Shall not behold her face at ample view;

But, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk,
And water once a day her chamber round
With eye-offending brine: all this to season 6
A brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh
And lasting in her sad remembrance.

Duke. O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame
To pay this debt of love but to a brother,
How will she love, when the rich golden shaft
Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else

That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart,
These sovereign thrones, her sweet perfections,
Are all supplied and fill'd with one self king!7 —
Away before me to sweet beds of flowers:

Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers. [Exeunt.

My brother he is in Elysium.
Perchance he is not drown'd: what think you, sailors?

Cap. It is perchance that you yourself were saved.
Vio. O my poor brother! and so perchance may he be.

6 To season is to preserve. In All's Well, i. 1, tears are said to be "the best brine a maiden can season her praise in."

7 The liver, brain, and heart were regarded as the special seats of passion, judgment, and affection, and so were put respectively for their supposed occupants.- One self king is equivalent to one and the same king. The Poet often uses self with the force of salf-same.

1 Viola first uses perchance in the sense of perhaps; the Captain in that of by chance, accident, or good luck.

Cap. True, madam: and, to comfort you with chance, Assure yourself, after our ship did split,

When you, and this poor number saved with you,

2

Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,

Most provident in peril, bind himself—

Courage and hope both teaching him the practice

To a strong mast that lived upon the sea;
Where, like Arion on the dolphin's back,3
I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves
So long as I could see.

Vio.

For saying so, there's gold:

Mine own escape unfoldeth to my hope,
Whereto thy speech serves for authority,

The like of him. Know'st thou this country?

Cap. Ay, madam, well; for I was bred and born

Not three hours' travel from this very place.

Vio. Who governs here?

Cap. A noble duke, in nature as in name.4

Vio. What is his name?

Cap. Orsino.

Vio. Orsino! I have heard my father name him :

2 "Driving boat" means, I suppose, boat driven before the storm.

8 Arion's feat is worthily described in Wordsworth's poem On the Power

of sound:

Thy skill, Arion,

Could humanize the creaures of the sea,

Where men were monsters. A last grace he craves,

Leave for one chant;- -the dulcet sound
Steals from the deck o'er willing waves,
And listening dolphins gather round.
Self-cast, as with a desperate course,
Mid that strange audience, he bestrides
A proud one docile as a managed horse;
And singing, while the accordant hand
Sweeps his harp, the master rides.

4 An allusion, no doubt, to the great and well-known Italian family of

Orsini, from whom the name Orsino is borrowed.

He was a bachelor then.

Cap. And so is now, or was so very late; For but a month ago I went from hence,

And then 'twas fresh in murmur, — as, you know,

What great ones do, the less will prattle of, —

That he did seek the love of fair Olivia.

Vio. What's she?

Cap. A virtuous maid, the daughter of a count That died some twelvemonth since; then leaving her In the protection of his son, her brother,

Who shortly also died: for whose dear loss,

They say, she hath abjured the company

And sight of men.

Vio.

O, that I served that lady,

And might not be deliver'd to the world,

Till I had made mine own occasion mellow,

What my estate is ! 5

Cap.

That were hard to compass;

Because she will admit no kind of suit,

No, not the Duke's.

Vio. There is a fair behaviour in thee, captain;
And though that nature with a beauteous wall
Doth oft close-in pollution, yet of thee

I well believe thou hast a mind that suits
With this thy fair and outward character.
I pr'ythee, and I'll pay thee bounteously, -
Conceal me what I am; and be my aid
For such disguise as haply shall become
The form of my intent. I'll serve this Duke:

5 Viola is herself a nobleman's daughter; and she here wishes that her birth and quality - her estate - may be kept secret from the world, till she has a ripe occasion for making known who she is. Certain later passages in the play seem to infer that she has already fallen in from the descriptions she has had of him.

love with Duke Orsino

Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him: 6
It may be worth thy pains; for I can sing,
And speak to him in many sorts of music,
That will allow me very worth his service."
What else may hap, to time I will commit;
Only shape thou thy silence to my wit.

Cap. Be you his eunuch, and your mute I'll be :
When my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see.
Vio. I thank thee: lead me on.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

A Room in OLIVIA'S House.

Enter Sir TOBY BELCH and MARIA.

Sir To. What a plague means my niece, to take the death of her brother thus? I am sure care's an enemy to life.

Mar. By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o' nights your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.

Sir To. Why, let her except before excepted.2

Mar. Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits of order.

Sir To. Confine! I'll confine myself no finer than I

6 This plan of Viola's was not pursued, as it would have been inconsistent with the plot of the play. She was presented as a page, not as an eunuch.

7" Will approve me worth his service"; that is, "will prove that I am worth," &c. This use of to allow for to approve is very common in old English; and Shakespeare has it repeatedly. So in King Lear, ii. 4: “O Heavens, if your sweet sway allow obedience."

1 Cousin was used, not only for what we so designate, but also for nephew, niece, grandchild, and, indeed, kindred in general.

2 The Poet here shows his familiarity with the technical language of the Law; Sir Toby being made to run a whimsical play upon the old legal phrase, "those things being excepted which were before excepted."

am: 3 these clothes are good enough to drink in; and so be these boots too: an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.

Mar. That quaffing and drinking will undo you I heard my lady talk of it yesterday; and of a foolish knight that you brought in one night here to be her wooer.

Sir To. Who, Sir Andrew Aguecheek?

Mar. Ay, he.

Sir To. He's as tall a man as any's in Illyria.

Mar. What's that to the purpose?

Sir To. Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.

Mar. Ay, but he'll have but a year in all these ducats: he's a very fool and a prodigal.

Sir To. Fie, that you'll say so! he plays o' the viol-degamboys, and speaks three or four languages word for word. without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature.

Mar. He hath, indeed, all most natural:6 for, besides that he's a fool, he's a great quarreller; and, but that he hath the gift of a coward to allay the gust? he hath in quar

8 Sir Toby purposely misunderstands confine, taking it for refine.

4 The use of tall for bold, valiant, stout, was common in Shakespeare's time, and occurs several times in his works. Sir Toby is evidently bantering with the word, Sir Andrew being equally deficient in spirit and in stature. See vol. ii., page 222, note 4.

5 Viol-de-gamboys appears to be a Tobyism for viol da gamba, an instrument much like the violoncello: so called because it was held between the legs; gamba being Italian for leg. According to Gifford, the instrument was an indispensable piece of furniture in every fashionable house, where it hung up in the best chamber, much as the guitar does in Spain, and the violin in Italy, to be played on at will, and to fill up the void of conversation. Whoever pretended to fashion affected an acquaintance with this instrument."

6 Maria plays upon natural, which, in one of its senses, meant a fool. See page 15, note 3.-There is also an equivoque in all most, one of the senses being almost.

7 Gust is taste, from the Italian gusto; not much used now, though its sense lives in disgust.