| “If music be the food of love, play on” (I.i.1) | he wants to have an abundance of love |
| “That say thou art a man: Diana’s lip / Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe / Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound, / And all is semblative a woman’s part.” (I.iv.31-34) | The duke is talking to cesario about how much he looks like a woman, has feminine traits, lips, body, voice, etc… |
| “Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.” (I.iv.42) | She’ll go woo olivia, but viola wants to be his wife, not anybody else |
| “Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.” (I.v.19) | If he’s hung, he’ll have a great marriage — he’ll be really good in bed and he’ll have a great marriage |
| “He is very well-favoured and he speaks very shrewishly; one would think his mother’s milk were scarce out of him” (I.v.159-162) | He looks super young, like he just got done breastfeeding |
| “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; / Halloo your name to the reverberate hills” (I.v.268) | if I were in love with you I would do these things, oliva starts to fall in love with cesario here |
| “Not to be a-bed after midnight is to be betimes” (II.iii.2) | they are going to bed early because they are going to bed in the morning (after midnight) |
| “There is a fair behavior in thee, captain, / And though that nature with a beauteous wall / Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee / I will believe thou hast a / mind that suits / With this thy fair and outward character. / I prithee—and I’ll pay / thee bounteously— / Conceal me what I am, and be my aid / For such disguise / as haply shall become / The form of my intent.” (I.ii.44-52) | she is talking about dressing up and disguising herself as a man & going to the duke’s court and will work for him, offers captain money for his help |
| “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em” (II.v.144-146) | some people are born great, some earn greatness other ways, the letter is giving malvolio greatness by telling him what to do to make him great |
| “This fellow is wise enough to play the fool / And to do that well craves a kind of wit” (III.i.60-61) | he’s smart and has to be to play the fool |
| “Love sought is good, but giv’n unsought is better” (III.i.56) | she’s trying to thrust her love on cesario, confessing her love for him, so he doesn’t have to go find love because she’s right there |
| “He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies (III.ii.78-80) | malvolio is doing everything we told him to do, and because of his smiling he is developing more lines |
| “I hate ingratitude more in a man / Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, / Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption / Inhabits our frail blood” (III.iv.354-357) | Antonio is accusing Cesario that he’s being ungrateful and he says he’s not ungrateful |
| “What relish is in this? How runs the stream? / Or I am mad, or else this is a dream. / Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep; / If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!” (IV.i.60-64) | he’s not sure if he’s crazy or dreaming but if it is a dream don’t let me wake up because he likes how it’s going |
| “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.” (II.iv.91-101) | a woman can’t love as much as a man can, when cesario is telling him that there is a woman who loves him as much as he loves olivia |
| Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit. He’s a witty fool, it’s better to be that than to appear smart than pretend to be | it’s better to actually be smart and “play” dumb than to be dumb and pretend to be smart |
| Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me;/ now my foes tell me 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 negativesmake your two affirmatives why then, the worse for/ my friends and the better for my foes. | his friends make him look bad and his enemies just tell him he’s bad. his enemies help him more than his friends do |
| What would my lord, but that he may not have,/ Wherein Olivia may seem serviceable? | what can she do for him to make him go away because she doesn’t want him to bother her anymore |
| And let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds. | he wants to see her in woman’s clothing |
Twelfth Night Quotes – Meaning
July 1, 2019