<-- back to Scene Seven SCENE 8 OLIVIA's house. The night wrote a check the morning couldn't cash. Light change to suggest night.
[Enter Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, midnight snacking.]
SIR TOBY Approach, Sir Andrew: not to be abed after midnight is to be up betimes; and 'diluculo surgere,' thou know'st,--
Out comes the phrasebook, which is promptly smacked away by Sir Toby. I know it's hard, but try to think on your feet once in a while, goddamnit.
SIR ANDREW Nay, my troth, I know not: but I know, to be up late is to be up late.
SIR TOBY A false conclusion: I hate itScraping the last out of the tin of peaches you're eating, and emphasizing with the now empty can.
as an unfilled can. To be up after midnight and to go to bed then, is early: so that to go to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes. Does not our life consist of the four elements?
SIR ANDREW Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.
SIR TOBY Thou'rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say! a stoup of wine![Feste, woken up by this, rolls out from the musicians' nest and joins them.]
SIR ANDREW Here comes the fool, i' faith.
FESTE How now, my hearts! did you never see the picture of 'we three'?Moving Sir Andrew's hands over his eyes and Sir Toby's hands over his mouth, Feste puts his hands over his ears to complete the picture. As in, do you mind?, we're trying to get some sleep over here.
SIR TOBY Welcome, ass. Now let's have a catch.
SIR ANDREW By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. I had rather than forty shillings I had such a leg, and so sweet a breath to sing, as the fool has. In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou spokest of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus: 'twas very good, i' faith. I sent thee sixpence for thy leman: hadst it?At this, the bauble comes out, again, Cornholio style, echoing him on the big fancy words. Feste, again, trying to suppress the bauble's rantings.
FESTE I did impeticos thy gratillity; for Malvolio's nose is no whipstock: my lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses.
SIR ANDREW Excellent! why, this is the best fooling, when all is done. Now, a song.At this Sir Toby should surreptitiously pick a coin out of Sir Andrew's purse.
SIR TOBY Come on; there is sixpence for you: let's have a song.
SIR ANDREW There's aWait, wasn't there more money in here?
testril of me too: if one knight give a--
FESTE Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?
SIR TOBY A love-song, a love-song.
SIR ANDREW Ay, ay: I care not for good life.FESTE O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
Every wise man's son doth know.SIR ANDREW Excellent good, i' faith.
SIR TOBY Good, good.FESTE What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
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.
Youth's a stuff will not endure.SIR ANDREW A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.
SIR TOBY A contagious breath.
SIR ANDREW Very sweet and contagious, i' faith.
SIR TOBY To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion.For a moment, Sir Toby is off his element, and the Master of the Revels is spinning his wheels. Then he recovers.
But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver? shall we do that?
SIR ANDREW An you love me, let's do't: I am dog at a catch.
FESTE By'r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.
SIR ANDREW Most certain. Let our catch be, 'Thou knave.'"Freebird!" "Stairway To Heaven!"
FESTE 'Hold thy peace, thou knave,' knight? I shall be constrained in't to call thee knave, knight.
SIR ANDREW 'Tis not the first time I have constrained one to call me knave.You don't say.
Begin, fool: it begins 'Hold thy peace.'
FESTE I shall never begin if I hold my peace.Huh-huh-huh. He said 'hold my piece.'
SIR ANDREW Good, i' faith. Come, begin.
[Catch sung; this should be a loud sea shanty-like round, possibly with audience participation. The musicians are awakened and invited, conga-line style, inside the gates.]
Hold thy peace, thou knave, (&etc.)
[Enter MARIA]
MARIA What a caterwauling do you keep here! If my lady have not called up her steward Malvolio and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me.
SIR TOBY My lady's a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio's a Peg-a-Ramsey, and 'Three merry men be we.' Am not I consanguineous? am I not of her blood? Tillyvally. Lady! 'There dwelt a man in Babylon, lady, lady!'
FESTE Beshrew me, the knight's in admirable fooling.
SIR ANDREW Ay, he does well enough if he be disposed, and so do I too: he does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.
SIR TOBY 'O, the twelfth day of December,'--
MARIA For the love o' God, peace!Enter MALVOLIO, possibly with a thunderbolt sound & lightning light effect. Everything stops. The musicians freeze, then wilt, and slink back outside the gates, where they belong. Sir Andrew misses the cue to stop, and keeps jamming until he thinks to look back and see Malvolio staring at him.
MALVOLIO My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have ye no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Do ye make an alehouse of my lady's house, that ye squeak out your coziers' catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?
SIR TOBY We did keep time, sir, in our catches. Sneck up!The gauntlet is thrown. Sir Toby has had enough.
MALVOLIO Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My lady bade me tell you, that, though she harbours you as her kinsman, she's nothing allied to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your misdemeanors, you are welcome to the house; if not, an it would please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you farewell.
Sir Toby is thrown hardly at all. He walks out towards the musicians and grabs a drum.
SIR TOBY 'Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone.'
MARIA Nay, good Sir Toby.Ixnay, ixnay
FESTE 'His eyes do show his days are almost done.'
MALVOLIO Is't even so?
SIR TOBY 'But I will never die.'
