Curio and Feste enter then, and Feste is more than happy to sing the song that he sang last night. He urges Cesario, in particular, to take note of it for although it is "old and plain," it is a song that is well known. Spinsters sing it, as do young maidens; its theme concerns the simple truth of love's innocence. The song begins, "Come away, come away, death . . ." (which is certainly a melancholy evocation) and goes on to lament unrequited love — of which Orsino and Viola (and Olivia) all suffer. The lover of the song is a young man who has been "slain" by "a fair cruel maid," and, his heart broken, he asks for a shroud of white to encase his body. He wants no flowers strewn on his black coffin; nor does he want friends nor mourners present when he is lowered into the grave. In fact, he wants to be buried in a secret place so that no other "sad true lover" will chance to find his grave and find reason to weep there. The emphasis here is on the innocence of love, and our focus is on poor Viola, who has innocently fallen in love with Duke Orsino, who believes that she is only a handsome young man, to whom he feels "fatherly."
Orsino gives Feste some money for singing the mournful ballad, and, in return, Feste praises his good and generous master and then exits. The duke then excuses the others, and when he and Cesario are alone, he turns to the boy and tells him that he must return to Olivia and her "sovereign cruelty." He tells Cesario that he must convince Olivia that Orsino's love is "more noble than the world." It is not her riches which he seeks (her "quantity of dirty lands"); instead, he prizes her as a "queen of gems." It is his soul which loves her. When Cesario asks what he should say if Olivia protests that she absolutely cannot love Orsino, the duke refuses to accept such an answer.
