William Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

ACT I. 3. SCENE III. A Room in OLIVIA'S House.

[Enter SIR TOBY BELCH and MARIA.]

SIR TOBY.
What a plague means my niece, to take the death of her
brother thus? I am sure care's an enemy to life.

MARIA.
By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o' nights;
your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.

SIR TOBY.
Why, let her except, before excepted.

MARIA.
Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits
of order.

SIR TOBY.
Confine? I'll confine myself no finer than I am: these
clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too;
an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.

MARIA.
That quaffing and drinking will undo you: I heard my lady
talk of it yesterday; and of a foolish knight that you brought in
one night here to be her wooer.

SIR TOBY.
Who? Sir Andrew Ague-cheek?

MARIA.
Ay, he.

SIR TOBY.
He's as tall a man as any's in Illyria.

MARIA.
What's that to the purpose?

SIR TOBY.
Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.

MARIA.
Ay, but he'll have but a year in all these ducats; he's a
very fool, and a prodigal.

SIR TOBY.
Fye that you'll say so! he plays o' the viol-de-gambo,
and speaks three or four languages word for word without book,
and hath all the good gifts of nature.

MARIA.
He hath indeed,--almost natural: for, besides that he's a
fool, he's a great quarreller; and, but that he hath the gift of
a coward to allay the gust he hath in quarrelling, 'tis thought
among the prudent he would quickly have the gift of a grave.