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Duke. Madam, I am most apt to embrace your offer.Your master quits you [to Viola]; and, for your service done

him,

So much against the mettle of your sex,
So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,

And since you call'd me master for so long,
Here is my hand: you shall from this time be

Your master's mistress.

Oli.

A sister! you are she.

Re-enter FABIAN, with MALVOLIO.

Duke. Is this the madman?
Oli.

How now, Malvolio!

Ay, my lord, this same.

Madam, you have done me wrong,

Mal.

Notorious wrong.

Oli.

Have I, Malvolio? no.

Mal. Lady, you have. Pray you, peruse that letter:

You must not now deny it is your hand,

Write from it, if you can, in hand or phrase;
Or say 'tis not your seal, not your invention:
You can say none of this: well, grant it, then,
And tell me, in the modesty of honour,
Why you have given me such clear lights of favour,
Bade me come smiling and cross-garter'd to you,
To put on yellow stockings, and to frown
Upon Sir Toby and the lighter people;
And, acting this in an obedient hope,
Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd,
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
And made the most notorious geck and gull
That e'er invention play'd on? tell me why.

Oli. Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing,
Though, I confess, much like the character :
But, out of question, 'tis Maria's hand.
And now I do bethink me, it was she
First told me thou wast mad; then (42) cam'st in smiling,
And in such forms which here were presuppos'd

Upon thee in the letter. Prithee, be content:
This practice hath most shrewdly pass'd upon thee;

But, when we know the grounds and authors of it,

Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge

Of thine own cause.

Fab.

Good madam, hear me speak;

And let no quarrel nor no brawl to come

Taint the condition of this present hour,

Which I have wonder'd at. In hope it shall not,

Most freely I confess, myself and Toby

Set this device against Malvolio here,

Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts
We had conceiv'd against him: Maria writ
The letter at Sir Toby's great importance;
In recompense whereof he hath married her.
How with a sportful malice it was follow'd,
May rather pluck on laughter than revenge;
If that the injuries be justly weigh'd

That have on both sides pass'd.

Oli. Alas, poor fool, (43) how have they baffled thee! Clo. Why, "some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown (44) upon them." I was one, sir, in this interlude, -one Sir Topas, sir; but that's all one. -"By the Lord, fool, I am not mad;"-but do you remember? "Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal? an you smile not, he's gagged:" and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Mal. I'll be reveng'd on the whole pack of you. [Exit. Oli. He hath been most notoriously abus'd.

Duke. Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace:

He hath not told us of the captain yet:

When that is known, and golden time convents,

A solemn combination shall be made

Of our dear souls. Meantime, sweet sister,
We will not part from hence. - Cesario, come;

For so you shall be, while you are a man;

But when in other habits you are seen,

Orsino's mistress, and his fancy's queen.

[Exeunt all, except Clown.

Clo.

SONG.

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.

But when I came to man's estate,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my bed,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken head,
For the rain it raineth every day.

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.

[Exit.

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So Pope (and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector). -The folio has "like the sweet sound," &c.

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Theobald's emendation (and so Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector). - The folio has "coole my nature."

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So Pope. The folio has "a dam'd colour'd stocke." (Mr. Knight prints "a damask-coloured stock." -Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector makes it "a dun-coloured stock:" see my Few Notes, &c. p. 75.)

P. 12. (6)

"that's as much to say as, I wear not," &c.

Mr. Collier, who (with Malone, &c.) prints "that's as much as to say," &c., tells us that here in the old copies "as" is misplaced: yet in Sec. Part of Henry VI. act iv. sc. 2, he gives, with the old copies, "which is as much to say as, let the magistrates," &c.

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The folio (from which perhaps something more than prefixes has dropped

out) makes the whole of the above run on as one speech, -" Vio..

Some

mollification for your Giant, sweete Ladie; tell me your minde, I am a mes senger." I adopt here the usual modern distribution of the dialogue, what has been urged against it by Mr. Collier (ad l.) and by Mr. Hunter (New Illust. of Shakespeare, vol. i. 402) having only tended to strengthen my conviction that "Tell me your mind" cannot possibly belong to Viola. (With respect to "I am a messenger," Mason remarks that "as a messenger, Viola was not to speak her own mind, but that of her employer.")

P. 17. (9)

"With adorations, with fertile tears,

With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire."

In the first line the folio omits the second "with," a mistake, as the context (to say nothing of the metre) shows plainly.

P. 20. (10)

"but, though I could not with such estimable wonder overfar believe that," &c. Here Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector makes an alteration which a critic in Blackwood's Magazine for August 1853, p. 201, rightly calls "a very bad piece of tinkering;" and Mr. Singer's Ms. Corrector (see Shakespeare Vindicated, p. 64) makes another, which comes under the same description. Indeed, I believe that the folio gives the passage as the author wrote it.

P. 21. (11) "Vio. She took the ring of me;-I'll none of it." On the reading of his Ms. Corrector, "She took no ring," &c. (which Malone also conjectures), Mr. Collier observes, "This alteration renders what the heroine afterwards says quite consistent, 'I left no ring with her,' and 'Why, he sent her none;" but "what the heroine afterwards says" is said to herself, not to Malvolio. I agree with Steevens and Mr. Knight that the old text is uncorrupted.

P. 21. (12)

"That methought her eyes had lost her tongue," &c. The editor of the second folio printed, for the metre, "That sure methought," &c. ("Sure, in the present instance, is not very likely to have been the word omitted in the first copy, being found in the next line but one."-MALONE.)

P. 21. (13)

The folio has,

"Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!
For such as we are made of, such we be."

"Alas, O [sec. folio "our"] frailtie is the cause, not wee,
For such as we are made, if such we bee."

P. 21. (14) "And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;
And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me."

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