Act 1, Scene 5

A Room in OLIVIA'S House.

[Enter MARIA and CLOWN.]
Maria
272 Nay; either tell me where thou hast been, or I will not open
273 my lips so wide as a bristle may enter in way of thy excuse: my
274 lady will hang thee for thy absence.
Feste
275 Let her hang me: he that is well hanged in this world needs
276 to fear no colours.
Maria
277 Make that good.
Feste
278 He shall see none to fear.
Maria
279 A good lenten answer: I can tell thee where that saying was
280 born, of, I fear no colours.
Feste
281 Where, good Mistress Mary?
Maria
282 In the wars; and that may you be bold to say in your foolery.
Feste
283 Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are
284 fools, let them use their talents.
Maria
285 Yet you will be hanged for being so long absent: or to be
286 turned away; is not that as good as a hanging to you?
Feste
287 Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage; and for turning
288 away, let summer bear it out.
Maria
289 You are resolute, then?
Feste
290 Not so, neither: but I am resolved on two points.
Maria
291 That if one break, the other will hold; or if both break,
292 your gaskins fall.
Feste
293 Apt, in good faith, very apt! Well, go thy way; if Sir Toby
294 would leave drinking, thou wert as witty a piece of Eve's flesh
295 as any in Illyria.
Maria
296 Peace, you rogue; no more o' that; here comes my lady: make
297 your excuse wisely; you were best.
[Exit.]
[Enter OLIVIA and MALVOLIO.]
Feste
298 Wit, and't be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits
299 that think they have thee do very oft prove fools; and I, that am
300 sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man. For what says
301 Quinapalus? Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.—God bless
302 thee, lady!
Olivia
303 Take the fool away.
Feste
304 Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady.
Olivia
305 Go to, you're a dry fool; I'll no more of you: besides, you
306 grow dishonest.
Feste
307 Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend:
308 for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry; bid the
309 dishonest man mend himself: if he mend, he is no longer
310 dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything
311 that's mended is but patched; virtue that transgresses is but
312 patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.
313 If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not,
314 what remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so
315 beauty's a flower:—the lady bade take away the fool; therefore,
316 I say again, take her away.
Olivia
317 Sir, I bade them take away you.
Feste
318 Misprision in the highest degree!—Lady, Cucullus non facit
319 monachum; that's as much to say, I wear not motley in my
320 brain. Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.
Olivia
321 Can you do it?
Feste
322 Dexteriously, good madonna.
Olivia
323 Make your proof.
Feste
324 I must catechize you for it, madonna.
325 Good my mouse of virtue, answer me.
Olivia
326 Well, sir, for want of other idleness, I'll 'bide your proof.
Feste
327 Good madonna, why mourn'st thou?
Olivia
328 Good fool, for my brother's death.
Feste
329 I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
Olivia
330 I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
Feste
331 The more fool you, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul
332 being in heaven.—Take away the fool, gentlemen.
Olivia
333 What think you of this fool, Malvolio? doth he not mend?
Malvolio
334 Yes; and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him.
335 Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.
Feste
336 God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better
337 increasing your folly! Sir Toby will be sworn that I am no fox;
338 but he will not pass his word for twopence that you are no fool.
Olivia
339 How say you to that, Malvolio?
Malvolio
340 I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren
341 rascal; I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool
342 that has no more brain than a stone. Look you now, he's out of
343 his guard already; unless you laugh and minister occasion to him,
Malvolio
344 he is gagged. I protest I take these wise men that crow so at
345 these set kind of fools, no better than the fools' zanies.
Olivia
346 O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a
347 distempered appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free
348 disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem
349 cannon bullets. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he
350 do nothing but rail; nor no railing in known discreet man, though
351 he do nothing but reprove.
Feste
352 Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou speakest well of
353 fools!
[Re-enter MARIA.]
Maria
354 Madam, there is at the gate a young gentleman much desires
355 to speak with you.
Olivia
356 From the Count Orsino, is it?
Maria
357 I know not, madam; 'tis a fair young man, and well attended.
Olivia
358 Who of my people hold him in delay?
Maria
359 Sir Toby, madam, your kinsman.
Olivia
360 Fetch him off, I pray you; he speaks nothing but madman.
361 Fie on him!
[Exit MARIA]
Olivia
362 Go you, Malvolio: if it be a suit from the count, I am sick, or
363 not at home; what you will to dismiss it.
[Exit MALVOLIO.]
