William Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

ACT III.
2. SCENE II. A Room in OLIVIA'S House.

[Enter SIR TOBY BELCH, SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK, and FABIAN.]

SIR ANDREW.
No, faith, I'll not stay a jot longer.

SIR TOBY.
Thy reason, dear venom: give thy reason.

FABIAN.
You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.

SIR ANDREW.
Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the count's
servingman than ever she bestowed upon me; I saw't i' the
orchard.

SIR TOBY.
Did she see thee the while, old boy? tell me that.

SIR ANDREW.
As plain as I see you now.

FABIAN.
This was a great argument of love in her toward you.

SIR ANDREW.
'Slight! will you make an ass o' me?

FABIAN.
I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment
and reason.

SIR TOBY.
And they have been grand jurymen since before Noah was a
sailor.

FABIAN.
She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to
exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in
your heart and brimstone in your liver. You should then have
accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the
mint, you should have banged the youth into dumbness. This was
looked for at your hand, and this was baulked: the double gilt of
this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sailed
into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an
icicle on Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by some
laudable attempt either of valour or policy.

SIR ANDREW.
And't be any way, it must be with valour: for policy I
hate; I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.

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