Enter SIR ANDREW, SIR TOBY, and FABIAN. Sir And. Now, sir, have I met you again? there's for you. [Striking SEBASTIAN. Seb. Why, there's for thee, and there, and there: Are all the people mad? [Beating SIR ANDREW. Sir To. Hold, sir, or I'll throw your dagger o'er the house. Clo. This will I tell my lady straight; I would not be in some of your coats for two-pence. Sir To. Come on, sir; hold. [Exit Clown. [Holding SEBASTIAN. Sir And. Nay, let him alone; I'll go another way to work with him; I'll have an action of battery against him, if there be any law in Illyria: though I struck him first, yet it's no matter for that. Seb. Let go thy hand. Sir To. Come, sir, I will not let you go. Come, my young soldier, put up your iron: you are well fleshed; come on. Seb. I will be free from thee. What wouldst thou now? If thou dar'st tempt me further, draw thy sword. [Draws. Sir To. What, what! Nay, then I must have an ounce or two of this malapert blood from you. Enter OLIVIA. [Draws. Oli. Hold. Toby; on thy life, I charge thee, hold. Sir To. Madam! Oli. Will it be ever thus? Ungracious wretch, Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves, Where manners ne'er were preach'd! out of my sight! Be not offended, dear Cesario: Rudesby3, be gone?—I pr'ythee, gentle friend, Against thy peace. Go with me to my house; He started one poor heart of mine in thee. Seb. What relish is in this? how runs the stream? Or I am mad, or else this is a dream: Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep; Oli. Nay, come, I pr'ythee: 'Would thou❜dst be rul'd by me! Seb. Madam, I will. Oli. O, say so, and so be! [Exeunt. SCENE II. A Room in Olivia's House. Enter MARIA and Clown. Mar. Nay, I pr'ythee, put on this gown, and this beard; make him believe, thou art Sir Topas the curate; do it quickly: I'll call Sir Toby the whilst. [Exit MARIA. Clo. Well, I'll put it on, and I will dissemble1 myself in't; and I would I were the first that ever 5 Made up. 3 Rude fellow. 4 Violence. 6 Ill betide. 7 An equivoque is here intended between hart and heart, they were formerly written alike. 8 i. e. how does this taste? what judgment am I to make of it? 1i. e. disguise. Shakspeare has here used a Latinism. ‘Dissimulo, to dissemble, to cloak, to hide, says Hutton's Dictionary, 1583. And Ovid, speaking of Achilles 'Veste virum longa dissimulatus erat.' dissembled in such a gown. I am not tall enough to become the function well; nor lean enough to be thought a good student: but to be said, an honest man, and a good housekeeper, goes as fairly as to say, a careful man, and a great scholar. The competitors 3 enter. Enter SIR TOBY BELCH and MARIA. Sir To. Jove bless thee, master parson. Clo. Bonos dies, Sir Toby: for as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of king Gorboduc, That, that is, is: so I, being master parson, am master parson: For what is that, but that? and is, but is1? Sir To. To him, Sir Topas. Clo. What, hoa, I say;-Peace in this prison! Sir To. The knave counterfeits well: a good knave. Mal. [in an inner chamber.] Who calls there? Clo. Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Malvolio the lunatick. Mal. Sir Topas, Sir Topas, good Sir Topas, go to my lady. Clo. Out, hyperbolical fiend! how vexest thou this man? talkest thou nothing but of ladies! Sir To. Well said, master parson. Mal. Sir Topas, never was man thus wronged: good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad: they have laid me here in hideous darkness. Clo. Fye, thou dishonest Sathan! I call thee by the most modest terms; for I am one of those gentle ones, that will use the devil himself with courtesy: Say'st thou, that house is dark? 2 The modern editors have changed this to fat without any apparent reason. 3 Confederates. 4 A humorous banter upon the language of the schools. Mal. As hell, Sir Topas. Clo. Why, it hath bay-windows5 transparent as barricadoes, and the clear stories towards the southnorth are as lustrous as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction? Mal. I am not mad, Sir Topas: I say to you, this house is dark. Clo. Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness, but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog. Mal. I say, this house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say, there was never man thus abused: I am no more mad than you are; make the trial of it in any constant question. Clo. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl? Mal. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. Clo. What thinkest thou of his opinion? Mal. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion. 5 Bay windows were large projecting windows, probably so called because they occupied a whole bay or space between two cross beams in a building. Minshew says a bay-window, so called 'because it is builded in manner of a bay or road for ships, i. e. round.' 6 Clear stories, in Gothic Architecture, denote the row of windows running along the upper part of a lofty hall or of a church, over the arches of the nave: q. d. a clear story, a story without joists, rafters, or flooring. 'Over each side of the nave is a row of clere story windows.'-Ormerod's Hist. of Cheshire, i. 450. The first folio reads clear stores, the second folio clear stones, which was followed by all subsequent editors. The emendation and explanation are Mr. Blakeway's; Randle Holme, however, in his Academy of Armory, says that clear story windows are such windows that have no transum or cross piece in the middle to break the same into two lights.' 7 Regular conversation. Clo. Fare thee well: Remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras, ere I will allow of thy wits; and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well. Mal. Sir Topas, Sir Topas, Sir To. My most exquisite Sir Topas! Mar. Thou might'st have done this without thy beard and gown; he sees thee not. Sir To. To him in thine own voice, and bring me word how thou findest him; I would, we were well rid of this knavery. If he may be conveniently delivered, I would he were; for I am now so far in offence with my niece, that I cannot pursue with any safety this sport to the upshot. Come by and by to my chamber. [Exeunt SIR TOBY and MARIA. Clo. Hey Robin, jolly Robin 10, Tell me how thy lady does. Mal. Fool, Clo. My lady is unkind, perdy. [Singing. 8 The clown mentions a woodcock because it was proverbial as a foolish bird, and therefore a proper ancestor for a man out of his wits. 9 A proverbial phrase not yet satisfactorily explained. The meaning however appears to be 'I can turn my hand to any thing, or assume any character.' Florio in his translation of Montaigne, speaking of Aristotle, says he hath an oar in every water, and meddleth with all things.' And in his Second Frutes, there is an expression more resembling the import of that in the text. 'I am a knight for all saddles.' Nash in his Lenten Stuffe, 1599, has almost the language of the clown.-' He is first broken to the sea in the Herring-man's skiffe or cock-boate, where having learned to brooke all waters, and drink as he can out of a tarrie can.' Mason's conjecture that the allusion is to the water hue or colour of precious stones is surely inadmissible. 10 This ballad may be found in Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Vol. i. p. 194, ed. 1794. Dr. Nott has also printed it among the poems of Sir Thomas Wiatt the elder, p. 188. |