Olivia
364 Now you see, sir, how your fooling grows old, and people dislike
365 it.
Feste
366 Thou hast spoke for us, madonna, as if thy eldest son should
367 be a fool: whose skull Jove cram with brains, for here he comes—
368 one of thy kin, has a most weak pia mater.
[Enter SIR TOBY BELCH.]
Olivia
369 By mine honour, half drunk!—What is he at the gate, cousin?
Sir Toby Belch
370 A gentleman.
Olivia
371 A gentleman? What gentleman?
Sir Toby Belch
372 'Tis a gentleman here.—A plague o' these pickle-herrings!—How
373 now, sot?
Feste
374 Good Sir Toby,—
Olivia
375 Cousin, cousin, how have you come so early by this lethargy?
Sir Toby Belch
376 Lechery! I defy lechery. There's one at the gate.
Olivia
377 Ay, marry; what is he?
Sir Toby Belch
378 Let him be the devil an he will, I care not: give me
379 faith, say I. Well, it's all one.
[Exit.]
Olivia
380 What's a drunken man like, fool?
Feste
381 Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above
382 heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns
383 him.
Olivia
384 Go thou and seek the coroner, and let him sit o' my coz;
385 for he's in the third degree of drink; he's drowned: go, look
386 after him.
Feste
387 He is but mad yet, madonna; and the fool shall look to the
388 madman.
[Exit CLOWN.]
[Re-enter MALVOLIO.]
Malvolio
389 Madam, yond young fellow swears he will speak with you. I
390 told him you were sick; he takes on him to understand so much,
391 and therefore comes to speak with you; I told him you were
392 asleep; he seems to have a foreknowledge of that too, and
393 therefore comes to speak with you. What is to be said to him,
394 lady? he's fortified against any denial.
Olivia
395 Tell him, he shall not speak with me.
Malvolio
396 Has been told so; and he says he'll stand at your door
397 like a sheriff's post, and be the supporter of a bench, but he'll
398 speak with you.
Olivia
399 What kind of man is he?
Malvolio
400 Why, of mankind.
Olivia
401 What manner of man?
Malvolio
402 Of very ill manner; he'll speak with you, will you or no.
Olivia
403 Of what personage and years is he?
Malvolio
404 Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy;
405 as a squash is before 'tis a peascod, or a codling, when 'tis
406 almost an apple: 'tis with him e'en standing water, between boy
407 and man. He is very well-favoured, and he speaks very shrewishly;
408 one would think his mother's milk were scarce out of him.
Olivia
409 Let him approach. Call in my gentlewoman.
Malvolio
410 Gentlewoman, my lady calls.
[Exit.]
[Re-enter MARIA.]
Olivia
411 Give me my veil; come, throw it o'er my face;
412 We'll once more hear Orsino's embassy.
[Enter VIOLA.]
Viola
413 The honourable lady of the house, which is she?
Olivia
414 Speak to me; I shall answer for her. Your will?
Viola
415 Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty,—I pray you,
416 tell me if this be the lady of the house, for I never saw her: I
417 would be loath to cast away my speech; for, besides that it is
418 excellently well penned, I have taken great pains to con it. Good
419 beauties, let me sustain no scorn; I am very comptible, even to
420 the least sinister usage.
Olivia
421 Whence came you, sir?
Viola
422 I can say little more than I have studied, and that
423 question's out of my part. Good gentle one, give me modest
424 assurance, if you be the lady of the house, that I may proceed in
425 my speech.
Olivia
426 Are you a comedian?
Viola
427 No, my profound heart: and yet, by the very fangs of malice
428 I swear, I am not that I play. Are you the lady of the house?
Olivia
429 If I do not usurp myself, I am.
Viola
430 Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp yourself; for
431 what is yours to bestow is not yours to reserve. But this is from
432 my commission: I will on with my speech in your praise, and then
433 show you the heart of my message.
Olivia
434 Come to what is important in't: I forgive you the praise.
Viola
435 Alas, I took great pains to study it, and 'tis poetical.
Olivia
436 It is the more like to be feigned; I pray you keep it in. I
437 heard you were saucy at my gates; and allowed your approach,
438 rather to wonder at you than to hear you. If you be not mad, be
439 gone; if you have reason, be brief: 'tis not that time of moon
440 with me to make one in so skipping a dialogue.
Maria
441 Will you hoist sail, sir? here lies your way.
Viola
442 No, good swabber; I am to hull here a little longer.—
443 Some mollification for your giant, sweet lady.
Olivia
444 Tell me your mind.
Viola
445 I am a messenger.
Olivia
446 Sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver, when the
447 courtesy of it is so fearful. Speak your office.
