3.2 OLIVIA’s house.
[Enter SIR TOBY BELCH, SIR
ANDREW, and FABIAN]
SIR ANDREW
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 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 TOBY BELCH Did she see thee the while, old boy?
tell me that.
SIR ANDREW As plain as I see you now.
FABIAN
This was a great argument of love in her toward you.
SIR ANDREW ‘Slight, will you make an ass o’ me?
FABIAN I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths
of judgment and reason.
SIR TOBY BELCH And they have been grand-jury-men
since before Noah was a sailor.
FABIAN 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 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 valour or policy.
SIR ANDREW An’t be any way, it must be with
valour; for policy I hate: I had as lief be a Brownist
as a politician.
SIR TOBY BELCH
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 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 valour.
FABIAN There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.
SIR ANDREW
Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?
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 fun 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 ANDREW Where shall I find you?
SIR TOBY BELCH We’ll call thee at the cubiculo: go.
[Exit SIR ANDREW]
FABIAN This is a dear manikin to you, Sir Toby.
SIR TOBY BELCH I have been dear to him, lad,
some two thousand strong, or so.
FABIAN We shall have a rare letter from him:
but you’ll not deliver’t?
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.
FABIAN And his opposite, the youth,
bears in his visage no great presage of cruelty.
[Enter MARIA]
SIR TOBY BELCH Look,
where the youngest wren of nine comes.
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.
SIR TOBY BELCH And cross-gartered?
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 favour.
SIR TOBY BELCH Come, bring us, bring us where he is.
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