# 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

## External links

* Twelfth Night quotes analyzed; study guide with themes, character analyses, literary devices, teaching guide