OLI. It is the more like to be feigned; I pray you, keep it in. I heard you were saucy at my gates; and allowed your approach, rather to wonder at you than to hear you. If you be not mada, be gone; if you have reason, be brief: 't is not that time of moon with me to make one in so skipping a dialogue,

MAR. Will you hoist sail, sir? here lies your way.

VIO. No, good swabber; I am to hull here a little longer.-Some mollification. for your giant, sweet lady.

OLI. Tell me your mind.

VIO. I am a messenger.

OLI. Sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver, when the courtesy of it is

so fearful. Speak your

office.

Vio. It alone concerns your ear.

I bring no overture of war, no taxation of homage; I hold the olive in my hand: my words are as full of peace as matter.

OLI. Yet you began rudely. What are you? what would you?

VIO. The rudeness that hath appeared in me, have I learned from my entertainment. What I am, and what I would, are as secret as maidenhead: to your ears, divinity; to any other's, profanation.

OLI. Give us the place alone: we will hear this divinity. [Exit MARIA.] Now, sir, what is your text?

VIO. Most sweet lady,—

OLI. A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it. Where lies your

text?

VIO. In Orsino's bosom.

OLI. In his bosom? In what chapter of his bosom?

VIO. To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.

OLI. O, I have read it; it is heresy. Have you no more to say?

VIO. Good madam, let me see your face.

OLI. Have you any commission from your lord to negociate with my face? you are now out of your text: but we will draw the curtain, and show you the picture. [Unveiling.] Look you, sir, such a one I was this present©:

Is 't not well done?

VIO. Excellently done, if God did all.

OLI. T is in grain, sir; 't will endure wind and weather.

VIO. "T is beauty truly blent, whose red and white

Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on:
Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive,

a Some would read, "if you be mad."

This forms part of Viola's speech, in the original; where "tell me your mind, I am a messenger," runs on, after "sweet lady."

• This text appears clear enough. Olivia says, "We will draw the curtain, and show you the picture." She then unveils her face for an instant only; and adds, "Look you, sir, such a one I was this present,"-such I was this moment. The text has been confused by a slight change which has been overlooked; for we find in all the modern editions, "such a one as I was this present."

COMEDIES.-VOL. II.

T

If you will lead these graces to the grave,

And leave the world no copy.

:

OLI. O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out divers schedules of my beauty It shall be inventoried; and every particle, and utensil, labelled to my will: as, item, two lips indifferent red; item, two gray eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me a ?

Vio. I see you what you are: you are too proud;

OLI.

But, if you were the devil, you are fair.

My lord and master loves you; O, such love

Could be but recompens'd, though you were crown'd
The nonpareil of beauty!

How does he love me?

Vio. With adorations, fertile tears",

With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.
OLI. Your lord does know my mind, I cannot love him:
Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,

Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;
In voices well divulg'd, free, learn'd, and valiant,
And in dimension, and the shape of nature,
A gracious person; but yet I cannot love him;
He might have took his answer long ago.
VIO. If I did love you in my master's flame,
With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
In your denial I would find no sense,
I would not understand it.

you?

OLI.
Why, what would
VIO. Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out, Olivia! O, you should not rest

Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me.

OLI. You might do much: What is your parentage?
VIO. Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:

OLI.

I am a gentleman.

a Praise me.

Get you to your lord;

Malone has ingeniously conjectured that praise is here a contraction for appraise. But the word used in Shakspere's time was apprise-to fix a price; and moreover, Olivia herself introduced the talk about schedules and inventories. We believe, therefore, that we must receive praise in its ordinary acceptation.

Fertile tears. So the original. Pope reads, "with fertile tears."

• Cantons-cantos.

I cannot love him: let him send no more;
Unless, perchance, you come to me again,

To tell me how he takes it.

I thank you for your pains:

Fare you well:

spend this for me.

Vio. I am no fee'd post, lady; keep your purse;

My master, not myself, lacks recompense.
Love make his heart of flint, that you shall love;
And let your fervour, like my master's, be
Plac'd in contempt! Farewell, fair cruelty.

OLI. What is your parentage?

"Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:

I am a gentleman."-I'll be sworn thou art;

Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit,

Do give thee five-fold blazon :-Not too fast:-soft! soft!
Unless the master were the man.-How now?

Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
Methinks, I feel this youth's perfections,

With an invisible and subtle stealth,

To creep in at mine eyes.
What, ho, Malvolio !—

MAL.

Well, let it be.

Re-enter MALVOLIO.

Here, madam, at your service.

OLI. Run after that same peevish messenger,`
The county's man: he left this ring behind him,
Would I, or not; tell him, I 'll none of it.
Desire him not to flatter with his lord,
Nor hold him up with hopes; I am not for him:
If that the youth will come this way to-morrow,
I'll give him reasons for 't. Hie thee, Malvolio.
MAL. Madam, I will.

OLI. I do I know not what and fear to find
Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
Fate, show thy force: Ourselves we do not owea;
What is decreed must be; and be this so!

We do not own, possess, ourselves.

[Exit.

[Exit.

[Exit.

ANT. Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you? SEB. By your patience, no: my stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone: It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.

ANT. Let me yet know of you whither you are bound.

SEB. No, 'sooth, sir; my determinate voyage is mere extravagancy. But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty, that you will not extort from me what I am willing to keep in; therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express myself. You must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian, which I called Rodorigo; my father was that Sebastian

a Express-make known.

of Messaline, whom I know you have heard of: he left behind him, myself and a sister, both born in an hour. If the heavens had been pleased, 'would we had so ended! but you, sir, altered that; for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was my sister drowned.

ANT. Alas, the day!

SEB. A lady, sir, though it was said she much resembled me, was yet of many accounted beautiful: but, though I could not, with such estimable wonder, overfar believe that, yet thus far I will boldly publish her,—she bore a mind that envy could not but call fair: she is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more.

ANT. Pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment.

SEB. O, good Antonio, forgive me your trouble.

ANT. If you will not murther me for my love, let me be your servant'.
SEB. If you will not undo what you have done, that is, kill him whom you have
recovered, desire it not. Fare ye well at once: my bosom is full of kind-
ness; and I am yet so near the manners of my mother, that upon the least
occasion more, mine eyes will tell tales of me. I am bound to the count
Orsino's court: farewell.

ANT. The gentleness of all the gods go with thee!
I have many enemies in Orsino's court,
Else would I very shortly see thee there:
But, come what may, I do adore thee so,
That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.

[Exit.

[Exit.

SCENE II.-A Street.

Enter VIOLA; MALVOLIO following.

MAL. Were not you even now with the countess Olivia?

VIO. Even now, sir; on a moderate pace I have since arrived but hither. MAL. She returns this ring to you, sir; you might have saved me my pains, to have taken it away yourself. She adds, moreover, that you should put your lord into a desperate assurance she will none of him: And one thing more; that you be never so hardy to come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your lord's taking of this. Receive it so.

Vio. She took the ring of me. I'll none of it.

MAL. Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is it should be so returned if it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.

a Messaline. Mitylene (Lesbos) is most probably meant.

[Exit.

She took the ring of me. Viola has been blamed for this assertion. She would screen Olivia from the suspicions of her own servant. The lady has said that the ring was left with her; and Viola has too strong a respect for her own sex to proclaim the truth. She makes up her mind during Malvolio's speech to refuse the ring; but not to expose the cause of her refusal.