The hopes of Orsino were for ever at an end by this marriage of Olivia, and with his hopes, all his fruitless love seemed to vanish away, and all his thoughts were fixed on the event of his favourite, young Cesario, being changed into a fair lady.  He viewed Viola with great attention, and he remembered how very handsome he had always thought Cesario was, and he concluded she would look very beautiful in a woman’s attire; and then he remembered how often she had said she loved him, which at the time seemed only the dutiful expression of a faithful page, but now he guessed that something more was meant, for many of her pretty sayings, which were like riddles to him, came now into his mind, and he no sooner remembered all these things than he resolved to make Viola his wife; and he said to her (he still could not help calling her Cesario and boy), “Boy, you have said to me a thousand times that you should never love a woman like to me, and for the faithful service you have done for me so much beneath your soft and tender breeding, and since you have called me master so long, you shall now be your master’s mistress, and Orsino’s true duchess.”

Olivia, perceiving Orsino was making over that heart, which she had so ungraciously rejected, to Viola, invited them to enter her house, and offered the assistance of the good priest, who had married her to Sebastian in the morning, to perform the same ceremony in the remaining part of the day for Orsino and Viola.  Thus the twin brother and sister were both wedded on the same day:  the storm and shipwreck, which had separated them, being the means of bringing to pass their high and mighty fortunes.  Viola was the wife of Orsino, the duke of Illyria, and Sebastian the husband of the rich and noble countess, the lady Olivia.

TIMON OF ATHENS

(By Charles Lamb)

Timon, a lord of Athens, in the enjoyment of a princely fortune, affected a humour of liberality which knew no limits.  His almost infinite wealth could not flow in so fast, but he poured it out faster upon all sorts and degrees of people.  Not the poor only tasted of his bounty, but great lords did not disdain to rank themselves among his dependants and followers.  His table was resorted to by all the luxurious feasters, and his house was open to all comers and goers at Athens.  His large wealth combined with his free and prodigal nature to subdue all hearts to his love; men of all minds and dispositions tendered their services to lord Timon, from the glass-faced flatterer, whose face reflects as in a mirror the present humour of his patron, to the rough and unbending cynic, who affecting a contempt of men’s persons, and an indifference to worldly things, yet could not stand out against the gracious manners and munificent soul of lord Timon, but would come (against his nature) to partake of his royal entertainments, and return most rich in his own estimation if he had received a nod or a salutation from Timon.