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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 favors to the count's serving-man than ever
she bestowed upon me: I saw it in 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 of 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 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.
SIR ANDREW
And it be any way, it must be with valor, 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 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.
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 cursed 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'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 it?
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 in 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 it for a great favor.
SIR TOBY BELCH
Come bring us, bring us where he is.
[Exeunt]