The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (book suggestions TXT) 📖

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 recompens’d 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 divulg’d, 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 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 contemned love And sing them loud even in the dead of night; Halloo your name to the reverberate hals, 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 Plac’d 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 tomorrow, 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

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ACT II. SCENE I.

The 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 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 call’d 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 pleas’d, would we had so ended! But you, sir, alter’d that; for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was my sister drown’d.

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 mind that envy could not but call fair. She is drown’d 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 recover’d-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 cnemies 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

SCENE II.

A street

 

Enter VIOLA and MALVOLIO at several doors MALVOLIO. Were you not ev’n now with the Countess Olivia?

VIOLA. Even now, sir; on a moderate pace I have since arriv’d 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 return’d. 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 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

SCENE III.

OLIVIA’S house

 

Enter SIR TOBY and SIR ANDREW

 

SIR TOBY. Approach, Sir Andrew. Not to be abed after midnight is to be up betimes; and ‘diluculo surgere’ thou know’st-AGUECHEEK. 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 unfill’d 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?

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

SIR TOBY. Th’art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink.

Marian, I say! a stoup of wine.

 

Enter CLOWN

 

AGUECHEEK. Here comes the fool, i’ faith.

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

SIR TOBY. Welcome, ass. Now let’s have a catch.

AGUECHEEK. 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 spok’st 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.

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

SIR TOBY. Come on, there is sixpence for you. Let’s have a song.

AGUECHEEK. 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. A love-song, a love-song.

AGUECHEEK. 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.

 

AGUECHEEK. Excellent good, i’ faith!

SIR TOBY. Good, good!

 

CLOWN sings

 

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.

 

AGUECHEEK. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.

SIR TOBY. A contagious breath.

AGUECHEEK. 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?

AGUECHEEK. An you love me, let’s do’t. I am dog at a catch.

CLOWN. By’r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.

AGUECHEEK. Most certain. Let our catch be ‘Thou knave.’

CLOWN. ‘Hold thy peace, thou knave’ knight? I shall be constrain’d in’t to call thee knave, knight.

AGUECHEEK. ‘Tis not the first time I have constrained one to call me knave. Begin, fool: it begins ‘Hold thy peace.’

CLOWN. I shall never begin if I hold my peace.

AGUECHEEK. Good, i’ faith! Come, begin. [Catch sung]

 

Enter MARIA

 

MARIA. What a caterwauling do you keep here! If my lady have not