Disguised as Cesario, Viola passionately describes to Olivia how she would woo her if she were truly in love. Ironically, Viola speaks with genuine feeling as she herself loves Duke Orsino, whom she serves.
Act 1, Scene 5. Viola, shipwrecked in Illyria and disguised as the young man Cesario, has been taken into service by Duke Orsino and immediately sent as his messenger to woo the Countess Olivia. Olivia is in mourning for her dead brother and has refused all of Orsino's previous suits. Cesario has talked his way past Malvolio and into Olivia's presence. Olivia has lifted her veil to show her face. Cesario has begun delivering Orsino's prepared speech but has broken off, refusing to continue with rehearsed material. Olivia, intrigued, has asked what Cesario would do if he loved her as Orsino claims to. This speech is the answer — Viola, as Cesario, describing how she would woo Olivia if it were her own suit. The dramatic engine: Viola is in love with Orsino, knows she is wooing on behalf of a man she wants for herself, and accidentally seduces the woman she is wooing.
Viola is doing two things at once and the speech is electric because of it. On the surface she is improvising — Olivia has asked a hypothetical and Cesario must answer, fluently, in character as the young man she is pretending to be. Underneath, she is finally describing what real love looks like, because no one has asked her about her own feelings since the shipwreck. What she wants from Olivia, on Orsino's behalf, is success — but what she wants from the moment, for herself, is the relief of speaking honestly even in disguise. The willow cabin, the loyal cantons, the calling of the name to the hills — these are not borrowed images. This is Viola's own romantic imagination breaking through Cesario's diplomatic mission. By the end she has, without meaning to, made Olivia fall in love with her.
The trap is playing this as a charming set piece. It is a speech that surprises the speaker. Viola does not plan it; she discovers it while saying it. Mark the opening — "Make me a willow cabin at your gate" — as the moment she stops being Orsino's messenger and starts being herself, even in disguise. The images escalate: a cabin at the gate, songs of unrequited love at midnight, calling out Olivia's name until the air rings with it, until pity moves her. Each is a step further into Viola's own want, not Orsino's. The shift at "You should not rest between the elements of air and earth / But you should pity me" is where the "you" almost slips out of theatrical hypothesis and into direct address — Olivia hears it, the audience hears it, and Cesario nearly catches herself. Tempo: this is fast and rising, not lyrical and dwelt-on. The verse has urgency. End on the line — "But you should pity me" — as a real bid, not a flourish, and let Olivia's response ("You might do much") catch you slightly off-guard. The whole speech is Viola almost giving herself away.
One of the strongest Shakespeare audition pieces in the canon for women in their late teens through early thirties. It shows verse handling, comic intelligence, the capacity to play disguise without winking, and an arc that moves visibly within forty seconds. It works particularly well for drama school auditions, MFA programs, classical company generals, and any audition that wants to see whether you can play layered intention — which is most of them. It is moderately used in audition rooms but not over-saturated, and it consistently distinguishes actors who genuinely think the speech from those who recite it. Strong for actors who read androgynous or have natural comic timing. Avoid it if you cannot commit to Cesario as a real disguise rather than a performed coyness. Also avoid if your audition material already includes another Shakespeare comedy piece — pair it instead with something tonally opposite.
Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo 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!