Gentle Sir Philip Sidney, thou knew'st what belong'd to a scholler; thou knew'st what pains, what toil, what travail conduct to perfection.
11.19.2008
Twelfth Night
VIOLA
If I did love you in my master's flame, With such a suffering, such a deadly life, In your denial I would find no sense; I would not understand it.
OLIVIA
Why, what would you?
VIOLA
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 And make the babbling gossip of the air Cry out 'Olivia!' O, You should not rest Between the elements of air and earth, But you should pity me!
OLIVIA
You might do much. What is your parentage?
VIOLA
Above my fortunes, yet my state is well: I am a gentleman.
"I am grown at length to see into the vanity of the world more than ever I did, and now I condemn myself for nothing so much as playing the dolt in print . . . . There is nothing that if a man list he may not wrest or pervert. I cannot forbid any to think villainously, Sed caveat emptor, let the interpreter beware; for none ever heard me make allegories of an idle text."
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