An Introduction to Shakespeare Part 12

[1] Sch.e.l.ling, _Elizabethan Drama_ I, 264.

[2] See p. 8.

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CHAPTER XI

THE PLAYS OF THE SECOND PERIOD--COMEDY AND HISTORY

It is difficult for us of to-day to realize that Shakespeare was ever less than the greatest dramatist of his time, to think of him as the pupil and imitator of other dramatists. He did, indeed, pa.s.s through this stage of his development with extraordinary rapidity, so that its traces are barely perceptible in the later plays of his First Period.

In the plays of his Second Period even these traces disappear. If his portrayal of Shylock shows the influence of Marlowe's Jew of Malta, it is in no sense derivative, and it is the last appearance in Shakespeare's work of characterization clearly dependent upon the plays of his predecessors. However much Shakespeare's choice of themes may have been determined by the public taste or by the work of his fellows, in the creation of character he is henceforth his own master. Having acquired this mastery, he uses it to depict life in its most joyous aspect. For the time being he dwells little upon men's failures and sorrows. He does not ignore life's darker side,--he loved life too well for that,--but he uses it merely as a background for pictures of youth and happiness and success. Although among the comedies of this period he wrote also three historical plays, they {154} have not the tragic character of the earlier histories. They deal with youth and hope instead of crime, weakness, and failure. In the two parts of _Henry IV_ there is quite as much comedy as there is history; in _Henry V_, even though the comic interest is slighter, the theme is still one of youth and joy as personified in the figure of the vigorous, successful young king. For convenience' sake, however, we may separate the histories from the comedies. To do this we shall have to depart somewhat from chronological order, and, since there are fewer histories, we shall consider them first.

+Henry IV, Part I+.--To the development of Henry V from the wayward prince to one of England's most beloved heroes, Shakespeare devoted three plays, _Henry IV_, _Parts I_ and _II_, and _Henry V_. The historical event around which the first of these centers is the rebellion of the Percies, which culminated in the defeat and death of Harry Percy, 'Hotspur,' on Shrewsbury field. In _Richard II_, Shakespeare had foreshadowed what was to come. The deposed king had prophesied that his successor, Henry Bolingbroke, crowned as Henry IV, would fall out with the great Percy family which had put him on the throne; that the Percies would never be satisfied with what Henry would do for them; and that Henry would hate and distrust them on the ground that those who had made a king could unmake one as well. And this prophecy was fulfilled. Uniting with the Scots under Douglas, with the Archbishop of York, with Glendower, who was seeking to reestablish the independence of Wales, and with Mortimer, the natural successor of Richard, {155} the Percies raised the standard of revolt. What might have happened had all things gone as they were planned, we can never know; but Northumberland, the head of the family, feigned sickness; Glendower and Mortimer were kept away; the Archbishop dallied; and failure was the result. This situation gave Shakespeare an opportunity to paint a number of remarkable portraits; but the scheming, crafty Worcester, the vacillating Northumberland, the mystic Glendower, are all overshadowed by the figure of Hotspur, wrong-headed, impulsive, yet so aflame with young life and enthusiasm, so ready to dare all for honor's sake, that he is almost more attractive than the Prince himself. Over against the older leaders of the rebellion stands the lonely figure of Henry IV, misunderstood and little loved by his sons, who has centered his whole existence upon getting and keeping the throne of England. To this one end he bends every energy of his shrewd, strong, hard nature. Such a man could never understand a personality like that of his older son, nor could the son understand the father. Prince Hal, loving life in all its manifestations, joy in all its forms, could find small satisfaction in the rigid etiquette of a loveless court so long as it offered him an opportunity for little more than formal activity. When the rebellion of the Percies showed him that he could do the state real service, he seized his opportunity gladly, gayly, modestly. On his father's cause he centered the energies which he had previously scattered. With this new demand to meet, he no longer had time for his old companions. His old life was thrown off like a coat discarded under stress of work. {156} Even before that time came, however, Hal was not one who could enjoy ordinary low company; but the friends which had distracted him were far from ordinary. In Falstaff, the leader of the riotous group, Shakespeare created one of the greatest comic figures in all literature. Never at a loss, Falstaff masters alike sack, difficulties, and companions. He is an incarnation of joy for whom moral laws do not exist. Because he will not fight when he sees no chance of victory, he has been called a coward, but no coward ever had such superb coolness in the face of danger. Falstaff's conduct in a fight is explained by his contempt for all conventions which bring no joy--a standard which reduces honor to a mere word. So full of joy was he that he inspired it in his companions. To be with him was to be merry.