Viola
448 It alone concerns your ear. I bring no overture of war, no
449 taxation of homage; I hold the olive in my hand: my words are as
450 full of peace as matter.
Olivia
451 Yet you began rudely. What are you? what would you?
Viola
452 The rudeness that hath appeared in me have I learned from my
453 entertainment. What I am and what I would are as secret as
454 maidenhead: to your ears, divinity; to any other's, profanation.
Olivia
455 Give us the place alone: we will hear this divinity.
[Exit MARIA.]
Olivia
456 Now, sir, what is your text?
Viola
457 Most sweet lady,—
Olivia
458 A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it.
459 Where lies your text?
Viola
460 In Orsino's bosom.
Olivia
461 In his bosom? In what chapter of his bosom?
Viola
462 To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.
Olivia
463 O, I have read it; it is heresy. Have you no more to say?
Viola
464 Good madam, let me see your face.
Olivia
465 Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my
466 face? you are now out of your text: but we will draw the curtain
467 and show you the picture. Look you, sir, such a one I was this
468 present. Is't not well done?
[Unveiling.]
Viola
469 Excellently done, if God did all.
Olivia
470 'Tis in grain, sir; 'twill endure wind and weather.
Viola
471 'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
472 Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on:
473 Lady, you are the cruel'st she alive,
474 If you will lead these graces to the grave,
475 And leave the world no copy.
Olivia
476 O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out
477 divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried; and every
478 particle and utensil labelled to my will: as, item, two lips
479 indifferent red; item, two grey eyes with lids to them; item, one
480 neck, one chin, and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me?
Viola
481 I see you what you are: you are too proud;
482 But, if you were the devil, you are fair.
483 My lord and master loves you. O, such love
484 Could be but recompens'd though you were crown'd
485 The nonpareil of beauty!
Olivia
486 How does he love me?
Viola
487 With adorations, fertile tears,
488 With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.
Olivia
489 Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him:
490 Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
491 Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;
492 In voices well divulged, free, learn'd, and valiant,
493 And, in dimension and the shape of nature,
494 A gracious person: but yet I cannot love him;
495 He might have took his answer long ago.
Viola
496 If I did love you in my master's flame,
497 With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
498 In your denial I would find no sense,
499 I would not understand it.
Olivia
500 Why, what would you?
Viola
501 Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
502 And call upon my soul within the house;
503 Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
504 And sing them loud, even in the dead of night;
505 Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
506 And make the babbling gossip of the air
507 Cry out Olivia! O, you should not rest
508 Between the elements of air and earth,
509 But you should pity me.
Olivia
510 You might do much. What is your parentage?
Viola
511 Above my fortunes, yet my state is well: I am a gentleman.
Olivia
512 Get you to your lord;
513 I cannot love him: let him send no more;
514 Unless, perchance, you come to me again,
515 To tell me how he takes it. Fare you well:
516 I thank you for your pains: spend this for me.
Viola
517 I am no fee'd post, lady; keep your purse;
518 My master, not myself, lacks recompense.
519 Love make his heart of flint that you shall love;
520 And let your fervour, like my master's, be
521 Placed in contempt! Farewell, fair cruelty.
[Exit.]
Olivia
522 What is your parentage?
523 'Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:
524 I am a gentleman.'—I'll be sworn thou art;
525 Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit,
526 Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast:—soft, soft!
527 Unless the master were the man.—How now?
528 Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
529 Methinks I feel this youth's perfections
530 With an invisible and subtle stealth
531 To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.—
532 What, ho, Malvolio!—
[Re-enter MALVOLIO.]
Malvolio
533 Here, madam, at your service.
Olivia
534 Run after that same peevish messenger,
535 The county's man: he left this ring behind him,
536 Would I or not; tell him I'll none of it.
537 Desire him not to flatter with his lord,
538 Nor hold him up with hopes; I am not for him:
539 If that the youth will come this way to-morrow,
540 I'll give him reasons for't. Hie thee, Malvolio.
Malvolio
541 Madam, I will.
[Exit.]
Olivia
542 I do I know not what: and fear to find
543 Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
544 Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe:
545 What is decreed must be; and be this so!
[Exit.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 275wordplay
“he that is well hanged in this world needs to fear no colours”
Feste packs three meanings into one sentence. 'Fear no colours' was a proverbial military phrase meaning 'face no enemy flags (colours)' — if you are dead, you cannot be afraid. But 'colours' sounds like 'collar' (a hangman's noose), so the hanged man literally fears no collar either. A third pun on 'collar' / 'choler' (anger) completes the jest.
