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_ ACT III SCENE II
OLIVIA'S house
[Enter SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW and FABIAN.]
SIR ANDREW.
No, faith, I'll not stay a jot longer.
SIR TOBY.
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 favours to the count's
serving-man than ever she bestow'd upon me; I saw 't i' th'
orchard.
SIR TOBY.
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?
FABIAN.
I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and
reason.
SIR TOBY.
And they have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was a sailor.
FABIAN.
She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to exasperate
you, to awake your dormouse valour, 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 bang'd the youth into dumbness. This was look'd for at your
hand, and this was balk'd: the double gilt of this opportunity
you let time wash off, and you are now sail'd into the north of
my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on
Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable
attempt either of valour or policy.
SIR ANDREW.
And't be any way, it must be with valour; for policy I hate: I
had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.
SIR TOBY.
Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of valour.
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 valour.
FABIAN.
There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.
SIR ANDREW.
Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?
SIR TOBY.
Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no
matter how witty, so it be eloquent and full of invention; taunt
him with the license of ink; 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.
We'll call thee at the cubiculo. Go.
[Exit SIR ANDREW.]
FABIAN.
This is a dear manakin to you, Sir Toby.
SIR TOBY.
I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand strong, or so.
FABIAN.
We shall have a rare letter from him; but you'll not deliver 't?
SIR TOBY.
Never trust me, then; and by all means stir on the youth to an
answer. I think oxen and wain-ropes cannot hale them together.
For Andrew, if he were open'd, and you find so much blood in his
liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of th'
anatomy.
FABIAN.
And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great presage
of cruelty.
SIR TOBY.
Look where the youngest wren of nine comes.
[Enter MARIA.]
MARIA.
If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into
stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is turn'd heathen, a very
renegado; for there is no Christian, that means to be sav'd by
believing rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages of
grossness. He's in yellow stockings.
SIR TOBY.
And cross-garter'd?
MARIA.
Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i' th'
church. I have dogg'd him, like his murderer. He does obey every
point of the letter that I dropp'd 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 't
is. 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
favour.
SIR TOBY.
Come, bring us, bring us where he is.
[Exeunt.] _
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