell her my love, more noble than the world,
Prizes not quantity of dirty lands;
The parts that fortune hath bestow’d upon her,
Tell her I hold as giddily as fortune:
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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 answer’d.
VIOLA Sooth, but you must.
Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,
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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 answer’d?
ORSINO There is no woman’s sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
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As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much: they lack retention.
Alas, their love may be call’d appetite,
No motion of the liver, but the palate,
That suffers surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;
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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?
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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 lov’d a man,
As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.
ORSINO And what’s her history?
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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 pin’d in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
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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?
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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. Exeunt.
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2.5 Enter SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW and FABIAN.
SIR TOBY Come thy ways, Signior Fabian.
FABIAN Nay, I’ll come: if I lose a scruple of this sport,
let me be boiled to death with melancholy.
SIR TOBY Would’st thou not be glad to have the
niggardly rascally sheep-biter come by some notable
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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
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Andrew?
SIR ANDREW And we do not, it is pity of our lives.
Enter MARIA.
SIR TOBY Here comes the little villain. How now, my
metal of India?
MARIA Get ye all three into the box-tree. Malvolio’s
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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! [As the men hide, she drops a letter.]
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Lie thou there: for here comes the trout that must be
caught with tickling. Exit.
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
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of my complexion. Besides, she uses me with a more
exalted respect than any one else that follows her.
What should I think on’t?
SIR TOBY Here’s an overweening rogue!
FABIAN O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-
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cock 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!
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SIR ANDREW Pistol him, pistol him!
SIR TOBY Peace, peace!
MALVOLIO There is example for’t. The Lady of the
Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe.
SIR ANDREW Fie on him, Jezebel!
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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!
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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!
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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!
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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 –
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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 a austere regard of control –
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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’ –
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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
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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
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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
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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
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good wishes. Her very phrases! By your leave, wax.
Soft! and the impressure her Lucrece, with which she
uses to seal: ’tis my lady! To whom should this be?
[He opens the letter.]
FABIAN This wins him, liver and all.
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MALVOLIO [Reads.] 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,
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Malvolio!
SIR TOBY Marry, hang thee, brock!
MALVOLIO [Reads.]
I may command where I adore;
But silence, like a Lucrece knife,
With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore;
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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.
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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,
