text
stringlengths
0
1.91k
Most wonderful!
SEBASTIAN.
Do I stand there? I never had a brother:
Nor can there be that deity in my nature
Of here and everywhere. I had a sister
Whom the blind waves and surges have devoured:--
[To Viola.] Of charity, what kin are you to me?
What countryman, what name, what parentage?
VIOLA.
Of Messaline: Sebastian was my father;
Such a Sebastian was my brother too:
So went he suited to his watery tomb:
If spirits can assume both form and suit,
You come to fright us.
SEBASTIAN.
A spirit I am indeed:
But am in that dimension grossly clad,
Which from the womb I did participate.
Were you a woman, as the rest goes even,
I should my tears let fall upon your cheek,
And say--Thrice welcome, drowned Viola!
VIOLA.
My father had a mole upon his brow.
SEBASTIAN.
And so had mine.
VIOLA.
And died that day when Viola from her birth
Had numbered thirteen years.
SEBASTIAN.
O, that record is lively in my soul!
He finished, indeed, his mortal act
That day that made my sister thirteen years.
VIOLA.
If nothing lets to make us happy both
But this my masculine usurp'd attire,
Do not embrace me till each circumstance
Of place, time, fortune, do cohere, and jump
That I am Viola: which to confirm,
I'll bring you to a captain in this town,
Where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help
I was preserv'd to serve this noble count;
All the occurrence of my fortune since
Hath been between this lady and this lord.
SEBASTIAN.
[To OLIVIA] So comes it, lady, you have been mistook:
But nature to her bias drew in that.
You would have been contracted to a maid;
Nor are you therein, by my life, deceived;
You are betroth'd both to a maid and man.
DUKE.
Be not amazed; right noble is his blood.--
If this be so, as yet the glass seems true,
I shall have share in this most happy wreck:
[To VIOLA] Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times,
Thou never shouldst love woman like to me.
VIOLA.
And all those sayings will I over-swear;
And all those swearings keep as true in soul
As doth that orbed continent the fire
That severs day from night.
DUKE.
Give me thy hand;
And let me see thee in thy woman's weeds.
VIOLA.
The captain that did bring me first on shore
Hath my maid's garments: he, upon some action,
Is now in durance, at Malvolio's suit;
A gentleman and follower of my lady's.
OLIVIA.
He shall enlarge him:--Fetch Malvolio hither:--
And yet, alas, now I remember me,
They say, poor gentleman, he's much distract.
[Re-enter CLOWN, with a letter.]
A most extracting frenzy of mine own
From my remembrance clearly banished his.--
How does he, sirrah?
CLOWN.
Truly, madam, he holds Belzebub at the stave's end as well
as a man in his case may do: he has here writ a letter to you; I
should have given it you to-day morning, but as a madman's
epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are
delivered.