This precious little guy is putty in your hands, Sir Toby.
SIR TOBY BELCH
I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand strong,
or so.
SIR TOBY BELCH
He must like me, since he's let me spend two thousand of his ducats.
FABIAN
50
We shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll not
deliver 't?
FABIAN
His letter's going to be hilarious. But you're not going to deliver it, are you?
SIR TOBY BELCH
Never trust me, then. And by all means stir on the youth to
an answer. I think oxen and wainropes cannot hale them
together. For Andrew, if he were opened and you find so
55
much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat
the rest of the anatomy.
SIR TOBY BELCH
Never trust me again if I don't. And by all means see if you can get the young man to answer it. I don't think a team of oxen could get them close enough to fight. If you dissected Andrew and found enough red blood in his liver
for a flea to eat, then I'd eat the rest of his corpse. He's a coward.
FABIAN
And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great
presage of cruelty.
FABIAN
And his opponent, the young messenger, doesn't look like he'd be very aggressive in a fight.
Enter MARIA
MARIA enters.
SIR TOBY BELCH
Look where the youngest wren of nine comes.
SIR TOBY BELCH
Here comes my little bird.
MARIA
60
If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourself into
stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is turned heathen,
a very renegado. For there is no Christian that means to be
saved by believing rightly can ever believe such impossible
passages of grossness. He's in yellow stockings.
MARIA
Listen, if you want a good laugh—and I mean a side-splitting one—then follow me. That gullible idiot Malvolio must have renounced Christianity, since no Christian could do such outrageous things as he's doing. He's wearing yellow stockings.
