When Sir Toby Belch says that Sir Andrew hath all the good gifts of nature, Maria's quick taste answers, "He hath, indeed,--all most natural." A great many men are boozily unconscious of the traits of their companions; but all women know each other thoroughly; and they tacitly allow for each defect, unless some spiteful moment aggravates them. To say that they know each other like a book is to overestimate the great majority of books. The more delightedly they greet each other, the more keenly are they remembering mutual frailties. Perhaps those of the charming morning-caller will transpire when her call is over. To your surprise, you learn that she is intriguing; that, indeed, she will not stick at a falsehood,--well, an indirection; that she is a very pushing woman, and quite capable of fawning if any social thrift will follow. And this absent friend atones for the constraint of her call by unbosoming her hostess to some other listener, who is pleased to learn that the fabric of the world will not crumble so long as both of them have daughters and sisters, who must get into society where marriage benedictions are pronounced, or where style, at least, is piety.
How nicely Maria decants the essence of Malvolio, without spilling or clouding, when Sir Toby asks her, "Tell us something of him"! Now Maria wants to marry Sir Toby, so she bends to every breeze of his humor, but is never overset: she could not misrepresent Malvolio even to please Sir Toby who has been so rated for overdrinking. She tells the simple truth of her observation: the steward is "the best persuaded of himself; so crammed, as he thinks, with excellences, that it is his ground of faith, that all that look on him love him." Sir Toby first sees Malvolio in his true aspect, and exclaims with admiration, "She's a beagle, true bred!" So is every sound woman who is not called off the track by the small game of feminine crotchets and conceits.
Queen Margaret, the wife of Henry VI., has a mind so distempered by a hankering for political distinction that she misreads the grief of the good Duke Humphrey, the king's uncle, when she succeeds in degrading and banishing the Duchess. And she asks the King,--
"Can you not see? or will you not observe The strangeness of his alter'd countenance?"