TLN 279archaic vocab
“A good lenten answer”
'Lenten' here means thin, spare, meagre — by analogy with Lent, the forty-day fast before Easter when meat was forbidden. Maria is praising Feste's pun as neatly lean: not a word wasted, like a Lenten meal.
TLN 283biblical allusion
“those that are fools, let them use their talents”
Feste glances at the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), in which servants are given sums of money ('talents') to invest. The servant who buries his talent and makes nothing of it is condemned. Feste's joke turns the moral upside down: a fool's foolishness is his 'talent' — his gift — and God's plan for him is to use it.
TLN 290wordplay
“I am resolved on two points”
'Resolved on two points' means 'decided on two matters,' but Maria immediately takes 'points' as the tagged laces that held breeches (gaskins) up in Elizabethan dress. If one lace broke, the other held; if both broke, 'your gaskins fall' — your trousers drop. 'Gaskins' are wide breeches (short for Gascon hose).
TLN 300cultural context
“what says Quinapalus”
Quinapalus is a name Feste invents on the spot as a fake authority for the maxim 'Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.' There is no such philosopher, wit, or scholar. The joke is that invented authorities sound just as weighty as real ones — a sly comment on how proverbs get coined and cited.
TLN 307archaic vocab
“Two faults, madonna”
'Madonna' is Italian for 'my lady' (from Latin mea domina), used as a respectful form of address for a noblewoman or, in Catholic usage, for the Virgin Mary. Feste uses it repeatedly to address Olivia. On the Elizabethan stage, Italian-tinged forms of address like 'madonna' signal courtly, continental manners.
TLN 310archaic vocab
“let the botcher mend him. Anything that's mended is but patched”
A 'botcher' is a cobbler or tailor who patches and mends old clothes and shoes — not a maker but a patcher. Feste's point is that all mending (whether of clothes, sin, or dishonesty) is just patching: virtue layered over sin is still a patchwork, and sin covered by a show of virtue is the same patchwork in reverse.
TLN 313rhetorical device
“If that this simple syllogism will serve”
A syllogism is a formal logical argument with two premises and a conclusion (e.g. 'All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal'). Feste names his patchwork reasoning a 'syllogism' while it is anything but rigorous. The joke is that calling absurd word-play by a formal logical name makes it sound like proof.
TLN 318cultural context
“Cucullus non facit monachum”
Latin proverb: 'The hood does not make the monk.' The cap or habit does not prove you are what you dress as. Feste wears the motley (the fool's patchwork costume), but he claims his brain is not motley — he is wiser than his clothes suggest. He is proving that Olivia's accusation ('I'll no more of you') confuses the costume with the man.
TLN 319archaic vocab
“I wear not motley in my brain”
'Motley' was the patchwork multicolored cloth worn by professional court fools — their identifying uniform, as recognizable as a soldier's livery. To 'wear motley' was to be a fool. Feste claims his foolishness is professional and deliberate, not a defect of mind: the costume is outside, the wit is within.
TLN 346rhetorical device
“you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite”
Olivia diagnoses Malvolio's contempt for the fool as a symptom, not a judgment: he is sick with narcissism ('self-love'), so everything he tastes is distorted ('distempered appetite'). A 'distempered' appetite was a medical term for a stomach out of its proper balance of humours — his critical faculties are ill, not Feste's fooling. 'Bird-bolts' are blunt-headed arrows used for small-game hunting, harmless compared with cannon balls.
TLN 352classical allusion
“Now Mercury endue thee with leasing”
Mercury (Greek Hermes) was the god of eloquence, trade, and deception — the divine patron of liars and tricksters as well as messengers. 'Leasing' is an archaic word for lying or falsehood. Feste is backhanded: he 'blesses' Olivia with Mercury's gift of deception because she has spoken well of fools — as though praising fools requires the ability to speak with a straight face.
TLN 368archaic vocab
“a most weak pia mater”
The pia mater ('soft mother' in Latin) is the delicate innermost membrane surrounding the brain. In Elizabethan anatomy and common usage it stood for the brain itself or the seat of the understanding. Feste says Sir Toby's kinsman (Olivia's uncle, here Sir Toby himself) has a very feeble brain — a medical way of calling someone a fool.