FESTE Sir Toby, there you lie.
MALVOLIO This is much credit to you.
SIR TOBY 'Shall I bid him go?'
FESTE 'What an if you do?'
SIR TOBY 'Shall I bid him go, and spare not?'
FESTE 'O no, no, no, no, you dare not.'
SIR TOBY Out o' tune, sir: ye lie.If they had revolvers, Malvolio would already be dead. Not because it would be justified, but because Sir Toby's that kind of drunk.
Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?
A formal challenge from a knight? Well, more like a shove from a drunk, but the danger is no less real. Time to defuse.
FESTE Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too.
SIR TOBY Thou'rt i' the right.Right, right, right. I promised my niece: no disintegrations.
Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs. A stoup of wine, Maria!
Considerable tension, here. He's asking Maria to stand with him instead of obeying the boss's orders.
MALVOLIO Mistress Mary, if you prized my lady's favour at any thing more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule: she shall know of it, by this hand. [Malvolio exits, but not too soon to miss the next line:]
MARIA Go shake your ears.At this, Sir Toby may hug her and swing her around -- she's just represented on the home team's side, and you love her for it. She discovers she has a taste for being naughty. Feste, meanwhile, goes back to the musician's circle, pulls a blanket over his head, and goes back to trying to get some sleep.
SIR ANDREW 'Twere as good a deed as to drink when a man's a-hungry, to challenge him the field, and then to break promise with him and make a fool of him.
SIR TOBY Do't, knight: I'll write thee a challenge: or I'll deliver thy indignation to him by word of mouth.
MARIA Sweet Sir Toby, be patient for tonight: since the youth of the count's was today with thy lady, she is much out of quiet. For Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him: if I do not gull him into a nayword, and make him a common recreation, do not think I have wit enough to lie straight in my bed:Here and elsewhere, we see Maria starting to act on the suggestion of Feste's, initiating an awkward flirtation with Sir Toby. She's getting old, and she's alone, and she's more than a little scared. He first misses it because he's drunk, then misses it because he's uncomfortable with this sort of attention from a "buddy," then willfully misses it because he really doesn't want to admit that he's getting old, and alone, and scared too. They have a genuine love for each other, but it's filtered through a sad desperation, which must be dealt with first.
I know I can do it.
SIR TOBY Possess us, possess us; tell us something of him.
MARIA Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan.
SIR ANDREW O, if I thought that I'ld beat him like a dog!Double take. Trying to instruct the boy: you actually need to have a point. Not just occasionally, but all the time.
SIR TOBY What, for being a puritan? thy exquisite reason, dear knight?
SIR ANDREW I have no exquisite reason for't, but I have reason good enough.
MARIA The devil a puritan that he is, or any thing constantly, but a time-pleaser; an affectioned ass, that cons state without book and utters it by great swarths: the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him; and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work.
SIR TOBY What wilt thou do?
MARIA I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love; wherein, by the colour of his beard, the shape of his leg, the manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. I can write very like my lady your niece: on a forgotten matter we can hardly make distinction of our hands.
SIR TOBY Excellent! I smell a device.
SIR ANDREW I have't in my nose too.
SIR TOBY He shall think, by the letters that thou wilt drop, that they come from my niece, and that she's in love with him.
MARIA My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.
SIR ANDREW And your horse nowOh, wait, I've got it, Andrew make funny, wait, wait
would make him
Wait for it, oh, you're gonna LOVE this one
an ass.
Huh-huh-huh. Get it? Well, do you get it? I said ass. Feste wakes up and walks away from the music circle, leaving OSR with a glare to the noisy bunch as he goes to find someplace quieter to sleep.
MARIA Ass, I doubt not.
Shushing them, eyes nothing but apologetic, watching Feste leave.
SIR ANDREW O, 'twill be admirable!
MARIA Sport royal, I warrant you: I know my physic will work with him. I will plant you two, and let the fool make a third, where he shall find the letter: observe his construction of it. For this night, to bed,With a wistful look OSR towards where Feste has gone. If she could only follow...
and dream on the event. Farewell.[Exit OSL.]
SIR TOBY Good night, Penthesilea.
SIR ANDREW Before me, she's a good wench.
SIR TOBY She's a beagle, true-bred, and one that adores me:Life of Riley. Some guys got it, some guys don't.
what o' that?
SIR ANDREW I was adored once too.Sir Andrew has exactly one line with which to redeem his character, and this is it. In this moment are all of the regrets of a lifetime of chances untaken and also of opportunities simply unavailable. For one brief, brief moment, we actually feel sorry for the poor son of a bitch.
SIR TOBY Thou hadst need send for more money.
SIR ANDREW If I cannot recover your niece, I am a foul way out.
SIR TOBY Send for money, knight: if thou hast her not i' the end, call me cut.
SIR ANDREW If I do not, never trust me, take it how you will.
SIR TOBY Come, come, I'll go burn some sack; 'tis too late to go to bed now:Dionysian revels usually don't stop until people have died from exhaustive partying.
come, knight; come, knight. [They exit, OSL.]
--> on to Scene Nine Twelfth Night Annotated Script © 2001 Kevin M. Hollenbeck.
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