Feste's lines in Twelfth Night

Clown. Let her hang me: he that is well hanged in this world needs to fear no colours.

Clown. He shall see none to fear.

Clown. Where, good Mistress Mary?

Clown. Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.

Clown. Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage; and, for turning away, let summer bear it out.

Clown. Not so, neither; but I am resolved on two points.

Clown. Apt, in good faith; very apt. Well, go thy way; if Sir Toby would leave drinking, thou wert as witty a piece of Eve's flesh as any in Illyria.

Clown. Wit, an' be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits, that think they have thee, do very oft prove fools; and I, that am sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man: for what says Quinapalus? 'Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.'

God bless thee, lady!

Clown. Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady.

Clown. 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. If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not, what remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so beauty's a flower. The lady bade take away the fool; therefore, I say again, take her away.

Clown. Misprision in the highest degree! Lady, cucullus non facit monachum; that's as much to say as I wear not motley in my brain. Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.

Clown. Dexterously, good madonna.

Clown. I must catechise you for it, madonna: good my mouse of virtue, answer me.

Clown. Good madonna, why mournest thou?

Clown. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

Clown. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.

Clown. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing your folly! Sir Toby will be sworn that I am no fox; but he will not pass his word for two pence that you are no fool.

Clown. Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou speakest well of fools!

Clown. Thou hast spoke for us, madonna, as if thy eldest son should be a fool; whose skull Jove cram with brains! for,--here he comes,--one of thy kin has a most weak pia mater.

Clown. Good Sir Toby!

Clown. Like a drowned man, a fool and a mad man: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him.

Clown. He is but mad yet, madonna; and the fool shall look to the madman.

Clown. How now, my hearts! did you never see the picture of 'we three'?

Clown. 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.

Clown. Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?

Clown. [Sings]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.

Clown. [Sings]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.

Clown. By'r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.

Clown. 'Hold thy peace, thou knave,' knight? I shall be constrained in't to call thee knave, knight.

Clown. I shall never begin if I hold my peace.

Clown. Beshrew me, the knight's in admirable fooling.

Clown. 'His eyes do show his days are almost done.'

Clown. Sir Toby, there you lie.

Clown. 'What an if you do?'

Clown. 'O no, no, no, no, you dare not.'

Clown. Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too.

Clown. Are you ready, sir?

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!

Clown. No pains, sir: I take pleasure in singing, sir.

Clown. Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or another.

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.

Clown. No, sir, I live by the church.

Clown. No such matter, sir: I do live by the church; for I do live at my house, and my house doth stand by the church.

Clown. You have said, sir. To see this age! A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit: how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!

Clown. I would, therefore, my sister had had no name, sir.

Clown. Why, sir, her name's a word; and to dally with that word might make my sister wanton. But indeed words are very rascals since bonds disgraced them.

Clown. Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words; and words are grown so false, I am loath to prove reason with them.

Clown. Not so, sir, I do care for something; but in my conscience, sir, I do not care for you: if that be to care for nothing, sir, I would it would make you invisible.

Clown. No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly: she will keep no fool, sir, till she be married; and fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings; the husband's the bigger: I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words.

Clown. Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines every where. I would be sorry, sir, but the fool should be as oft with your master as with my mistress: I think I saw your wisdom there.

Clown. Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard!

Clown. Would not a pair of these have bred, sir?

Clown. I would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia, sir, to bring a Cressida to this Troilus.

Clown. The matter, I hope, is not great, sir, begging but a beggar: Cressida was a beggar. My lady is within, sir. I will construe to them whence you come; who you are and what you would are out of my welkin, I might say 'element,' but the word is over-worn.

Clown. Will you make me believe that I am not sent for you?

Clown. Well held out, i' faith! No, I do not know you; nor I am not sent to you by my lady, to bid you come speak with her; nor your name is not Master Cesario; nor this is not my nose neither. Nothing that is so is so.

Clown. Vent my folly! he has heard that word of some great man and now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I am afraid this great lubber, the world, will prove a cockney. I prithee now, ungird thy strangeness and tell me what I shall vent to my lady: shall I vent to her that thou art coming?

Clown. By my troth, thou hast an open hand. These wise men that give fools money get themselves a good report--after fourteen years' purchase.

Clown. This will I tell my lady straight: I would not be in some of your coats for two pence.

