Pleased with Sir Andrew's decision to be valiant, Sir Toby mischievously urges him on to write a challenge to Viola/Cesario. He tells him to write
... as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper,
although the sheet were big enough for the bed
of Ware in England...
- Act III, scene ii, lines 47-49
Ware was a market town about twenty miles north of London which in Shakespeare's time was famous for a huge bed, eleven feet square, reportedly capable of allowing twelve people to sleep on it at once. It was in several different inns in the vicinity at one time or another and in 1931 finally came into the possession of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
... the augmentation of the Indies
This new practical joke has scarcely been placed under way when the old one regarding Malvolio reaches a climax. Maria comes in to say that Malvolio has fulfilled all the requests of the letter; yellow stockings, cross-garterings, and all, down to the perpetual smiling: 588 ITALIAN
He does smile his face
into more lines than is in the new map
with the augmentation of the Indies.
- Act III, scene ii, lines 78-80
Mariners were particularly interested in marking a rhumb line on a map that would indicate the shortest distance from one point to another. On the globe, such a line would be a curve spiraling northward or southward.
In 1568 the Flemish geographer Gerhard Kremer (better known by the Latinized version of his last name, Mercator) put out a map of the world plotted in such a way that the rhumb lines were straight. Maps for navigation based on Mercator's scheme could be easily marked with rhumb lines, and many of them were therefore put in, crossing and crisscrossing.
What's more, the sixteenth-century explorations had led to an increasingly detailed knowledge of the Americas ("The Indies"), and about the time that Twelfth Night was being written, a new map, with numerous rhumb lines, was published, showing the New World in far greater and more accurate detail than had ever been shown before. This added detail was the "augmentation of the Indies."
... Jove, not I ...
Maria tells Olivia that Malvolio seems to be raving, and when he appears on the scene, grotesquely clothed and quoting meaningfully from the letter, Olivia, flabbergasted, can only think he really is mad.
Malvolio is so far gone in self-delusion, however, that he interprets everything in the light of Olivia's supposed love for him, and in the midst of his triumphing, he remembers to be pious, saying:
Well, Jove, not I, is the doer of this,
and he is to be thanked.
- Act III, scene iv, lines 87-88
This is undoubtedly intended to mock Puritan sanctimoniousness, and, just as undoubtedly, the real Malvolio would have said "God" or "the Lord" or "the Almighty." Growing Puritan strength, however, in later years clamped down on references to God on the stage, and this form of ridiculous censorship led to the foolish substitution of "Jove."
... Legion himself ...
Sir Toby conies fussing in, full of mock concern over Malvolio's madness, and saying:
If all the devils of hell be drawn in little,
and Legion himself possessed him,
yet I'll speak to him.
- Act III, scene iv, lines 89-92
This is a reference to one of the examples of demonic possession in the New Testament. When Jesus asks the name of the "unclean spirit" possessing a man, that spirit answers "My name is Legion: for we are many" (Mark 5:9).
... like cockatrices
Toby baits Malvolio with his supposed madness and when the latter rushes off in a fury, Toby arranges to have him placed in a dark room because of his supposed madness, so that the practical joke may continue.
Meanwhile the affair of Sir Andrew and Viola/Cesario is developing further. Sir Andrew has written a cautiously phrased and clearly cowardly letter. Sir Toby accepts it gravely, but does not deliver it. He intends to deliver a challenge verbally, enormously exaggerating Sir Andrew's fire-eating propensities. He will then report with equal exaggeration to Sir Andrew, concerning what a raging fury Viola/Cesario is in. He says:
This will so fright them both that they
will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices.
- Act III, scene iv, lines 203-4
The cockatrice is the fabulous serpent which can kill by his mere glance (see page I-150).
... in Lethe steep
There now begins a series of mistakings very like those in The Comedy of Errors, complicated by difference in sex.
Antonio, the captain who has befriended Sebastian, has given him a purse of money to