Twelfth Night

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.

Act I

 * 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

 * 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

 * 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

 * 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

 * 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

 * 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