style="font-size:15px;"> DUKE.She is not worth thee, then. What years, i’ faith?
VIOLA.
About your years, my lord.
DUKE.
Too old, by heaven! 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.
VIOLA.
I think it well, my lord.
DUKE.
Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;
For women are as roses, whose fair flower,
Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.
VIOLA.
And so they are: alas, that they are so;
To die, even when they to perfection grow!
[Re-enter CURIO and CLOWN.]
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]
SONG
CLOWN.
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 every thing, and their intent every where; for that ‘s it that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell. [Exit.]
DUKE.
Let all the rest give place.
[CURIO and ATTENDANTS retire.]
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 ‘t is 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 call’d 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.
