OLIVIA (to Fabian) Read it you, sirrah.

Feste gives the letter to Fabian

FABIAN (reads) ‘By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and the world shall know it. Though you have put me into darkness and given your drunken cousin rule over me, yet have I the benefit of my senses as well as your ladyship. I have your own letter that induced me to the semblance I put on, with the which I doubt not but to do myself much right or you much shame. Think of me as you please. I leave my duty a little unthought of, and speak out of my injury.

The madly-used Malvolio.’

OLIVIA Did he write this?

FESTE Ay, madam.

ORSINO

This savours not much of distraction.

OLIVIA

See him delivered, Fabian, bring him hither.

My lord, so please you—these things further thought

on—

To think me as well a sister as a wife,

One day shall crown th‘alliance on’t, so please you,

Here at my house and at my proper cost.

ORSINO

Madam, I am most apt t’embrace your offer.

(To Viola) Your master quits you, 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 called me master for so long,

Here is my hand. You shall from this time be

Your master’s mistress.

OLIVIA (to Viola) A sister, you are she.

Enter Malvolio

ORSINO

Is this the madman?

OLIVIA Ay, my lord, this same.

How now, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO Madam, you have done me wrong,

Notorious wrong.

OLIVIA Have I, Malvolio? No.

MALVOLIO (showing a letter)

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-gartered 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 suffered me to be imprisoned,

Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,

And made the most notorious geck and gull

That e’er invention played on? Tell me why?

OLIVIA

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 cam’st in smiling,

And in such forms which here were presupposed

Upon thee in the letter. Prithee be content;

This practice hath most shrewdly passed 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.

FABIAN Good madam, hear me speak,

And let no quarrel nor no brawl to come

Taint the condition of this present hour,

Which I have wondered 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 conceived 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 followed

May rather pluck on laughter than revenge

If that the injuries be justly weighed

That have on both sides passed.

OLIVIA (to Malvolio)

Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee!

FESTE Why, ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown 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.

MALVOLIO I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you. Exit

OLIVIA

He hath been most notoriously abused.

ORSINO

Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace.

He hath not told us of the captain yet.

⌈Exit one or more⌉

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 but Feste

FESTE (sings)

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 beds,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

With tosspots still had drunken heads,

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,