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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Twelfth Night Deception and Lies Quotes

There is a fair behaviour in thee, captain,
And though that nature with a beauteous wall
Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee
I will believe thou hast a mind that suits
With this thy fair and outward character.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 2. Viola praises the Captain for being both handsome and honorable, as she decides to disguise herself as Cesario, a man, to gain work with the Duke. Not all who are physically attractive are good on the inside, she says, touching on the play’s theme of appearance vs reality.

Conceal me what I am, and be my aid
For such disguise as haply shall become
The form of my intent. I’ll serve this duke.
Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 2. Viola, to overcome her high-pitched woman’s voice while disguised as a man as a servant to Duke Orsino, comes up with the clever double deception of pretending to be his eunuch – a man who has been castrated. She asks the Captain to help her.

Diana’s lip
Is not more smooth and rubious. Thy small pipe
Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound,
And all is semblative a woman’s part.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 4. When Orsino first meets Viola who is posing as the pageboy Cesario, he notes that “he” is rather feminine in appearance. So maybe Viola’s disguise is not as good as she thought it was. Orsino goes on, in a rather sensual and suggestive way, to describe Cesario’s physical attributes, like “his” lucious red lips and high pitched voice. Orsino appears to be actually attracted to Cesario. At this point Cesario is about to set off in a bid to woo Olivia on behalf of Orsino, who seeks to think Cesario is perfect for the job.

I’ll do my best
To woo your lady. [Aside] Yet a barful strife!
Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 4. Viola, disguised as a man, says this after Orsino asks her to make Olivia love him. But in her aside Viola reveals she is actually in love with Orsino and so has to convince another woman to love the man she loves. This is the precarious situation she has put herself into by disguising herself.

But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of modesty, that you will not extort from me what I am willing to keep in. Therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express myself. You must know of me, then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian, which I called Roderigo.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 1. Sebastian confesses to his new friend Antonio who saved his life that he was fully honest about who he was, lying about his identity and calling himself Roderigo.

I left no ring with her. What means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her!
She made good view of me.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 2. Viola as Cesario, meditating on the meaning of the ring and realizing that her male disguise is causing some gender troubles for her. Olivia uses Malvolio in a trick to get Cesario to return to talk with her another day. She sends Malvolio to return Cesario’s ring. Olivia is lying about the ring, but she has fallen in love with Cesario. This passage foreshadows Olivia’s love with Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother.

Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 2. Viola has just become award of Olivia’s affection for her in her Cesario role. This was something she had not bargained for by donning a male disguise. She sees disguise now as something deceitful and evil that causes damage.

How easy is it for the proper false
In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 2. How easy it is for handsome deceptive men to play havoc with women’s hearts, Viola muses in her soliloquy.

I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3. Maria hatches a plan to forge a love letter to trick Malvolio into believing Olivia is in love with him.

My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3. When Maria says she is going to copy her mistress Olivia’s handwriting and write Malvolio love letters, a delighted Sir Toby says he will think his niece is in love with him. Maria responds with this line.

DUKE: And what’s her history?
VIOLA: A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4. Viola (disguised as Cesario) tells Orsino the story of her father’s daughter who had a secret love. Of course the daughter is actually Viola and the secret love is Orsino.

Let me be boiled to death with melancholy.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5. Fabian looks forward to the deceptive trick about to be played on Malvolio, saying if he misses any part of the joke may he be boiled to death.

FABIAN: I would exult, man. You know, he brought me out o’ favor with my lady about a bearbaiting here.
SIR TOBY: To anger him, we’ll have the bear again, and we will fool him black and blue, shall we not, Sir Andrew?

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5. Fabian and Toby are talking about the cruel practical joke they and Maria prepare to play on Malvolio. A letter written by Maria to trick Malvolio into thinking Olivia is in love with him have been dropped in the garden path for Malvolio to find. Toby compares the prank to a bear-baiting contest.

