Act 2, Scene 4

A Room in the DUKE'S Palace.

[Enter DUKE, VIOLA, CURIO, and others.]
Orsino
784 Give me some music:—Now, good morrow, friends:—
785 Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,
786 That old and antique song we heard last night;
787 Methought it did relieve my passion much;
788 More than light airs and recollected terms
789 Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times:—
790 Come, but one verse.
Curio
791 He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing it.
Orsino
792 Who was it?
Curio
793 Feste, the jester, my lord; a fool that the Lady Olivia's
794 father took much delight in: he is about the house.
Orsino
795 Seek him out, and play the tune the while.
[Exit CURIO. Music.]
Orsino
796 Come hither, boy. If ever thou shalt love,
797 In the sweet pangs of it remember me:
798 For, such as I am, all true lovers are;
799 Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
800 Save in the constant image of the creature
801 That is belov'd.—How dost thou like this tune?
Viola
802 It gives a very echo to the seat
803 Where Love is throned.
Orsino
804 Thou dost speak masterly:
805 My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye
806 Hath stayed upon some favour that it loves;
807 Hath it not, boy?
Viola
808 A little, by your favour.
Orsino
809 What kind of woman is't?
Viola
810 Of your complexion.
Orsino
811 She is not worth thee, then. What years, i' faith?
Viola
812 About your years, my lord.
Orsino
813 Too old, by heaven! Let still the woman take
814 An elder than herself; so wears she to him,
815 So sways she level in her husband's heart.
816 For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
817 Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
818 More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,
819 Than women's are.
Viola
820 I think it well, my lord.
Orsino
821 Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
822 Or thy affection cannot hold the bent:
823 For women are as roses, whose fair flower,
824 Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour.
Viola
825 And so they are: alas, that they are so;
826 To die, even when they to perfection grow!
[Re-enter CURIO and CLOWN.]
Orsino
827 O, fellow, come, the song we had last night:—
828 Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain:
829 The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
830 And the free maids, that weave their thread with bones,
831 Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth,
832 And dallies with the innocence of love
833 Like the old age.
Feste
834 Are you ready, sir?
Orsino
835 Ay; pr'ythee, sing.
[Music]
[SONG]
Feste
836 Come away, come away, death.
837 And in sad cypress let me be laid;
838 Fly away, fly away, breath;
839 I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
840 My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
841 O, prepare it!
842 My part of death no one so true
843 Did share it.
Feste
844 Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
845 On my black coffin let there be strown:
846 Not a friend, not a friend greet
847 My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown:
848 A thousand thousand sighs to save,
849 Lay me, O, where
850 Sad true lover never find my grave,
851 To weep there!
Orsino
852 There's for thy pains.
Feste
853 No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir.
Orsino
854 I'll pay thy pleasure, then.
Feste
855 Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid one time or another.
Orsino
856 Give me now leave to leave thee.
Feste
857 Now the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy
858 doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal!—I
859 would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business
860 might be everything, and their intent everywhere; for that's it
861 that always makes a good voyage of nothing.—Farewell.
[Exit CLOWN.]
Orsino
862 Let all the rest give place.—
[Exeunt CURIO and Attendants.]
Orsino
863 Once more, Cesario,
864 Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty:
865 Tell her my love, more noble than the world,
866 Prizes not quantity of dirty lands;
867 The parts that fortune hath bestow'd upon her,
868 Tell her, I hold as giddily as fortune;
869 But 'tis that miracle and queen of gems
870 That Nature pranks her in attracts my soul.
Viola
871 But if she cannot love you, sir?
Orsino
872 I cannot be so answer'd.
Viola
873 'Sooth, but you must.
874 Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,
875 Hath for your love as great a pang of heart
876 As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her;
877 You tell her so. Must she not then be answer'd?
Orsino
878 There is no woman's sides
879 Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
880 As love doth give my heart: no woman's heart
881 So big to hold so much; they lack retention.
882 Alas, their love may be called appetite,—
883 No motion of the liver, but the palate,—
884 That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;
885 But mine is all as hungry as the sea,
886 And can digest as much: make no compare
887 Between that love a woman can bear me
888 And that I owe Olivia.
Viola
889 Ay, but I know,—
Orsino
890 What dost thou know?
Viola
891 Too well what love women to men may owe.
892 In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
893 My father had a daughter loved a man,
894 As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
895 I should your lordship.
Orsino
896 And what's her history?
Viola
897 A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
898 But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
899 Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought;