+Date+.--The play was entered in the Stationers' Register, and a quarto was printed in 1598. Meres mentions the play without indicating whether he meant one part or both. The evidence of meter and style point to a date much earlier than Meres's entry, so that 1597 is the year to which Part I is commonly a.s.signed.

+Source+.--For the serious plot of this play, Shakespeare drew upon Holinshed. He had no scruples, however, against altering history for dramatic purposes. Thus he brings within a much shorter period of time the battles in Wales and Scotland, makes Hal and Hotspur of approximately the same age, and unites two people in the character of Mortimer. The situations in the scenes which show Hal with Falstaff and his fellows are largely borrowed from an old play called _The Famous Victories of Henry V_, but this source furnished only the barest and crudest outlines, and gave practically no hint of the characters as Shakespeare conceived them. The reference in Act I, Sc. ii, to Falstaff as the 'old lad of the castle' shows that his name was originally {157} Oldcastle, as in _The Famous Victories_. Oldcastle was a historical personage quite unlike Falstaff, and it is supposed that the change was made to spare the feeling of Oldcastle's descendants.

+Henry IV, Part II+.--This part is less a play than a series of loosely connected scenes. The final suppression of the rebellion, which had been continued by the Archbishop of York, the sickness and death of Henry IV, and the accession of Prince Hal as Henry V, are matters essentially undramatic and incapable of unified treatment, while the growing separation of Hal and Falstaff deprived the underplot of that close connection with the main action which it had in the preceding play. Feeling the weakness of the main plot, Shakespeare reduced it to a subordinate position, making it little more than a series of historical pictures inserted between the scenes in which Falstaff and his companions figure. He enriched this part of the play, on the other hand, by the introduction of a number of superbly poetical speeches, the best known of which is that beginning, "O Sleep, O gentle Sleep."

To the comic groups Shakespeare added a number of new figures, among them the braggart Pistol, whose speech bristles with the high-sounding terms he has borrowed from the theater, and old Justice Shallow, so fond of recalling the gay nights and days which are as much figments of his imagination as is his a.s.sumed familiarity with the great John of Gaunt. By placing more stress upon the evil and less pleasing sides of Falstaff's nature, Shakespeare evidently intended to prepare his readers' minds for the definite break between old Jack and the new king; but in this wonderful man he had created a character so fascinating that he could not spoil it; and {158} the king's public rejection of Falstaff comes as a painful shock which, impresses one as much with the coldly calculating side of the Bolingbroke nature as it does with the sad inevitability of the rupture.

+Source and Date+.--The sources for this play are the same as those of its predecessor. Although the first and only quarto was not printed until 1600, there is a reference to this part in Jonson's _Every Man Out of his Humour_, which was produced in 1599. It must, therefore, have been written shortly after Part I, and it is accordingly dated 1598.

+Henry V+.--In this, which is really the third play of a trilogy, Shakespeare adopted a manner of treatment quite unlike that which characterizes the other two. _Henry V_ is really a dramatized epic, an almost lyric rhapsody cast in the form of dialogue. Falstaff has disappeared from view, and is recalled only by the affecting story of his death. This episode, however, brief as it is, reveals the love which the old knight evoked from his companions, while the narrative of his last hours is the more pathetic for being put in the mouth of the comic figure of Dame Quickly. Falstaff's place was one which could not be filled, and the comic scenes become comparatively insignificant, although the quarrels of Pistol and the Welshman Fluellen have a distinctive humor. A figure which replaces the cla.s.sic chorus connects the scattered historical scenes by means of superb narrative verse.

Each episode glorifies a new aspect of Henry's character. We see him as the valiant soldier; as the leader rising superior to tremendous odds; as the democratic king who, concealing his rank, talks and jests with a common soldier; and {159} as the bluff, hearty suitor of a foreign bride. In thus seeing him, moreover, we see not only the individual man; we see him as an ideal Englishman, as the embodiment of the type which the men of Shakespeare's day--and of ours, too, for that matter--loved and admired and honored. In celebrating Henry's victories, Shakespeare was also celebrating England's more recent victories over her enemies abroad, so that the play is a great national paean, the song of heroic, triumphant England.

+Date and Source+.--Like its predecessors, _Henry V_ is founded on Holinshed, with some additions taken from the Famous Victories. The allusion in the chorus which precedes Act V to the Irish expedition of the Earl of Ess.e.x fixes the date of composition between April 14 and September 28, 1599. A quarto, almost certainly pirated, was printed in 1600 and reprinted in 1602, 1608, and 1619 (in the latter with the false date of 1608). The text of these quartos is, therefore, much inferior to that of the Folio.

