OLIVIA
Are you a comedian?
VIOLA
No, my profound heart: and yet, by the very fangs
of malice I swear, I am not that I play. Are you
the lady of the house?
OLIVIA
If I do not usurp myself, I am.
VIOLA
Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp
yourself; for what is yours to bestow is not yours
to reserve. But this is from my commission: I will
on with my speech in your praise, and then show you
the heart of my message.
OLIVIA
Come to what is important in’t: I forgive you the praise.
VIOLA
Alas, I took great pains to study it, and ’tis poetical.
OLIVIA
It is the more like to be feigned: I pray you,
keep it in. I heard you were saucy at my gates,
and allowed your approach rather to wonder at you
than to hear you. If you be not mad, be gone; if
you have reason, be brief: ’tis not that time of
moon with me to make one in so skipping a dialogue.
MARIA
Will you hoist sail, sir? here lies your way.
VIOLA
No, good swabber; I am to hull here a little
longer. Some mollification for your giant, sweet
lady. Tell me your mind: I am a messenger.
OLIVIA
Sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver, when
the courtesy of it is so fearful. Speak your office.
VIOLA
It alone concerns your ear. I bring no overture of
war, no taxation of homage: I hold the olive in my
hand; my words are as fun of peace as matter.
OLIVIA
Yet you began rudely. What are you? what would you?
VIOLA
The rudeness that hath appeared in me have I
learned from my entertainment. What I am, and what I
would, are as secret as maidenhead; to your ears,
divinity, to any other’s, profanation.
OLIVIA
Give us the place alone: we will hear this divinity.
Exeunt MARIA and Attendants
Now, sir, what is your text?
VIOLA
Most sweet lady,–
OLIVIA
A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it.
Where lies your text?
VIOLA
In Orsino’s bosom.
OLIVIA
In his bosom! In what chapter of his bosom?
VIOLA
To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.
OLIVIA
O, I have read it: it is heresy. Have you no more to say?
VIOLA
Good madam, let me see your face.
OLIVIA
Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate
with my face? You are now out of your text: but
we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.
Look you, sir, such a one I was this present: is’t
not well done?
Unveiling
VIOLA
Excellently done, if God did all.
OLIVIA
‘Tis in grain, sir; ’twill endure wind and weather.
VIOLA
‘Tis 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.
OLIVIA
O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give
out divers schedules of my beauty: it shall be
inventoried, and every particle and utensil
labelled to my will: as, item, two lips,
indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to
them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth. Were
you sent hither to praise me?
VIOLA
I see you what you are, you are too proud;
But, if you were the devil, you are fair.
My lord and master loves you: O, such love
Could be but recompensed, though you were crown’d
The nonpareil of beauty!
OLIVIA
How does he love me?
VIOLA
With adorations, fertile tears,
With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.
OLIVIA
Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him:
Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;
In voices well divulged, free, learn’d and valiant;
And in dimension and the shape of nature
A gracious person: but yet I cannot love him;
He might have took his answer long ago.
VIOLA
If I did love you in my master’s flame,
With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
In your denial I would find no sense;
I would not understand it.
OLIVIA
Why, what would you?
VIOLA
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;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out ‘Olivia!’ O, You should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!
OLIVIA
You might do much.
What is your parentage?
VIOLA
Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:
I am a gentleman.
OLIVIA
Get you to your lord;
I cannot love him: let him send no more;
Unless, perchance, you come to me again,
To tell me how he takes it. Fare you well:
I thank you for your pains: spend this for me.
VIOLA
I am no fee’d post,
lady; keep your purse:
My master, not myself, lacks recompense.
Love make his heart of flint that you shall love;
And let your fervor, like my master’s, be
Placed in contempt! Farewell, fair cruelty.
Exit
Twelfth Night reminds us how we can fall in love! One moment we are going about our daily lives rearranging details, assuming contentment; the next out of our ‘peripheral’ vision there appears the someone who becomes quite simply and arrestingly the ‘face’. In this scene Olivia meet Cesario/Viola for the first time and wakes up into a vital, fascinated desirous state! The fascination emantes from the revitalisation of Olivia’s exhausted state of mourning through the provocative ‘freshness’ of Cesario’s conversation. Language is for life or for death in the play.
Cesario has been sent on a mission for her ‘master’ and secret love in this scene and this places her in a very odd situation. Should she ‘fail’ to seduce Olivia for the Duke then the Duke will regard ‘her’ as perhaps disloyal. If she succeeds in attracting Olivia for the Duke then she loses any possibility of loving the Duke openly for herself. The pleasure of this scene is of course the liberating surprise of a strangely ‘unbounded ‘ flirtation. For WHY does Cesario ask Olivia to unveil herself? Is this necessary to her assignment? Or is it just a rival’s curiosity? I would suggest neither.
Significantly Olivia allows this spirited interloper into her monotonous world to see her metaphorically ‘undressed’. The frisson is palpable: the powerful woman allows herself to be dominated and enjoys it!
Verbal strip tease yields to a literal risk of emotional and romantic ‘exposure’. The self-irony of Olivia, too accustomed to empty flattery is met by a new response. A response which makes Olivia notice her ‘antagonist’ still more facinated, still more ‘aroused’ by this new ‘note’ in her previously stale existence.
‘Why, what would you?’
How breathessly suggestive is this? The use of the conditional ‘would’ invites Cesario to seduce her. And with her own script. NOTHING that the Duke with his egocentric self-love speaks of rivals this: Ceasario reaches into her heart and pulls out a passionate ‘night text’ which leaves Olivia out of her text too:
‘ You might do much’
Olivia I am sure, feels in need of the proverbial cold shower !
One of sexiest scenes in literature and highlights how much freshness and openness can enchant !