900 And with a green and yellow melancholy,
901 She sat like patience on a monument,
902 Smiling at grief. Was not this love, indeed?
903 We men may say more, swear more; but indeed,
904 Our shows are more than will; for still we prove
905 Much in our vows, but little in our love.
Orsino
906 But died thy sister of her love, my boy?
Viola
907 I am all the daughters of my father's house,
908 And all the brothers too;—and yet I know not.—
909 Sir, shall I to this lady?
Orsino
910 Ay, that's the theme.
911 To her in haste: give her this jewel; say
912 My love can give no place, bide no denay.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 788archaic vocab
“light airs and recollected terms Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times”
'Recollected terms' means studied, carefully assembled phrases — the kind of clever, fashionable language that poets and courtiers assembled for effect. Orsino is contrasting the natural, unpolished 'old and antique song' he wants to hear with the slick, self-conscious lyrics fashionable in his day. 'Light airs' means frivolous tunes.
TLN 799archaic vocab
“Unstaid and skittish in all motions else, Save in the constant image”
'Unstaid' means unsteady, lacking restraint. 'Skittish' means erratically changeable. 'Motions' means emotions or impulses. Orsino is saying that a true lover is restless and inconsistent about everything in life except the fixed, obsessive image of the person he loves.
TLN 802rhetorical device
“It gives a very echo to the seat Where Love is throned”
Viola means the music resonates perfectly with the place in the heart where love lives — as if the seat of love itself hears its own reflection. 'The seat where Love is throned' pictures love as a monarch enthroned at the center of the heart or mind. The compliment flatters Orsino while letting Viola speak truthfully about her own feeling.
TLN 813archaic vocab
“Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, So sways she level”
'Still' means always. 'Wears' here means grows gradually accustomed or adjusted, as a garment shapes itself to the body. 'Sways she level' means keeps her emotional balance steady. Orsino is arguing that a woman should marry an older man, because she will mold herself to him and remain emotionally stable in his heart.
TLN 829historical topical
“The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids, that weave their thread with bones”
Orsino is describing the kind of women who traditionally sang plain old love songs: spinners (who spin thread), knitters working outdoors, and 'free maids' — unmarried girls — who do bobbin-lace ('weave their thread with bones,' meaning the small bone or ivory bobbins used for lacemaking). He is picturing the song as folk music, not court entertainment.
TLN 836cultural context
“Come away, come away, death”
Feste's song is a standard Elizabethan 'dying-for-love' lyric: the speaker, slain by an unfeeling beloved, desires a secret burial with no flowers and no mourners. 'Cypress' (line 2) was a wood associated with death and mourning; yew (line 5) was planted in churchyards. 'Sad true lover' (line 11) means a sincerely sorrowful one. The song dramatizes Orsino's self-pity as art, but Viola knows it from the inside.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 857historical topical
“the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal”
Feste invokes Saturn, the 'melancholy god' who supposedly governed melancholy people, wishing him on the changeable Orsino as a parting joke. A 'doublet of changeable taffeta' was a jacket made of shot silk that shifts color depending on the angle of light — a byword for inconstancy. An opal changes color similarly. Feste is calling Orsino a mood-driven weathervane in the courtliest possible terms.
TLN 869archaic vocab
“'tis that miracle and queen of gems That Nature pranks her in attracts my soul”
'Pranks her in' means adorns or dresses her in. Orsino is saying that what attracts him is not Olivia's fortune ('dirty lands') or the worldly advantages Fortune gave her, but the inner beauty that Nature has dressed her in — a 'miracle' and a 'queen of gems.' The contrast between Fortune (outer wealth) and Nature (innate quality) was a standard philosophical distinction.
TLN 883historical topical
“No motion of the liver, but the palate”
In early modern medicine, the liver was the organ that generated deep, enduring passion and desire; the palate was associated with mere appetite — the taste for whatever is in front of you at the moment. Orsino is saying women's love is not true feeling from the liver but only appetite, like the palate: it craves whatever is available and then tires of it.
TLN 898rhetorical device
“concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought; And with a green and yellow melancholy”
Viola describes how her invented 'sister' wasted away from hidden love. 'A worm i' the bud' is a caterpillar eating a rose from inside before it can open — a perfect image for unexpressed feeling consuming the lover from within. 'Damask' is the rich pink-and-white color of the damask rose. 'Green and yellow melancholy' was a recognized symptom: pale, jaundiced skin and a greenish cast were taken as signs of the 'green sickness,' a condition thought to afflict lovesick young women.
TLN 901rhetorical device
“She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief”
A monument here means a tomb or memorial sculpture. Patience was sometimes personified in Renaissance art as a still, resigned female figure. Viola is saying her 'sister' sat so motionless and quietly enduring in her suffering that she looked like the sculpted figure of Patience carved on a tomb — beautiful, fixed, and smiling even at grief. It is one of the most striking images in the play.