Quote Quest: Twelfth Night
For each quotation, identify:
a) speaker
b) context
c) significance (How is this quotation important to the
rest of the play? Consider plot development,
characterization, theme and devices)
1. “If music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again! It had a dying fall.
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.”
2. “By innocence I swear, and by my youth,
I have but one heart, one bosom, and one truth,
And that no woman has, nor never none,
Shall mistress be of it, save I alone.
And so adieu, good madam. Nevermore
Will I my master’s tears to you deplore.”
3. “My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit,
manners, nor honesty but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?
Do you make an ale-house of my lady’s house, that you squeak out
your coziers’ catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is
there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?”
4. “By your patience no. My stars shine darkly over me. The malignancy
of my fate might perhaps distemper yours. Therefore I shall crave of
your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense
for your love to lay any of them on you”
5. “Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit
Do give thee fivefold blazen. Not too fast! Soft,
Soft!
Unless the master were the man. How now?
Even so quickly may one catch the plague.
Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections
With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes.”