Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Act 3 - Scene 2
OLIVIA’s house.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek : No, faith, I'll not stay a jot longer.
Sir Toby Belch : Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason.
Fabian : You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek : Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the
[p]count's serving-man
than ever she bestowed upon me;
[p]I saw't i' the orchard.
Sir Toby Belch : Did she see thee the while, old boy? tell me that.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek : As plain as I see you now.
Fabian : This was a great argument of love in her toward you.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek : 'Slight, will you make an ass o' me?
Fabian : I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of
[p]judgment and
reason.
Sir Toby Belch : And they have been grand-jury-men since before Noah
[p]was a sailor.
Fabian : She did show favour to the youth in your sight only
[p]to exasperate
you, to awake your dormouse valour, to
[p]put fire in your heart and
brimstone in your liver.
[p]You should then have accosted her; and
with some
[p]excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you
should
[p]have banged the youth into dumbness. This was
[p]looked for
at your hand, and this was balked: the
[p]double gilt of this
opportunity you let time wash
[p]off, and you are now sailed into the
north of my
[p]lady's opinion; where you will hang like an
icicle
[p]on a Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by
[p]some
laudable attempt either of valour or policy.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek : An't be any way, it must be with valour; for policy
[p]I hate: I had
as lief be a Brownist as a
[p]politician.
Sir Toby Belch : Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of
[p]valour.
Challenge me the count's youth to fight
[p]with him; hurt him in
eleven places: my niece shall
[p]take note of it; and assure thyself,
there is no
[p]love-broker in the world can more prevail in
man's
[p]commendation with woman than report of valour.
Fabian : There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek : Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?
Sir Toby Belch : Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief;
[p]it is no matter
how witty, so it be eloquent and fun
[p]of invention: taunt him with
the licence of ink:
[p]if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not
be
[p]amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of
[p]paper,
although the sheet were big enough for the
[p]bed of Ware in England,
set 'em down: go, about it.
[p]Let there be gall enough in thy ink,
though thou
[p]write with a goose-pen, no matter: about it.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek : Where shall I find you?
Sir Toby Belch : We'll call thee at the cubiculo: go.
Fabian : This is a dear manikin to you, Sir Toby.
Sir Toby Belch : I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand
[p]strong, or so.
Fabian : We shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll
[p]not deliver't?
Sir Toby Belch : Never trust me, then; and by all means stir on the
[p]youth to an
answer. I think oxen and wainropes
[p]cannot hale them together. For
Andrew, if he were
[p]opened, and you find so much blood in his liver
as
[p]will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of
[p]the
anatomy.
Fabian : And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no
[p]great presage
of cruelty.
Sir Toby Belch : Look, where the youngest wren of nine comes.
Maria : If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourself
[p]into stitches,
follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is
[p]turned heathen, a very renegado;
for there is no
[p]Christian, that means to be saved by
believing
[p]rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages
[p]of
grossness. He's in yellow stockings.
Sir Toby Belch : And cross-gartered?
Maria : Most villanously; like a pedant that keeps a school
[p]i' the church.
I have dogged him, like his
[p]murderer. He does obey every point of
the letter
[p]that I dropped to betray him: he does smile his
[p]face
into more lines than is in the new map with the
[p]augmentation of the
Indies: you have not seen such
[p]a thing as 'tis. I can hardly
forbear hurling things
[p]at him. I know my lady will strike him: if
she do,
[p]he'll smile and take't for a great favour.
Sir Toby Belch : Come, bring us, bring us where he is.
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Next: Act 3 - Scene 3
