For, that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause ; Oli. Yet come again; for thou perhaps mayst move SCENE II. - A Room in OLIVIA'S House. [Exeunt. Enter Sir TOBY BELCH, Sir ANDREW AGUECHEEK, and FABIAN. Sir And. No, faith, I'll not stay a jot longer. Sir To. Thy reason, dear venom: give thy reason. Sir And. 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' the orchard. Sir To. Did she see thee the while, old boy? tell me that. Sir And. As plain as I see you now. Fab. This was a great argument of love in her toward you. Sir And. 'Slight, will you make an ass o' me? not, from what I have just said, force or gather reasons for rejecting my offer." Perhaps Olivia thinks her superiority of rank may excuse her in thus making the first open advances. 26 We should say, "nor ever any." The doubling of negatives is very frequent in Shakespeare, as in all the writers of his time; but such a trebling is rare, at least comparatively so. Fab. I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and reason. Sir To. And they have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was a sailor. Fab. 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, firenew 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 a Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt either of valour or policy. Sir And. An't be any way, it must be with valour; for policy I hate: I had as lief be a Brownist1 as a politician. Sir To. Why, then build me2 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-broker3 in the world can more prevail in man's commendation with woman than report of valour. 1 The Brownists were one of the radical sects that arose during the reign of Elizabeth; so called from Robert Brown, their founder. Like others of their kind, their leading purpose was to prevent the abuse of certain things, such as laws, by uprooting the use of them. Malvolio appears to have been intended partly as a satire on the Puritans in general; they being especially strenuous at the time this play was written to have restrictions set upon playing. But there had been a deep-seated grudge between the Puritans and the Dramatists ever since Nash put out the eyes of Martin Marprelate with salt. 2 In colloquial language, me was often thus used redundantly, though with a slight dash of humour. 3 A love-broker is one who mediates or breaks the ice between two bashful lovers. Pandarus sustains that office in Troilus and Cressida; hence our word pander. Fab. There is no way but this, Sir Andrew. Sir And. Will either of you bear me a challenge to him? Sir To. 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 And. Where shall I find you? Sir To. We'll call thee at thy cubiculo: go. [Exit Sir ANDREW. some two thou Fab. This is a dear manikin 8 to you, Sir Toby. Sir To. I have been dear to him, lad, sand strong, or so.9 Fab. We shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll not deliver't? Sir To. Never trust me, then; and by all means stir on 4 Curst is cross, snappish. We should say, " Be short," or "Be tart." 5 This has been generally thought an allusion to Coke's abusive thouing of Sir Walter Raleigh at his trial; but the play was acted a year and a haif before that trial took place. And indeed it had been no insult to thou Sir Walter, unless there were some pre-existing custom or sentiment to make it so. What that custom was, may be seen by the following passage from a book published in 1661, by George Fox the Quaker: "For this thou and thee was a sore cut to proud flesh, and them that sought self-honour; who, though they would say it to God and Christ, would not endure to have it said to themselves. So that we were often beaten and abused, and sometimes in danger of our lives, for using those words to some proud men, who would say, What, you ill-bred clown, do you thou me!" This curious piece of furniture was a few years since still in being at one of the inns in that town. It was reported to be twelve feet square, and capable of holding twenty-four persons. 7 Cubiculo, from the Latin cubiculum, is a sleeping-room. 8 Manikin is an old diminutive of man; here it means pet. 9 Meaning that he has fooled or dandled so much money out of him. the youth to an answer. I think oxen and wain-ropes cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were open'd, an you find so much blood in his liver 10 as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of the anatomy. Fab. And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great presage of cruelty. Sir To. Look, where the youngest wren of nine comes.11 Enter MARIA. Mar. If you desire the spleen,12 and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvalio is turn'd 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.13 He's in yellow stockings. Sir To. And cross-garter'd? Mar. Most villanously; like a pedant 14 that keeps a school i' the 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 are in the 10 A red liver, or a liver full of blood, was the common badge of courage, as a white or bloodless liver was of cowardice. 11 Alluding to the small stature of Maria. Sir Toby elsewhere calls her "the little villain," and Viola ironically speaks of her as "giant." The expression seems to have been proverbial; the wren generally laying nine or ten eggs, and the last hatched being the smallest of the brood. 12 The spleen was held to be the special seat of unbenevolent risibility, and so the cause of teasing or pestering mirth; splenetic laughter. Here it seems to mean a fit or turn of excessive merriment, dashed with something of a spiteful humour. 13 A rather curious commentary on the old notion of "Salvation by orthodoxy," or "belief in believing." The meaning is, that even one who makes a merit of being easy of belief, as thinking to be saved thereby, could not believe a thing so grossly incredible as this. The Poet has impossible elsewhere in the sense of incredible. See vol. iv., page 179, note 21. 14 The Poet uses pedant for pedagogue. So Holofernes the schoolmaster is called repeatedly in Love's Labours Lost; also the tutors employed for Catharine and Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew. new map, with the augmentation of the Indies : 15 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 favour. Sir To. Come, bring us, bring us where he is. [Exeunt. SCENE III. - A Street. Enter SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO. Seb. I would not, by my will, have troubled you; Ant. I could not stay behind you my desire, Set forth in your pursuit. Seb. My kind Antonio, I can no other answer make, but thanks, 15 Alluding, no doubt, to a map which appeared in the second edition of Hakluyt's l'oyages, in 1598. This map is multilineal in the extreme, and is the first in which the Eastern Islands are included. 1 Worth here stands for wealth or fortune. Repeatedly so. |