Twelfth Night
comedy by William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night, or What You Will, is a comedy by William Shakespeare, named after the Twelfth Night holiday. The play was believed to have been written around 1601–1602.
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Act I
edit- If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die. —
That strain again; it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear, like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing, and giving odour! Enough! No more.
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.- Orsino, scene i
- Conceal me what I am; and be my aid
For such disguise as, haply, shall become
The form of my intent.- Viola, scene ii
- I am sure care's an enemy to life.
- Sir Toby scene iii
- I have them at my fingers' ends.
- Maria, scene iii
- Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before 'em?
- Sir Toby, scene iii
- Is it a world to hide virtues in?
- Sir Toby, scene iii
- Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage...
- Feste, scene v
- Olivia: Go to, you're a dry fool; I'll no more of you; besides, you grow dishonest.
Feste: Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry; bid the dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him; any thing that's mended is but patched; virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.- Scene v
- Olivia: What's a drunken man like, fool?
Feste: Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him.- Scene v
- We will draw the curtain, and show you the picture.
- Olivia, scene v
- ’T is beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on:
Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive
If you will lead these graces to the grave,
And leave the world no copy.- Viola, scene v
- Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out.- Viola, scene v
Act II
edit- O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;
It is too hard a knot for me t' untie.- Viola, scene ii, lines 38-39
- O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear: your true-love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers' meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.- Feste, scene iii
- What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty:
Youth's a stuff will not endure.- Feste, scene iii
- He does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.
- Sir Andrew, scene iii
- Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?
- Malvolio, scene iii
- Sir Toby: Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?
Feste: Yes, by Saint Anne; and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too.- Scene iii
- My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.
- Maria, scene iii
- These most brisk and giddy-paced times.
- Orsino, scene iv
- Let still the woman take
An elder than herself: so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart:
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are.- Orsino, scene iv
- Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent.- Orsino, scene iv
- The spinsters and the knitters in the sun
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones
Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.- Orsino, scene iv
- Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.- Feste, scene iv
- Orsino: And what's her history?
Viola: A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought,
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love, indeed?- Scene iv
- I am all the daughters of my father's house,
And all the brothers too.- Viola, scene iv
- This is my lady's hand these be her very C's, her U's and her T's and thus makes she her great P's.
- Malvolio, scene v
- An you had any eye behind you, you might see more detraction at your heels than fortunes before you.
- Fabian, scene v
- Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.
- Malvolio, scene v
- Malvolio is reading aloud a letter which he believes to be from Olivia.
- Parodied in Joseph Heller, Catch-22, Chapter 9, as “Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”
Act III
edit- Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb, like the sun; it shines everywhere.
- Feste, scene i
- O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful
In the contempt and anger of his lip!- Olivia, scene i
- Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.
- Olivia, scene i
- Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.
- Sir Toby, scene ii
- I think we do know the sweet Roman hand.
- Malvolio, scene iv
- Why, this is very midsummer madness.
- Olivia, scene iv
- Put thyself into the trick of singularity.
- Malvolio, scene iv
- Malvolio is quoting what he believes to be a letter from Olivia.
- What, man! defy the Devil: consider, he's an enemy to mankind.
- Sir Toby, scene iv
- ’T is not for gravity to play at cherry-pit with Satan.
- Sir Toby, scene iv
- If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.
- Fabian, scene iv
- More matter for a May morning.
- Fabian, scene iv
- Still, you keep o’ the windy side of the law.
- Fabian, scene iv
- An I thought he had been valiant and so cunning in fence, I'ld have seen him damned ere I'ld have challenged him.
- Sir Andrew, scene v
- Out of my lean and low ability
I'll lend you something.- Viola, scene v
- Out of the jaws of death.
- Antonio, scene v
Act IV
edit- As the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, That, that is, is.
- Feste, scene ii
- Feste: What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl?
Malvolio: That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
Act V
edit- Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
- Feste, scene i
- When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain:
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.- Feste, scene i
- A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain:
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.- Feste, scene i
Characters
edit- Viola – a shipwrecked young woman who disguises herself as a page named Cesario
- Sebastian – Viola's twin brother
- Duke Orsino – Duke of Illyria
- Olivia – a wealthy countess
- Malvolio – steward in Olivia's household
- Maria – Olivia's gentlewoman
- Sir Toby Belch – Olivia's uncle
- Sir Andrew Aguecheek – a friend of Sir Toby
- Feste – Olivia's servant, a jester
- Fabian – a servant in Olivia's household
- Antonio – a sea captain and friend to Sebastian
- Valentine and Curio – gentlemen attending on the Duke
- A Sea Captain – a friend to Viola
External links
edit- Twelfth Night quotes analyzed; study guide with themes, character analyses, literary devices, teaching guide