Twelfth Night

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. 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 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 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!

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.

Act II

Scene I

The sea-coast.