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Enter SIR TOBY BELCH, SIR ANDREW, and FABIAN |
SIR TOBY BELCH, SIR ANDREW, and FABIAN enter. |
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SIR ANDREW
No, faith, I’ll not stay a jot longer. |
SIR ANDREW
No, I won’t stay a second longer. |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason. |
SIR TOBY BELCH
Why are you leaving, my angry friend? |
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FABIAN
You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew. |
FABIAN
Yes, you have to tell us why, Sir Andrew. |
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SIR ANDREW
Marry, I saw your niece do more favors to the Count’s servingman than ever she bestowed upon me. I saw ’t i’ the orchard. |
SIR ANDREW
Well, because I saw your niece Olivia treat the count’s messenger better than she’s ever treated me. I saw it in the orchard. |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
Did she see thee the while, old boy? Tell me that. |
SIR TOBY BELCH
Did she see you there the whole time, old boy? Tell me that. |
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SIR ANDREW
As plain as I see you now. |
SIR ANDREW
Yes, she saw me quite clearly. |
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FABIAN
This was a great argument of love in her toward you. |
FABIAN
Well, that proves she’s in love with you. |
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SIR ANDREW
’Slight, will you make an ass o’ me? |
SIR ANDREW
Are you trying to make fun of me? |
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FABIAN
I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and reason. |
FABIAN
No, I’ll prove it with airtight evidence and logical argument. |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
And they have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was a sailor. |
SIR TOBY BELCH
And you can’t deny evidence and argument—They’ve been around since Noah’s ark. |
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FABIAN
She did show favor to the youth in your sight only to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valor, 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 balked. 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 valor or policy. |
FABIAN
She flirted with the messenger boy to exasperate you, fire up your passions, and make you angry and jealous. You should have run up to her, unleashed a few excellent quips invented on the spot, and rendered the young man speechless. That’s what she was expecting, and you let her down. You wasted a golden opportunity, and now my lady thinks badly of you. You can only raise her opinion of you with some impressive act of courage or complicated intrigue. |
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SIR ANDREW
An ’t be any way, it must be with valor, for policy I hate. I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician. |
SIR ANDREW
I’ll have to do something courageous then, because I hate intrigue. I’d rather be a heretic than a schemer with fancy plots. |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of valor. 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 valor. |
SIR TOBY BELCH
Well then, improve your situation with a show of courage. Challenge the count’s young servant to a fight. Hurt him in eleven different places. My niece Olivia will notice, and let me tell you, no matchmaker in the world can get you a woman faster than a reputation for courage. |
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FABIAN
There is no way but this, Sir Andrew. |
FABIAN
It’s really the only way, Sir Andrew. |
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SIR ANDREW
Will either of you bear me a challenge to him? |
SIR ANDREW
Will either of you give him the message that I’m challenging him to a duel? |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
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”-est 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 TOBY BELCH
Go ahead and write it down. Make your handwriting look like a soldier’s. Be pointed and brief. It doesn’t need to be witty as long as it’s eloquent and imaginative. Taunt him as much as you want, since you’re only doing it in writing. It’s fine if you refer to him as “thou” instead of “you.” Write down as many lies as you can fit on a sheet of paper. Go ahead, get on with it. You may be using an ordinary pen, but you can fill it with poison ink. Now get busy. |
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SIR ANDREW
Where shall I find you? |
SIR ANDREW
Where will I find you when I’ve finished it? |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
We’ll call thee at the cubiculo. Go. |
SIR TOBY BELCH
We’ll come find you in the bedroom. Go on. |
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Exit SIR ANDREW |
SIR ANDREW exits. |
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FABIAN
This is a dear manikin to you, Sir Toby. |
FABIAN
This precious little guy is putty in your hands, Sir Toby. |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand strong, or so. |
SIR TOBY BELCH
He must like me, since he’s let me spend two thousand of his ducats. |
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FABIAN
We shall have a rare letter from him: but you’ll not deliver ’t? |
FABIAN
His letter’s going to be hilarious. But you’re not going to deliver it, are you? |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
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. |
SIR TOBY BELCH
Never trust me again if I don’t. And by all means see if you can get the young man to answer it. I don’t think a team of oxen could get them close enough to fight. If you dissected Andrew and found enough red blood in his liver for a flea to eat, then I’d eat the rest of his corpse. He’s a coward. |
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FABIAN
And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great presage of cruelty. |
FABIAN
And his opponent, the young messenger, doesn’t look like he’d be very aggressive in a fight. |
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Enter MARIA |
MARIA enters. |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
Look where the youngest wren of nine comes. |
SIR TOBY BELCH
Here comes my little bird. |
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MARIA
If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourself into stitches, follow me. Yond 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. |
MARIA
Listen, if you want a good laugh—and I mean a side-splitting one—then follow me. That gullible idiot Malvolio must have renounced Christianity, since no Christian could do such outrageous things as he’s doing. He’s wearing yellow stockings. |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
And cross-gartered? |
SIR TOBY BELCH
With crisscrossed laces? |
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MARIA
Most villanously, 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 is 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. If she do, he’ll smile and take ’t for a great favor. |
MARIA
Oh, he looks like a pathetic Sunday school teacher. I’ve stalked him like a murderer, and he’s done everything the letter told him to. He smiles so much his face has more lines in it than a map of the East Indies. You’ve never seen anything like it. I can hardly keep myself from throwing things at him. I know that my lady’s going to end up hitting him. And when she does, he’ll imagine she’s flirting with him. |
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SIR TOBY BELCH
Come, bring us, bring us where he is. |
SIR TOBY BELCH
Come on, take us to him. |
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Exeunt |
They all exit. |