Clown. Well, I'll put it on, and I will dissemble myself in't; and I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown. I am not tall enough to function well, nor lean enough to be thought a good student; but to be said an honest man and a good housekeeper goes as fairly as to say a careful man and a great scholar. The competitors enter.

Clown. Bonos dies, Sir Toby: for, 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;' so I, being Master Parson, am Master Parson; for, what is 'that' but 'that,' and 'is' but 'is'?

Clown. What, ho, I say! peace in this prison!

Clown. Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Malvolio the lunatic.

Clown. Out, hyperbolical fiend! how vexest thou this man! talkest thou nothing but of ladies?

Clown. Fie, thou dishonest Satan! I call thee by the most modest terms; for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtesy: sayest thou that house is dark?

Clown. Why it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clearstores toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction?

Clown. Madman, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.

Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?

Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion?

Clown. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.

Clown. Nay, I am for all waters.

Clown. ([Singing]) 'Hey, Robin, jolly Robin, Tell me how thy lady does.'

Clown. 'My lady is unkind, perdy.'

Clown. 'Alas, why is she so?'

Clown. 'She loves another'--Who calls, ha?

Clown. Master Malvolio?

Clown. Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?

Clown. But as well? then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in your wits than a fool.

Clown. Advise you what you say; the minister is here. Malvolio, Malvolio, thy wits the heavens restore! endeavour thyself to sleep, and leave thy vain bibble babble.

Clown. Maintain no words with him, good fellow. Who, I, sir? not I, sir. God be wi' you, good Sir Topas. Merry, amen. I will, sir, I will.

Clown. Alas, sir, be patient. What say you sir? I am shent for speaking to you.

Clown. Well-a-day that you were, sir

Clown. I will help you to't. But tell me true, are you not mad indeed? or do you but counterfeit?

Clown. Nay, I'll ne'er believe a madman till I see his brains. I will fetch you light and paper and ink.

Clown. ([Singing]) I am gone, sir, And anon, sir, I'll be with you again, In a trice, Like to the old Vice, Your need to sustain; Who, with dagger of lath, In his rage and his wrath, Cries, ah, ha! to the devil: Like a mad lad, Pare thy nails, dad; Adieu, good man devil.

Clown. Good Master Fabian, grant me another request.

Clown. Do not desire to see this letter.

Clown. Ay, sir; we are some of her trappings.

Clown. Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my friends.

Clown. No, sir, the worse.

Clown. Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me; now my foes tell plainly I am an ass: so that by my foes, sir I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends, I am abused: so that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two affirmatives why then, the worse for my friends and the better for my foes.

Clown. By my troth, sir, no; though it please you to be one of my friends.

Clown. But that it would be double-dealing, sir, I would you could make it another.

Clown. Put your grace in your pocket, sir, for this once, and let your flesh and blood obey it.

Clown. Primo, secundo, tertio, is a good play; and the old saying is, the third pays for all: the triplex, sir, is a good tripping measure; or the bells of Saint Bennet, sir, may put you in mind; one, two, three.

Clown. Marry, sir, lullaby to your bounty till I come again. I go, sir; but I would not have you to think that my desire of having is the sin of covetousness: but, as you say, sir, let your bounty take a nap, I will awake it anon.

Clown. O, he's drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes were set at eight i' the morning.

Clown. Truly, madam, he holds Belzebub at the staves's end as well as a man in his case may do: has here writ a letter to you; I should have given't you to-day morning, but as a madman's epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are delivered.

Clown. Look then to be well edified when the fool delivers the madman.

'By the Lord, madam,'--

Clown. No, madam, I do but read madness: an your ladyship will have it as it ought to be, you must allow Vox.

Clown. So I do, madonna; but to read his right wits is to read thus: therefore perpend, my princess, and give ear.

Clown. Ay, madam.

Clown. Why, 'some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them.' I was one, sir, in this interlude; one Sir Topas, sir; but that's all one. 'By the Lord, fool, I am not mad.' But do you remember? 'Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal? an you smile not, he's gagged:' and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Clown. ([Sings]) 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. But when I came to man's estate, With hey, ho, & c. 'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, For the rain, & c. But when I came, alas! to wive, With hey, ho, & c.

By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain, & c. But when I came unto my beds, With hey, ho, & c. With toss-pots still had drunken heads, For the rain, & c. A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, & c. But that's all one, our play is done, And we'll strive to please you every day.