William Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

ACT V. 1. SCENE I. The Street before OLIVIA's House. (continued)

DUKE.
Madam, I am most apt to embrace your offer.--
[To VIOLA] Your master quits you; and, for your service done him,
So much against the mettle of your sex,
So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,
And since you called me master for so long,
Here is my hand; you shall from this time be
You master's mistress.

OLIVIA.
A sister?--you are she.

[Re-enter FABIAN with MALVOLIO.]

DUKE.
Is this the madman?

OLIVIA.
Ay, my lord, this same;
How now, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO.
Madam, you have done me wrong,
Notorious wrong.

OLIVIA.
Have I, Malvolio? no.

MALVOLIO.
Lady, you have. Pray you peruse that letter:
You must not now deny it is your hand,
Write from it, if you can, in hand or phrase;
Or say 'tis not your seal, not your invention:
You can say none of this. Well, grant it then,
And tell me, in the modesty of honour,
Why you have given me such clear lights of favour;
Bade me come smiling and cross-garter'd to you;
To put on yellow stockings, and to frown
Upon Sir Toby and the lighter people:
And, acting this in an obedient hope,
Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd,
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
And made the most notorious geck and gull
That e'er invention played on? tell me why.

OLIVIA.
Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing,
Though, I confess, much like the character:
But out of question, 'tis Maria's hand.
And now I do bethink me, it was she
First told me thou wast mad; then cam'st in smiling,
And in such forms which here were presuppos'd
Upon thee in the letter. Pr'ythee, be content:
This practice hath most shrewdly pass'd upon thee:
But, when we know the grounds and authors of it,
Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge
Of thine own cause.