TLN 396historical topical
“stand at your door like a sheriff's post”
In Elizabethan towns, a painted post was set outside the sheriff's or mayor's door as a mark of civic office. It was a fixed, permanent object — a symbol of authority going nowhere. Malvolio reports that the visitor ('Cesario') threatened to stand equally immovably at Olivia's gate, as official and unmovable as a symbolic post.
TLN 405archaic vocab
“as a squash is before 'tis a peascod, or a codling, when 'tis almost an apple”
Malvolio describes 'Cesario' (Viola in disguise) as neither boy nor man by a series of food metaphors: a 'squash' is an unripe peapod, before the peas have filled it; a 'peascod' is the fully formed pod; a 'codling' is an unripe apple. The visitor is at a green, neither-nor stage — not yet a full adult. The passage is Malvolio's only sustained attempt at wit; Olivia pointedly does not laugh at it.
TLN 419archaic vocab
“I am very comptible, even to the least sinister usage”
'Comptible' (or 'accountable') means sensitive, easily affected, easily wounded — not 'capable of counting.' Viola-as-Cesario is asking Olivia's household not to be rude: she is thin-skinned and susceptible even to the smallest discourtesy ('sinister usage'). 'Sinister' here means unfavorable or unkind, not evil.
TLN 453wordplay
“What I am and what I would are as secret as maidenhead: to your ears, divinity; to any other's, profanation”
Viola says her true identity ('what I am') and purpose ('what I would') are as private as a virgin's chastity — 'maidenhead' is the hymen or, more broadly, virginity. What she has to say is 'divinity' (sacred, holy) for Olivia's ears alone; for anyone else to hear it would be 'profanation' (sacrilege). The language elevates Orsino's erotic suit into something quasi-religious — and quietly hints at Viola's own secret (she is herself a maidenhead, a woman in disguise).
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 470archaic vocab
“'Tis in grain, sir”
'In grain' means dyed with grain (kermes, a red dye made from dried insect bodies embedded in oak-galls, and hence the word 'crimson' from Arabic qirmiz). Cloth dyed 'in grain' kept its color through washing and weathering — it was permanent. Olivia is deflecting Viola's hint that her beauty is the work of cosmetics: she says her complexion is genuine, not painted on.
TLN 473cultural context
“Lady, you are the cruel'st she alive, If you will lead these graces to the grave, And leave the world no copy”
Viola argues that Olivia's beauty is a kind of public property she holds in trust: to take it to the grave unmarried and childless is to cheat the world of its 'copy' — an heir who inherits her features. The argument that a beautiful woman owes the world children to perpetuate her beauty was a standard Renaissance topos, familiar from Shakespeare's own first group of sonnets (Sonnets 1-17, sometimes called the 'procreation sonnets').
TLN 487cultural context
“With adorations, fertile tears, With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire”
This catalogue of symptoms — tears, groans, sighs — is the standard vocabulary of the Petrarchan lover: a man who worships a cold, unattainable woman and expresses that worship in a repertoire of physical suffering. Orsino's love is painted in exactly this mode throughout the play. Olivia's response ('Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him') is the dismissal the Petrarchan convention expects but, in the convention, always ignores.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 501cultural context
“Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house; Write loyal cantons of contemned love”
The willow was the symbol of rejected or unrequited love — a mourning tree, also associated with the abandoned woman who carries a willow garland. 'Cantons' are cantos or songs. Viola imagines building a small shelter of willow branches at Olivia's gate and singing love-songs that denounce ('contemned') rejection. The speech is the most lyrical in the scene and the moment Olivia begins to fall for 'Cesario.'
TLN 526rhetorical device
“Do give thee five-fold blazon”
A 'blazon' in heraldry is a description of a coat of arms; in Renaissance love-poetry it became a rhetorical form in which a lover catalogues the beloved's physical attributes one by one, as though drawing up an inventory of beauty. Here Olivia uses it to mean the clear outward signs — tongue, face, limbs, actions, spirit — that 'blazon' (proclaim, describe) Viola's gentlehood. She is reading the disguised Viola as if reading a heraldic shield.
TLN 528historical topical
“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”
Plague was caught by invisible contagion through the air or, as some early modern physicians believed, through the eyes and breath. Olivia compares sudden love to sudden infection: she has caught 'the plague' of Cesario's beauty in an instant. The image also reverses the Petrarchan convention (the wound of Cupid's arrow) by shifting from military to medical language — love as an epidemic, not a siege.