MARIA.

Sir Toby. What a plague means my niece, to take the death of her brother thus? I am sure, care's an enemy to life.

Maria. By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o'nights; your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.

Sir Toby. Why, let her except before excepted.

Maria. Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits of order.

Sir Toby. Confine? I'll confine myself no finer than I am: these clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too; an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.

Maria. That quaffing and drinking will undo you : I heard my lady talk of it yesterday; and of a foolish knight, that you brought in one night here, to be her wooer.

Sir Toby. Who, Sir Andrew Ague-cheek?

Maria. Ay, he.

Sir Toby. He's as tall a man as any's in Illyria.

Maria. What's that to the purpose?

Sir Toby. Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.

Maria. Ay, but he'll have but a year in all these ducats; he's a very fool and a prodigal.

Sir Toby. Fye, that you'll say so! he plays o' the viol-de-gambo, and speaks three or four languages word for word without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature.

Maria. He hath, indeed,-almost natural: for, besides that he's a fool, he's a great quarreller; and, but that he hath the gift of a coward to allay the gust he hath in quarrelling, 'tis thought among the prudent, he would quickly have the gift of a grave.

Sir Toby. By this hand they are scoundrels, and substractors, that say so of him. Who are they?

Maria. They that add moreover, he's drunk nightly in your com

pany.

Sir Toby. With drinking healths to my niece; I'll drink to her, as long as there is a passage in my throat, and drink in Illyria: He's a coward, and a coystril, that will not drink to my niece, till his brains turn o' the toe like a parish-top.

TWELFTH NIGHT.. - Act I. Scene III.