Like It; it should therefore (though I lay no stress on the statement) be the last of the comedies of Shakespeare; and thus we are again brought very near to the date 1600.

PART III.-Characteristics.

This is the Comedy of Comedies, at least so far as Shakespeare is concerned; and I suppose we shall hardly fear to discover its rival out of Shakespeare. If the play presents no salient feature of recognition, it is because it combines so many excellences, and combines them so happily. But not only are the elements of comic drama and comic satire from Plautus to Rabelais herein represented as fully and as perfectly as may be, for the comedy of Twelfth Night is both relieved and heightened by an interwoven exquisite romance, while strains of the finest poetry make perfect harmony with the comic undertones; and all this in a manner that only the genius of Shakespeare rendered possible. Further, the play is splendidly wrought; plot, underplot, incident, character, movement, dialogue, diction, each is excellent; and our interest is sustained throughout at the highest dramatic level. Finally, a wise good humour is the all-pervading spirit of the drama; its gentle satire has saltness but no bitterness;1 Twelfth Night is indeed the happy inspiration of a happy moment.

This brief general estimate may be followed by an examination of the dramatic technique of Twelfth Night, chiefly on its literary side.

Of course we can detect flaws in any work of art,2 and especially in the "wood notes wild" of "Fancy's child"; and Milton is not altogether at fault in thus describing Shakespeare; but, as he tells us elsewhere, there is

1 "There is ... no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove," Twelfth Night, I. v. 97-99.

* See note on II. v. 156-158.

Later in life Milton became more austere, and might have expressed himself differently; at present he means both less and more than we usually imagine; the words are partly in contrast to "Jonson's learned sock," and half their purport may be gathered from the Epitaph on Shakespeare

"To the shame of slow-endeavouring Art Thy easy numbers flow."

more real beauty in the flowers which "Nature boon Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain," than in those which are carefully arranged by "Nice Art In beds and curious knots"; to this we may add that the former can fill us with undisturbed delight, while the latter must give some offence with their stiff precision. Or, to put it more plainly (and it might be put in a thousand other ways), we receive from the unstudied symmetry of the Romantic Drama an impression of perfect art, but from the studied symmetry of the so-called Classical Drama an impression of perfect artifice. Besides, we must remember what has been said about the spots on Shakespeare's sun.

Of these spots in Twelfth Night, one or two will be found near the close of the play. I will first mention "the hurried and strange marriage contract between Olivia and Sebastian." 2 This is indirectly noticed by Johnson: "The marriage of Olivia, and the succeeding perplexity, though well enough contrived to divert on the stage, wants credibility, and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of life." And the following stricture of Hallam is not without some bearing on the same incident: "The part of Sebastian has all that improbability which belongs to mistaken identity, without the comic effect for the sake of which that is forgiven in Plautus and in The Comedy of Errors." At this point, however, I must interpolate the naïve remark of Montégut: "Mais chut... nous sommes ici dans le monde de la féerie."

Another spot to be examined is the marriage of Sir Toby and Maria; this difficulty will be dealt with in the notes. Next we examine the apparent discrepancies in the closing scene of the play; these are fully described by Oechelhäuser, who also attempts to remove them by the

1" In many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected." This remark of Johnson, however, may be read with some caution.

2 Kenny. 3 E.g. IV. ii. 75 and v. 368. "Eine besondere Schwierigkeit bot aber die Oekonomie der Schluss-scene. So oft ich das Stück in den verschiedensten Bearbeitungen und mehr oder minder vollendeter Darstellung gesehen, drängte sich mir stets das Unbefriedigende des Schlusses auf; er liess regelmässig das Publikum kalt." [Again, the arrange

insertion of some lines and stage-directions.

But I think

it well to trust to the text as we have it, although a good deal that the poet omitted, or at least implied, may in this case be brought out by the actor; and even Oechelhäuser admits that in regard to the Elizabethan stage, on which boys played the part of women, the conclusion of the play is skilfully wrought.

And this leads me to compare the literary with the acting qualities of Twelfth Night; for if there are passages that may be rendered more explicit in the acting, so there are others those of the highest mood-that must seem to lose by it;1 and we often hear that the romantic element in the play makes it less suited for the stage than most of the other comedies. In this we have at least a germ of truth; yet the larger truth lies in the fact that whether a poetic drama is read or acted, certain ideal conditionsblank verse, for example-are assumed by the poet; as Matthew Arnold has taught us, the artist must be met halfway or at least some part of the way; and to my thinking, although the actor may sometimes aid the poet, it often happens that the ideal conditions imposed on the audience at a theatre are much more exacting than those which are required of the reader. But this subject I have dealt with more fully in another volume, and I will only add here that for my part I can never quite enjoy the blank verse of the stage; perhaps I keep too jealously in mind that exquisite ment of the closing scene presents an especial difficulty. Whenever I have seen the piece in the most diverse renderings, and under more or less perfect representation, the unsatisfactory character of the conclusion always impressed itself upon me. It invariably left the public cold.] Einführungen in Shakespeare's Bühnen-Dramen. W. Oechelhäuser, Minden, 1885.