+The Merchant of Venice+.--As usually presented on the modern stage, _The Merchant of Venice_ appears to be a comedy, which is overshadowed by one tragic figure, that of the Jew Shylock, the representative of a down-trodden people, deprived of his money by a tricky lawyer and deprived of his daughter by a tricky Christian. Students, on the other hand, have maintained that to the Elizabethans Shylock was merely a comic figure, the defeat of whose vile plot to get the life of his Christian debtor, Antonio, by taking a pound of his flesh in place of the unpaid gold, was greeted with shouts of delighted laughter. As a matter of fact, Shylock, then as now, was a human being, and by virtue {160} of that fact both ridiculous and pathetic. In any case, whatever the dominant note of his character, he is not the dominant figure of the play. If he were, the fifth act, which ends the play with moonlight and music and the laughter of happy lovers, would be distinctly out of place. Yet it is in reality the absence of such defects of taste, the ability to bring everything into its proper place, to make a harmonious whole out of the most various tones, which best characterizes the Shakespearean comedy of this period. Instead of being a play in which one great character is set in relief against a number of lesser ones, _The Merchant of Venice_ is a comedy in which there is an unusually large number of characters of nearly equal importance and an unusually large number of plots of nearly equal interest. There is the plot which has to do with Portia's marriage, in which the right lover wins this gracious merry lady by choosing the proper one of three locked caskets. There is the plot which deals with the elopement of the Jew's daughter, Jessica. There is the plot which relates the story of the bond given by Antonio to the Jew in return for the loan which enables Antonio's friend, Ba.s.sanio, to carry on his suit for Portia's hand, the bond, which, when forfeited, would have cost Antonio his life had not Portia, disguised as a lawyer, defeated Shylock's treacherous design. There is the plot which tells how Ba.s.sanio and his friend Gratiano give their wedding rings as rewards to the pretended lawyer and his a.s.sistant, really their wives Portia and Nerissa in disguise,--an act which gives the wives a chance to make much trouble for their lords. And all these plots are worked out with an abundance of {161} interesting detail, and are so perfectly interwoven that the play has all of the wonderful harmony of a Turkish rug, as well as its brilliant variety. No play of Shakespeare's depends more for its effect on plot, on the sheer interest of the stories, and no one has, consequently, situations which are more effective on the stage. It is, perhaps, an inevitable result that the individual characters have a somewhat less permanent, less deeply satisfying charm than do those of the comedies which follow. None of these successors, however, presents a larger or more varied group of delightful men and women.

+Date+.--The later limit of the date is settled by the mention of this play in Meres's catalogue, and by its entry in the Stationers' Register of that same year. Basing their opinion on extremely unsubstantial internal evidence, some scholars have dated the play as early as 1594, but the evidence of style and construction make a date before 1596 unlikely. Two quartos were printed, one in 1600; the other, though copying the date 1600 upon its t.i.tle-page, was probably printed in 1619.

+Source+.--The story of the pound of flesh and that of the choice of caskets are extremely ancient. The former is combined with that of the wedding rings in Fiorentino's _Il Pecorone_ (the first novel of the fourth day), a story which Shakespeare probably knew and may have used.

Alexander Silvayn's _The Orator_, printed in English translation in 1596, has, in connection with a bond episode, speeches made by a Jew which may be the source of some of Shylock's lines. The combination of these plots with those of Jessica and Nerissa is, so far as we can yet prove, original with Shakespeare; but we cannot be certain how much _The Merchant of Venice_ resembles a lost play of the Jew mentioned in Gosson's _School of Abuse_ (1579), "representing the greediness of worldly chusers, and b.l.o.o.d.y mindes of Usurers."

+The Taming of the Shrew+.--_The Taming of the Shrew_ is only in part the work of Shakespeare. Just how {162} much he had to do with making over the underplot, we shall probably never know; but, in any case, he did not write the dialogue of this part of the play, and its construction is not particularly remarkable. The winning of a girl by a suitor disguised as a teacher is a conventional theme of comedy, as is the disguising of a stranger to take the place of an absent father in order to confirm a young lover's suit. The main plot Shakespeare certainly left as he found it. It tells how an ungovernable, willful girl was made into a submissive wife by a husband who a.s.sumed for the purpose a manner even wilder than her own, so wild that not even she could endure it. This story is presented in scenes of uproarious farce in which there is little opportunity for subtle characterization or the higher sort of comedy. What Shakespeare did was to give to the hero and heroine, Petruchio and Katherine, a semblance of reality, and to add enormously to the life and movement of the scenes in which they appear. Some of these scenes are very effective on the stage, but they are not of a sort to reveal Shakespeare's greatest qualities. The induction, the framework in which the play is set, is, however, quite another matter. The story of the drunken tinker, Sly, unfortunately omitted in many modern presentations, is a little masterpiece. A n.o.bleman returning from the hunt finds Sly lying in a drunken stupor before an inn. The n.o.bleman has Sly taken to his country house, has him dressed in rich clothing, has him awakened by servants who make him believe that he is really a lord, and finally has the play performed before him. The outline of this induction was in the old play which Shakespeare revised; but {163} he developed the crude work of his predecessor into scenes so delightfully realistic, into characterization so richly humorous, that this induction takes its place among the great comic episodes of literature.

