This sad little song just suited the melancholy mood of the Duke, and when Feste had sung it, and gone away, Orsino went on talking to Viola—or his young page Cesario, as he thought her—about his unhappy love for Olivia. He bade her go once more to the cruel lady, and insist on her listening to him.
“But if she cannot love you, sir?” said Viola.
“I cannot be answered so,” said Orsino.
“Sooth, but you must,” replied Viola. “Say that some lady, as perhaps there is, has as great a love for you as you have for Olivia; you cannot love her; you tell her so; must she not then be answered?”
Orsino replied that no woman could ever love any man as he loved Olivia; that women’s hearts were much more shallow than men’s, etc. Viola, knowing her own deep and hidden affection for the Duke himself, protested that she knew too well how much women could love, and in veiled language she went on to describe the case of “a daughter of her father,” whom Orsino naturally took to mean a sister, but who was in reality herself. However, the end of it was that Viola again went to Olivia.
She was received just as kindly as before, but Olivia said plainly that it was quite useless for her to plead on behalf of Orsino, although if Cesario would undertake another suit she would listen to it more gladly than to the music of the spheres. Viola could only reply to this as she had done before, that she had one heart, and that no woman except herself should ever be mistress of it. So she took her leave.
The interview between the Countess and the young page had been jealously watched; the spectator was the foolish knight, Sir Andrew Aguecheek. It had occurred to Sir Toby that it would be a very good plan to wed his niece Olivia to this silly gentleman, and he kept urging Sir Andrew to pay his court to her. Sir Andrew spent money lavishly in riotous living with Sir Toby, hoping to repay himself when he married Olivia. He was therefore very indignant when he saw her bestow more favours on Orsino’s messenger than she had ever done on him, and he angrily told Sir Toby that he intended to leave at once.
Sir Toby tried to soothe him, and he and another gentleman of Olivia’s household who happened to be present persuaded him that Olivia knew all the time that he was looking on, and only showed favour to the youth to exasperate Sir Andrew and to awaken his dormouse valour. They said he ought immediately to have fired up, and frightened the boy into dumbness, and that he had damaged his own cause by not doing so. The only thing now to do was to redeem it by some laudable attempt either of valour or policy.
“If it is to be anyway, it must be with valour, for policy I hate,” said Sir Andrew.