Twelfth Night

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. — Malvolio

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