1 For example, see p. xxxiv of this Introduction, “It is the note struck loudest in the very first line of the play." In Twelfth Night, as usually acted, the second scene of the first Act begins the play, and thus the magnificent overture which is the poet's purpose in the first scene is robbed of fully one-half of its effect.

Since writing the above I have witnessed a performance of Twelfth Night, and on this subject of stage representation I will here comment without prejudice. The caste was fairly good and the performance creditable, but to the best of my judgment the play lost in the acting much more than it gained. It gained most in the comic scenes, and in the vividness that was added to incident (that of the ring, for example) and the development of the plot generally; but it lost twothirds of its poetry, and Shakespeare's Viola was not on the stage. I might add that the marvellous variety of incident in Shakespeare is best seen in the theatre. See also Lamb's Essay, "On Some of the Old Actors.”

3 Handbook to Shakespeare, Chapter i. See also p. xl, note.

thought of Keats, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter."

These precautionary remarks may help to render us more impartial as we proceed to examine other spots-or seeming spots-in this dramatic sun. Some critics have blamed the play because it presents no striking delineation of character; but again, I need only repeat the words of Montégut: "Nous sommes ici dans le monde de la féerie." Somewhat graver is the charge that the punishment dealt out to Malvolio is both coarse and excessive; to this I reply, "Not if we view it from the standpoint of the time."

Next will be the questionable sequence of Act and Scene as given in the text; but here we make a less direct reference to the author. On this subject Mr. Spedding remarks: "The division of the Acts in Twelfth Night is of less importance than in King Lear and Much Ado about Nothing; for the movement of the piece is so light and rapid, and the several actions mix so naturally, without perplexing or confusing each other, that if it were played from beginning to end without any pause at all, the spectators would feel no harshness. Nevertheless, though the interacts might in that case be omitted altogether without injuring the dramatic effect, the effect is materially injured on two occasions by the interposition of them in the wrong place." He then proceeds to examine these two occasions, and further proposes a valuable rearrangement of Act and Scene, which will be found in the Third Appendix. Of other proposed rearrangements, I need mention only the one adopted in the acting version of Sir Henry Irving, which of course differs from Spedding at many points. This also is given in the Third Appendix.

The next difficulty we have to deal with occurs in the time of the action of Twelfth Night; on this head I may quote Mr. P. A. Daniel,1 whose time-analysis of the play is also subjoined. It will be seen that whereas the incidents are supposed to fall within three days, an interval of three months is twice mentioned in the Fifth Act. Mr. Daniel remarks: "The time represented by this play is three days, 1 New Shakespeare Soc. Trans. 1877-79, p. 173.

with an interval of three days between the First and Second.

Day 1. Act I. sc. i.-iii.

Interval of three days.

Day 2. Act I. sc. iv. and v.; Act II. sc. i.-iii.

Day 3. Act II. sc. iv. and v.; and Acts III., IV., and V." There remains to be noticed in Act v. a statement inconsistent with the plot of the play as revealed in the previous scenes. Viola and Sebastian both suffered the same shipwreck, and when they arrive in Illyria it is evident that but a very few days can have elapsed since their escape. Yet, when Antonio is brought before the Duke in Act v. he asserts that Sebastian has been in his company for three months. It might indeed be said that this inconsistency is merely imaginary, and is founded on too strict an interpretation of the dialogue in Act I. sc. ii. and Act II. sc. i., but the Duke makes a similar assertion with regard to Viola

Three months this youth hath tended upon me.

And this is in absolute contradiction to Valentine's speech on the second day of the action (Act I. sc. iv.), where he says that the Duke "hath known you (Viola) but three days."

Some other discrepancies are too trifling to find a place in this Introduction, and they will be dealt with in the notes; but a word may be said here on the scene of the action of Twelfth Night.

Both the locality and the time of Twelfth Night have an indefiniteness which suits the romance. Illyria comes nearest to the modern Dalmatia, and was probably regarded by the Elizabethans as Italian, and in Twelfth Night as it appears on the stage we have Venetian manners of the seventeenth century. But there is little to identify the locality of the drama with Italy; in spirit it is much more English than are the other Italian plays of Shakespeare; and we may dismiss any further examination of place or period by merely quoting the title of another of Shakespeare's dramas 1 See note on I. ii. 2.