Twelfth Night Study Guide

Twelfth Night, or What You Will is a comedy by William Shakespeare, named after the Twelfth Night holiday. The play was probably written in 1601 or 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 oer 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 aidFor 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 whiteNature’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 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 takeAn 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 sunAnd 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 beautifulIn 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 abilityI’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