question's out of my part. Good gentle one, give me modest assurance if you be the lady of the house, that I may proceed in my speech.

Oli. Are you a comedian?

Vio. No, my profound heart: and yet, by the very fangs of malice I swear, I am not that I play. Are you the lady

of the house?

Oli. If I do not usurp myself, I am.

Vio. 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. Oli. Come to what is important in't I forgive you the praise.

Vio. Alas, I took great pains to study it, and 'tis poetical. Oli. It is the more like to be feigned: I pray you, keep it in. I heard you were saucy at my gates, and allowed you to 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.

Mar. Will you hoist sail, sir? here lies your way.

Vio. 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. 220

Oli. Sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver, when the courtesy of it is so fearful. Speak your office.

Vio. 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.

Oli. Yet you began rudely. What are you? what would you? 229

Vio. 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.

Oli. Give us the place alone: we will hear this divinity. [Exeunt Maria and Attendants.] Now, sir, what is your

text?

Vio. Most sweet lady,

Oli. A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it. Where lies your text? 240

Vio. In Orsino's bosom.

Oli. In his bosom ! In what chapter of his bosom?

Vio. To answer by the method, in the first of his heart. Oli. O, I have read it: it is heresy. Have you no more to say?

Vio. Good madam, let me see your face.

Oli. 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.

Vio. Excellently done, if God did all.
Oli. 'Tis in grain, sir; 'twill endure wind and weather.
Vio. 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.

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:

Oli. 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?

Vio. 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!

Oli.

Why, what would you?
Vio. 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,

270

Oli.
How does he love me?
Vio. With adoration, fertile tears,
With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.

Oli. 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

Vio. 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.

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But you should pity me!
Oii.

You might do much.

What is your parentage?

Vio. Above my fortunes, yet my state is well : I am a gentleman.

Oli.

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.
Vio. 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.
Oli. "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.

Mal.

Here, madam, at your service.
Oli. 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.
Mal. Madam, I will.

Oli. 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.

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[Exit.

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[Erit.

[Exit.

ACT II

SCENE I. The sea-coast

Enter ANTONIO and SEBASTIAN.

Ant. Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you?

Seb. 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.

Ant. Let me yet know of you whither you are bound. 10 Seb. 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 called 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 pleased, would we had so ended! but you, sir, altered that; for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was my sister drowned.

Ant. Alas the day!

Seb. 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 a mind that envy could not but call fair. She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more.

Ant. Pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment.
Seb. O good Antonio, forgive me your trouble.

Ant. If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant.

Fare ye

Seb. If you will not undo what you have done, that is, kill him whom you have recovered, desire it not. 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.

Ant. The gentleness of all the gods go with thee! I have many enemies 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.
SCENE II. A street.

Enter VIOLA, MALVOLIO following.

Mal. Were not you even now with the Countess Olivia ? Vio. Even now, sir; on a moderate pace I have since arrived but hither.

Mal. 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.

Vio. She took the ring of me

I'll none of it.

Mal. Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is, it should be so returned if it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.

[Erit.

Vio. 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 sure 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.

[Exit. 49

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 to untie !

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[Exit.