She uses me with a more exalted respect than anyone else that follows her.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5. Malvolio’s conceit and arrogance make him an easy target for the trap Maria and Toby laid for him. He falls headlong into it, believing the fake love letter to be from Olivia. Malvolio has an ambition and desire to rise to a higher station in life. And he fails to see how unlikely it would be of someone of Lady Olivia’s position to fall in love with a servant.

By my life, this is my lady’s hand! These be her very C’s, her U’s and her T’s and thus makes she her great P’s.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5. Malvolio picks up the fake letter written by Maria and is convinced it is from his mistress Olivia.

I may command where I adore.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5. Malvolio reads aloud the love letter purporting to be from Olivia to him. But it is a hoax played on him by Maria, who wrote it in Olivia’s handwriting.

Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5. Reading from a letter, Malvolio learns how his employer Olivia would like him to wear yellow stockings and cross-gartering as proof of his love for her. Except Olivia never wrote the letter, but another servant Maria did to make him look foolish in his outrageous, bizarre garb.

Jove and my stars be praised! Here is yet a postscript.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5. Fooled by the fictitious love letter from Olivia and all psyched up, Malvolio thanks Jove, Roman god of the sky and thunder and king of the gods.

A sentence is but a chev’ril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 1. Feste to Viola, saying how you can easily fool people with words, a clever imagination can twist language inside-out like a glove. This speaks to the themes of deceit and disguise, illusion and reality.

I am not what I am.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 1. Cesario to Olivia, in a line that is full or revelation and concealment. Olivia has no clue that Cesario, whom she has fallen in love with, is Viola in disguise.

By innocence I swear, and by my youth,
I have one heart, one bosom and one truth,
And that no woman has, nor never none
Shall mistress be of it, save I alone.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 1. Viola, dressed as Cesario and rejecting Olivia’s offer of love, tells Olivia that no other woman will be mistress of her heart. She fails to come clean and confess her true identity and the trickery she is engaged in by wearing the disguise of a man.

I think we do know the sweet Roman hand.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4. The hoodwinked Malvolio, speaking to the Lady Olivia, says he knows she wrote the love letter because he recognizes her handwriting.

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4. Fabian expresses his pleasure with the success of the prank to make a fool of Malvolio, whose conceit and arrogance lead him right into the forged love letter trap. In the kingdom of Illyria, it seems, nothing is quite as it appears.

I have not seen such a Firago.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4. Sir Toby to Cesario (Viola), of the supposedly deadly knight waiting to attack him in the orchard. Who is in reality the cowardly Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

Well, I’ll put it on, and I will dissemble myself in ‘t, and I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 2. Donning a curate’s uniform, Feste hides behind a false appearance to play another trick on Malvolio. In a sideswipe at the church, he suggests he is not the first to act false while in a priest’s robe.

Out, hyperbolical fiend!

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 2. Feste, dressed as a fake priest, bids the demon to leave the Malvolio whom Feste has branded as a “lunatic.” Of course it’s all a diabolical lie and trick being played on Malvolio, who is not mad.

Fie, thou dishonest Satan! (I call thee by the most modest terms, for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtesy.)

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 2. The fake priest Sir Topas, Feste in disguise, performs a mock exorcism on Malvolio.

FESTE [as Sir Topas]: Maintain no words with him, good fellow. [As himself.] Who, I, sir? Not I, sir! God buy you, good Sir Topas. [As Sir Topas.] Marry, amen. [As himself]. I will, sir, I will.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 2. During the cruel prank on Malvolio, the disguised Feste switches between playing himself and the fake priest Sir Tobias.

I will help you to ‘t. But tell me true, are you not mad indeed, or do you but counterfeit?

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 2. Feste, in his disguise of the priest Sir Topas, asks Malvolio if he is really crazy or just acting. But it is really Feste, who has just performed a mock exorcism on Malvolio to banish his supposed demons, that is the big fake here.

There’s something in ‘t
That is deceivable.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 3. After wondering is Olivia is mad because of her sudden new-found love for him, Sebastian becomes suspicious that there is some mix-up. And sure enough there is, Olivia thinks he is Cesario, Sebastian’s twin Viola who has been disguising herself as a man. Things are never quite what they appear to be in this play.

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