Act One: Shipwreck · Twelfth Night

"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."

Orsino, Duke of Illyria, lay listening to music in his palace, and indulging his love for the Countess Olivia. She would not see him. She had lost her father, and then her brother, and she had vowed to shut herself away for seven years and mourn, veiled like a nun, and admit no man's suit. Orsino found that only made him love her more: how would she love, when Cupid's arrow had killed all other affections in her? "Away before me to sweet beds of flowers: love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers."

On the sea-coast of Illyria, a young woman, Viola, had come ashore from a wreck, with the captain and some sailors. Her twin brother, Sebastian, had been on the ship with her; the captain had last seen him binding himself to a strong mast that lived upon the sea, and riding the waves, "like Arion on the dolphin's back." He might be alive. She did not know.

The captain told her where she was, and of Duke Orsino, who loved the Countess Olivia. Viola, alone in a strange country, decided to disguise herself as a young man, a eunuch, and serve the Duke: "Conceal me what I am . . . I can sing and speak to him in many sorts of music." What would come of it, time would show.

The plan to serve as a eunuch, a singer, is mentioned but not carried out in the play.

In Olivia's house lived her uncle, Sir Toby Belch, a fat, idle, cheerful drunkard, who stayed up all night carousing; her waiting-gentlewoman, Maria, sharp and witty; her clown, Feste, a professional fool; and her steward, Malvolio, a sour, self-important, puritanical man who disapproved of all of them. Sir Toby had brought into the house a foolish, rich, cowardly knight, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who was to court Olivia, and whom Sir Toby was cheerfully fleecing of his money. Sir Andrew, discouraged, wanted to go home; Sir Toby persuaded him to stay another month, and to dance a caper.

Viola, now called Cesario, dressed as a young man, had been in the Duke's service only three days, and already he had told her all his heart. He sent her to Olivia to court her for him: "Be not denied access; stand at her doors, and tell them there thy fixed foot shall grow till thou have audience." Her youth would win Olivia's attention: "Diana's lip is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound."

Viola went. And as she went, she confessed, to herself: "I'll do my best to woo your lady — yet, a barful strife! — whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife." She had fallen in love with Orsino.

At Olivia's house, Feste the clown, back after an absence, made his mistress laugh by proving her a fool for mourning her brother, whose soul was in heaven. Malvolio sneered at him — "I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal." Olivia rebuked her steward: "O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite."

The Duke's young messenger was at the gate, and would not go away. Olivia put on her veil and let him in. Viola began her prepared speech — "Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty" — and broke off to ask whether this was the lady of the house, for she would be loath to cast away her speech. She was saucy and witty and persistent. Olivia, intrigued, sent her women away and lifted her veil. "Is't not well done?" "Excellently done, if God did all." "'Tis in grain, sir; 'twill endure wind and weather."

Viola told her what she would do if she loved her as the Duke did:

"Make me a willow cabin at your gate, and call upon my soul within the house; write loyal cantons of contemnèd love, and sing them loud even in the dead of night; hallo your name to the reverberate hills, and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out 'Olivia!' O, you should not rest between the elements of air and earth, but you should pity me!"

"You might do much," said Olivia. She would not love the Duke. But when the messenger had gone, she found that she had fallen in love with him. "Even so quickly may one catch the plague?" She sent Malvolio running after Cesario with a ring, pretending that he had left it, and that the Duke must take it back. "Fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe; what is decreed must be, and be this so."