Sir To. I mean, to go, sir, to enter. Vio. I will answer you with gait and entrance: But we are prevented. Enter OLIVIA and MARIA. -Most excellent accomplished lady, the heavens rain odours on you! Sir And. That youth's a rare courtier! Rain odours! well. Vio. My matter hath no voice, lady, but to your own most pregnant and vouchsafed ear. 3 -I'll Sir And. Odours, pregnant, and vouchsafed :get 'em all three ready. Oli. Let the garden door be shut, and leave me to my hearing. [Exe. Sir TOBY, Sir AND. and MARIA.]Give me your hand, sir. Vio. My duty, madam, and most humble service. Vio. Cesario is your servant's name, fair princess. Vio. And he is yours, and his must needs be yours; Your servant's servant is your servant, madam. Oli. For him, I think not on him: for his thoughts, 'Would they were blanks, rather than fill'd with me! Vio. Madam, I come to whet your gentle thoughts On his behalf: Oli. O, by your leave, I pray you; I bade you never speak again of him: Than music from the spheres. Vio. Dear lady, Oli. Give me leave, I beseech you: I did send, A ring in chace of you; so did I abuse To force that on you, in a shameful cunning, Which you knew none of yours: What might you think? Have you not set mine houour at the stake, And baited it with all the unmuzzled thoughts That tyrannous heart can think? To one of your receiving Enough is shown; a cyprus, not a bosom, Hides my poor heart: So let me hear you speak. Vio. I pity you. Oli. That's a degree to love. Vio. No, not a grise ;5 for 'tis a vulgar proof, That very oft we pity enemies. Oli. Why, then, methinks, 'tis time to smile again : O world, how apt the poor are to be proud! If one should be a prey, how much the better Vio. Then westward-hoe :6 Grace, and good disposition 'tend your ladyship! I pr'ythee, tell me, what thou think'st of me. Vio. Then think you right; I am not what I am. I wish it might; for now I am your fool. Oli. O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful In the contempt and anger of his lip! A murd'rous guilt shows not itself more soon Than love that would seem hid: love's night is noon. By maidhood, honour, truth, and every thing, [4] A cyprus is a transparent stuff. JOHNSON. 151 A step, sometimes written greese, from degres, French. [6] This is the name of a comedy by T. Decker, 1607. JOHNS. STEEV. And that no woman has; nor never none Oli. Yet come again: for thou, perhaps, may'st move That heart, which now abhors, to like his love. [Exeunt. SCENE II. A Room in OLIVIA's House. Enter Sir TOBY BELCH, Sir ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK, and FABIAN. Sir And. No, faith, I'll not stay a jot longer. Sir To. Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason. Fab. You must needs yield your reason, sir Andrew. Sir And. Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the count's serving-man, than ever she bestowed 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 ? Fab. I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and reason. Sir To. And they have been grand jury-men, 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, fire-new from the mint, you should have banged the youth into dumbness. This was looked for at your hand, and this was baulked: the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sailed 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. 7 Sir And. Andt be any way, it must be with valour; for policy I hate: I had as lief be a Brownist, as a politician. [7] The Brownists were so called from Mr. Robert Browne, a noted separatist in Queen Elizabeth's reign. (See Strype's Annals of Queen Elizabeth, Vol. III. p. 15, 16, &c.) In his life of Whitgift, p. 323, he informs us, that Sir To. 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 nicce shall take note of it: and assure thyself, there is no lovebroker in the world can more prevail in man's commendation with woman, than report of valour. Fab. There is no way but this, sir Andrew. 8 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 licence 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 the cubiculo: Go. [Exit Sir ANDREW. Fab. This is a dear manikin to you, sir Toby. Sir To. I have been dear to him, lad; some two thousand strong, or so. Fab. We shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll not deliver it. Sir To. Never trust me then; and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. I think,oxen and wainropes cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were opened, and you find so much blood in his liver 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. Enter MARIA. Sir To. Look, where the youngest wren of nine comes. Mar. If you desire the spleen, and will laugh your Browne, in the year 1589, "went off from the separation, and came into the communion of the church. This Browne was descended from an ancient and honourable family in Rutlandshire; his grandfather Francis had a charter granted him by K. Henry VIII. and confirmed by act of parliament; giving him leave to put on his hat in the presence of the king, or his heirs, or any lord spiritual or temporal in the land, and not to put it off, but for his own ease and pleasure." Neal's History of New-England, Vol. 1. p. 58. GREY. The Brownists seem, in the time of our author, to have been the constant objects of popular satire. STEEV. [8] Martial hand, seems to be a careless scrawl, such as shewed the writer to neglect ceremony. Curst, is petulant, crabbed. A curst cur, is a dog that with little provocation snarls and bites. JOHNS. selves into stitches, follow me: yon' gull Malvolio is turned 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. He's in yellow stockings. Sir To. And cross-gartered? Mar. Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i' the church.-I have dogged him, like his murderer: He does obey every point of the letter that I dropped to betray him. He does smile his face into more lines, than are in the new map, with the augmentation of the Indies: you have not seen such a thing as 'tis; I can hardly forbear hurling things at him. I know, my lady will strike him ;9 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 ANTONIO and SEBASTIAN. Seb. I would not, by my will, have troubled you; ; Ant. I could not stay behind you; my desire, Seb. My kind Antonio, I can no other answer make, but thanks, And thanks, and ever thanks: Often good turns. Ant. To-morrow, sir; best, first, go see your lodging. [9] We may suppose, that in an age when ladies struck their servants, the box on the ear which Queen Elizabeth is said to have given to the Ear of Essex, was not regarded as a transgression against the rules of common behaviour. STEEV 20* VOL. III. |