[Enter SIR TOBY BELCH, SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK, and FABIAN.] SIR ANDREW No, faith, I'll not stay a jot longer.
SIR TOBY Thy reason, dear venom: give thy reason.
FABIAN You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.
SIR ANDREW Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the count's
servingman than ever she bestowed upon me; I saw't i' the
orchard.
SIR TOBY Did she see thee the while, old boy? tell me that.
SIR ANDREW As plain as I see you now.
FABIAN This was a great argument of love in her toward you.
SIR ANDREW 'Slight! will you make an ass o' me?
FABIAN I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment
and reason.
SIR TOBY And they have been grand jurymen since before Noah was a
sailor.
FABIAN She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to
exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in
your heart and brimstone in your liver. You should then have
accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the
mint, you should have banged the youth into dumbness. This was
looked for at your hand, and this was baulked: the double gilt of
this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sailed
into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an
icicle on Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by some
laudable attempt either of valour or policy.
SIR ANDREW And't be any way, it must be with valour: for policy I
hate; I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.
SIR TOBY Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of
valour. Challenge me the count's youth to fight with him; hurt
him in eleven places; my niece shall take note of it: and assure
thyself there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in
man's commendation with woman than report of valour.
FABIAN There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.
SIR ANDREW Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?
SIR TOBY Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is
no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and full of invention;
taunt him with the licence of ink; if thou 'thou'st' him some
thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in
thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the
bed of Ware in England, set 'em down; go about it. Let there be
gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no
matter. About it.
SIR ANDREW Where shall I find you?
SIR TOBY We'll call thee at the cubiculo. Go.
[Exit SIR ANDREW.] FABIAN This is a dear manakin to you, Sir Toby.
SIR TOBY I have been dear to him, lad; some two thousand strong, or so.
FABIAN We shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll not deliver it.
SIR TOBY Never trust me then; and by all means stir on the youth
to an answer. I think oxen and wainropes cannot hale them
together. For Andrew, if he were opened and you find so much
blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the
rest of the anatomy.
FABIAN And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great
presage of cruelty.
[Enter MARIA.] SIR TOBY Look where the youngest wren of nine comes.
MARIA If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into
stitches, follow me: yond gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very
renegado; for there is no Christian, that means to be saved by
believing rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages of
grossness. He's in yellow stockings.
SIR TOBY And cross-gartered?
MARIA Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i' the
church.--I have dogged him like his murderer. He does obey every
point of the letter that I dropped to betray him. He does smile
his face into more lines than is in the new map, with the
augmentation of the Indies: you have not seen such a thing as
'tis; I can hardly forbear hurling things at him. I know my lady
will strike him; if she do, he'll smile and take't for a great
favour.
SIR TOBY Come, bring us, bring us where he is.
[Exeunt.]