This scene conveys Viola’s famous “ring speech.”
It’s amazing how peevish (rude!) both parties are in their initial exchange! Though Olivia’s endowed with a significant estate, I’ve set this scene in Olivia’s Garden, such that Malvolio’s opening line might not just be the formal statement of a neutral servant, but contains subtext of a disregard, “Do I know you? You were with the Countess Olivia, right?”:
Malvolio: Were you not e’en now, with the Countesse Olivia?
Viola’s reply is basically, “Yeah, duh, even walking at regular speed, I’ve only walked so far. (Whom else could I be?)”:
Viola: Even now, sir, on a moderate pace, I have since arriv’d but hither.
Malvolio wishes simply to be done with this matter, to brush off this churlish messenger with a ring:
Malvolio: She returns this Ring to you (sir).
But, perhaps the endorphins released from the action of thrusting the ring at her, gets his galls up, to the essential Malvolio:
Malvolio: You might have saved me my pains, to have taken it away yourself.
Malvolio regains his composure, and attempts at the professional aloofness, again, though it seems that he’s brimming with relish in stating Olivia’s condition, “unless it be to report your Lord’s taking of this.”
Malvolio: She adds, moreover, that you should put your Lord into a desperate assurance; she will none of him. And one thing more, that you be never so hardly to come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your Lord’s taking of this. Receive it so.
Malvolio has been holding his hand out, with the unaccepted ring the whole time. Viola hasn’t accepted yet. He commands her, to “Receive it so,” (”take the ring, you rascal!”), but Viola smartly replies, keeping Olivia’s secret, and expressing the rudeness in Olivia’s fickle decision in first taking, then returning:
Viola: She took the Ring of me; I’ll none of it.
Malvolio gives his commentary (”Seriously, kiddo, you rudely threw it at her.”), and then attempts the professional servant’s aloofness (”Her will is that you take it back.”):
Malvolio: Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is, it should be so return’d.
Malvolio throws the ring to the ground, the two make eyecontact on the ring. Malvolio is obviously a servant too lofty to wish to pocket ring change, so, knowing that this peevish messenger might not even pick it up, he just haughtily throws it away, this prize of a ring:
Malvolio: If it be worth stooping for, there it lies, in your eye: if not, be it his that finds it.
After Malvolio leaves, Viola is alone onstage, delivering a soliloquy at a point in the story, where her character feels lonely, as well–no one really knows who she really is. She begins by wondering about the ring she never gave to Olivia, and in fact, the entire speech is a meditation on interpretive implications from the ring:
Viola: I left no Ring with her: what means this Lady?
Viola then cites the only logical explanation for the hackneyed “love at first sight”–indeed, the two had barely met, so it could only be her looks that have done this.
Viola:
Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her:
She made good view of me, indeed so much,
That methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts distractedly.
Although she first thinks that Olivia is simply secretly giving her a token of her fondness for him, she begins to consider that Olivia might actually love her–the mere fact that Olivia’d invited her in, and her rudeness, too. And, why did she refer to the ring as her Lord’s ring?:
Viola: She loves me sure, the cunning of her passion
Invites me in, this churlish messenger:
None of my Lord’s Ring? Why he sent her none.
Epiphany–Olivia loves Cesario!:
Viola: I am the man, if it be so, as t’is,
Poor Lady, she were better love a dream!
It’s true, Olivia can only have Cesario, “in her dreams!”. “And, it’s all due to this disguise, and wow, we have yet a potential enemy due to it, this whole same-gender relationship mess. Ack!”
Viola:
Disguise, I feel thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
Why is it that women so often fall for Mr. Wrong (in this case… Ms. Wrong!):
Viola:
How easy it is, for the proper false
In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms:
For the next, I’ve gone along with the line, as printed, from the folio, where Viola cites frailty (tendency to be soft-hearted, too-trusting thus too-quick to fall-in-love) as the cause, not women, per se–and if they’re frail, it’s because they’re made with frailty:
Viola:
Alas, O frailty is the cause, not we,
For such as we are made, if such we be!
Viola then states the crux of the problem, this love triangle created by herself as this gender-disguised “poor monster”, and Olivia “mistaken”, and her master. Even if she were a real boy, the real Cesario, she would still be bound as Orsino’s servant, required to do his bidding, to woo Olivia on his behalf. But, as a woman, as she really is, she’d only cause Olivia heartbreak:
Viola:
How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly,
And I (poor monster) fond as much on him:
And she (mistaken) seems to dote on me:
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master’s love:
As I am woman (now alas the day)
What thriftless sighs shall poor Oliv’a breathe?
This entire episode is done while Viola ponders, standing, meditating/staring at the ring, figuring out what to do with it. She then bends down, picks up the ring, decides to let fate be her arbiter:
Viola:
O time, thou must untangle this, not I,
It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.
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