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- $Unique_ID{SSP01012}
- $Title{Twelfth Night: Act III, Scene II}
- $Author{Shakespeare, William}
- $Subject{}
- $Log{Dramatis Personae*01000.txt}
-
- Portions copyright (c) CMC ReSearch, Inc., 1989
-
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
-
- TWELFTH NIGHT
-
-
- ACT III
- ................................................................................
-
-
- SCENE II: OLIVIA's house.
- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
-
- {Enter SIR TOBY BELCH, SIR ANDREW, and FABIAN.}
-
- SIR ANDREW: No, faith, I'll not stay a jot longer.
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason.
-
- FABIAN: You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.
-
- SIR ANDREW: Marry, I saw your niece do more favors to the
- count's serving-man than ever she bestowed upon me;
- I saw't i' the orchard.
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: Did she see thee the while, old boy? tell me that.
-
- SIR ANDREW: As plain as I see you now.
-
- FABIAN: This was a great argument of love in her toward you.
-
- SIR ANDREW: 'Slight, will you make an ass o' me? 10
-
- FABIAN: I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of
- judgment and reason.
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: And they have been grand-jury-men since before Noah
- was a sailor.
-
- FABIAN: She did show favor to the youth in your sight only
- to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valor, to
- put fire in your heart and brimstone in your liver.
- You should then have accosted her; and with some
- excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should
- have banged the youth into dumbness. This was 20
- looked for at your hand, and this was balked: the
- double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash
- off, and you are now sailed into the north of my
- lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle
- on a Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by
- some laudable attempt either of valor or policy.
-
- SIR ANDREW: An't be any way, it must be with valor; for policy
- I hate: I had as lief be a Brownist as a
- politician.
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of 30
- valor. Challenge me the count's youth to fight
- with him; hurt him in eleven places: my niece shall
- take note of it; and assure thyself, there is no
- love-broker in the world can more prevail in man's
- commendation with woman than report of valor.
-
- FABIAN: There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.
-
- SIR ANDREW: Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief;
- it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and fun
- of invention: taunt him with the license of ink: 40
- if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be
- amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of
- paper, although the sheet were big enough for the
- bed of Ware in England, set 'em down: go, about it.
- Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou
- write with a goose-pen, no matter: about it.
-
- SIR ANDREW: Where shall I find you?
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: We'll call thee at the cubiculo: go.
-
- [Exit SIR ANDREW.]
-
- FABIAN: This is a dear manikin to you, Sir Toby.
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand 50
- strong, or so.
-
- FABIAN: We shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll
- not deliver't?
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: Never trust me, then; and by all means stir on the
- youth to an answer. I think oxen and wainropes
- cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were
- opened, and you find so much blood in his liver as
- will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of
- the anatomy.
-
- FABIAN: And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no 60
- great presage of cruelty.
-
- {Enter MARIA.}
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: Look, where the youngest wren of nine comes.
-
- MARIA: If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourself
- into stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is
- turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no
- Christian, that means to be saved by believing
- rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages
- of grossness. He's in yellow stockings.
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: And cross-gartered?
-
- MARIA: Most villanously; like a pedant that keeps a school 70
- i' the church. I have dogged him, like his
- murderer. He does obey every point of the letter
- that I dropped to betray him: he does smile his
- face into more lines than is in the new map with the
- augmentation of the Indies: you have not seen such
- a thing as 'tis. I can hardly forbear hurling things
- at him. I know my lady will strike him: if she do,
- he'll smile and take't for a great favor.
-
- SIR TOBY BELCH: Come, bring us, bring us where he is.
-
- [Exeunt.]
-