Twelfth Night Olivia Quotes

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

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.

Where lies your text? Viola: In Orsino's bosom. Olivia: In his bosom! In what chapter of his bosom? Viola: To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.

Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.

I do I know not what, and fear to find Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind. Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe. What is decreed must be; and be this so.

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she purged the air of pestilence! That instant was I turn'd into a hart; And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E'er since pursue me.

In his bosom? In what chapter of his bosom? In his heart? In what chapter and verse of his heart? VIOLA (200) To answer by the method, in the first of his heart. To continue this metaphor—in the first chapter of his heart. OLIVIA Oh, I have read it. It is heresy. Have you no more to say? Oh, I have read that. It's not a holy message, it's heresy. Do you

Stay, I prithee tell me what thou think'st of me. Viola: That you do think you are not what you are. Olivia: If I think so, I think the same of you. Viola: Then think you right; I am not what I am. Olivia: I would you were as I would have you be. Viola: Would it be better, madam, than I am? I wish it might, for now I am your fool.

I left no ring with her. What means this lady? Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her. She made good view of me; indeed, so much That, as methought, her eyes had lost her tongue, For she did speak in starts distractedly. She loves me sure; the cunning of her passion Invites me in this churlish messenger. None of my lord's ring? Why, he sent her none. I am the man. If it be so, as 'tis, Poor lady, she were better love a dream. Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy is it for the proper false In women's waxen hearts to set their forms! Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we, For such as we are made of, such we be. How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly; And I (poor monster) fond as much on him; And she (mistaken) seems to dote on me. What will become of this? As I am man, My state is desperate for my master's love. As I am woman (now alas the day!), What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe? O Time, thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me t' untie.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep, so I reread Twelfth Night,” Wren said. “We all know how it ends—happily, of course—but there’s sadness there, too. Olivia has lost a brother. So has Viola, but they handle it very differently. Viola changes her name, her whole identity, and almost immediately falls in love. Olivia shuts herself away from the world, and refuses to let love in at all. Viola is trying desperately to forget her brother. Olivia is maybe remembering him too much. So what do you do? Ignore your grief, or indulge it?” She looked up from the sand and found us, gaze drifting from face to face. Meredith, Alexander, Filippa, me, and finally James. “You all know that Richard refuses to be ignored,” she said, speaking to us, and no one else. “But maybe every day we let grief in, we’ll also let a little bit of it out, and eventually we’ll be able to breathe again. At least, that’s how Shakespeare would tell the story. Hamlet says, Absent thee from felicity awhile. But just awhile. The show’s not over. Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight. The rest of us must go on.

Thus in Twelfth Night the fact that Malvolio is called demon-possessed, and is associated with the devil over and over again, points to his thematic role in the play. Like Satan, he is sick with self-love, falling by the force of his own gravity, as Chesterton said. Of course, Malvolio is a comic devil, not nearly so threatening as Iago or Shylock, but he is a devil nonetheless. And his devilry is manifest particularly in his desire to end the gaiety of Olivia’s house. Here especially the title of the play comes into its own. Twelfth Night is named for the last night of the Christmas season, the final celebration of the Incarnation. It is a night for carnival, for suspension of the serious and structured. Malvolio wants to stop the merriment, and so it is fitting that he is ultimately excluded from it. But more: Malvolio is not only excluded from the comic climax of the play. He is excluded and overcome through trickery, practical joking, mirth. Satan digs a pit for the merry, but Satan falls into the very pit of merriment. And it tortures him forever. In the final analysis, that is the practical import of all that has been said in this little book: the joy of Easter, the joy of resurrection, the joy of trinitarian life does not simply offer an alternative “worldview” to the tragic self-inflation of the ancients. Worked out in the joyful life of the Christian church, deep comedy is the chief weapon of our warfare. For in the joy of the Lord is our strength, and Satan shall be felled with “cakes and ale” and midnight revels.

Make me a willow cabin at your gate And call upon my soul within the house, Write loyal cantons of contemnéd love, And sing them loud even in the dead of night; Holla your name to the revereberate hills, And make the babbling gossip of the air Cry out "Olivia!