DUKE.
O, fellow, come, the song we had last night.
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;
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.
CLOWN.
Are you ready, sir?
DUKE.
Ay; prithee, sing.
[_Music._]
The Clown’s song.
_ 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.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death no one so true
Did share it._
_ Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown:
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there._
DUKE.
There’s for thy pains.
CLOWN.
No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir.
DUKE.
I’ll pay thy pleasure, then.
CLOWN.
Truly sir, and pleasure will be paid one time or another.
DUKE.
Give me now leave to leave thee.
CLOWN.
Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of
changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. I would have men of
such constancy put to sea, that their business might be everything, and
their intent everywhere, for that’s it that always makes a good voyage
of nothing. Farewell.
[_Exit Clown._]
DUKE.
Let all the rest give place.
[_Exeunt Curio and Attendants._]
Once more, Cesario,
Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty.
Tell her my love, more noble than the world,
Prizes not quantity of dirty lands;
The parts that fortune hath bestow’d upon her,
Tell her I hold as giddily as fortune;
But ’tis that miracle and queen of gems
That nature pranks her in attracts my soul.
VIOLA.
But if she cannot love you, sir?
DUKE.
I cannot be so answer’d.
VIOLA.
Sooth, but you must.
Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,
Hath for your love as great a pang of heart
As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her;
You tell her so. Must she not then be answer’d?
DUKE.
There is no woman’s sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart: no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much; they lack retention.
Alas, their love may be called appetite,
No motion of the liver, but the palate,
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;
But mine is all as hungry as the sea,
And can digest as much. Make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that I owe Olivia.
VIOLA.
Ay, but I know—
DUKE.
What dost thou know?
VIOLA.
Too well what love women to men may owe.
In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
My father had a daughter loved a man,
As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.
DUKE.
And what’s her history?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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