+Date+.--No certain evidence for the date of this play exists, even the metrical tests failing us because of the collaboration. It is commonly a.s.signed to the years 1596-7, but this is little more than a guess.

+Source+.--As has already been indicated, this play is the revision of an older play ent.i.tled _The Taming of a Shrew_. The latter was probably written by a disciple of Marlowe, and was first printed in quarto in 1594. The chief change which the revision made in the plot was that which gave Katherine one sister instead of two and added the interest of rival suitors for this sister's hand. Stories concerning the taming of a shrewish woman are both ancient and common, but no direct antecedent of the older play has been discovered, although some incidents seem to have been borrowed from Gascoigue's _Supposes_, a translation from the Italian of Ariosto.

+Authors.h.i.+p+.--The ident.i.ty of Shakespeare's collaborator is unknown, nor is it possible to define exactly the limits of his work. It is practically certain, however, that Shakespeare wrote the Induction; II, i, 169-326; III, ii, with the possible exception of 130-150; IV, i, iii, and v; V, ii, at least as far as 175.

+The Merry Wives of Windsor+.--_The Merry Wives_ is the only comedy in which Shakespeare avowedly presents the middle-cla.s.s people of an English town. In other comedies English characters and customs appear through the thin disguise of Italian names; in the histories there are comic scenes drawn from English life; but only here does Shakespeare desert the city and the country for the small town and draw the larger number of his characters from the great middle cla.s.s. {164} A tradition has come down to us, one which is supported by the nature of the play, that Queen Elizabeth was so fascinated by the character of Falstaff as he appeared in _Henry IV_ that she requested Shakespeare to show Falstaff in love, and that Shakespeare, in obedience to this command, wrote the play within a fortnight. Unless this tradition be true, it is difficult to explain why Shakespeare should have written a comedy which is, in comparison with his other work of this period, at once conventional and mediocre. The subject--the intrigues of Falstaff with two married women, and the wooing of a commonplace girl by two foolish suitors and another as commonplace as herself--gave Shakespeare little opportunity for poetry and none for the portrayal of the types of character most congenial to his temperament. The greatest blemish on the play, however, from the standpoint of a student of Shakespeare, is that the man called Falstaff is not Falstaff at all, that this Falstaff bears only an outward resemblance to the Falstaff of the historical plays. If we may misquote the poet, Falstaff died a martyr, and this is not the man. The real Falstaff would never have stooped to the weak devices adopted by the man who bears his name, would never have been three times the dupe of transparent tricks. The task demanded of Shakespeare was one impossible of performance. Falstaff could not have fallen in love in the way which the queen desired. Nor is there much to compensate for this degradation of the greatest comic figure in literature. Falstaff's companions share, although to a lesser degree, in their leader's fall, while the two comic figures which are original with this play are {165} comparatively unsuccessful studies in French and Welsh dialect. Judged by Shakespeare's own standard, this work is as middle-cla.s.s as its characters; judged by any other, it is an amusing comedy of intrigue, realistic in type and abounding in comic situations which approach the borderland of farce.

+Date+.--This play was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company January 18, 1602. It was certainly written after the two parts of _Henry IV_, and if, as is most probable, the character of Nym is a revival and not an imperfect first sketch, the play must have succeeded _Henry V_. On these grounds the play is best a.s.signed to 1599. It was first printed in quarto in 1602, but this version is extremely faulty, besides being considerably shorter than that of the First Folio. The quarto seems to have been printed from a stenographic report of an acting version of the play, made by an unskillful reporter for a piratical publisher.

+Source+.--The main plot resembles a story derived from an Italian source which is found in Tarlton's _News out of Purgatorie_. For the underplot and a number of details in the working out of the main plot, no source is known.

+Much Ado About Nothing+.--In this play, as nowhere else, Shakespeare has given us the boon of laughter--not the smile, not the uncontrolled guffaw, but rippling, melodious laughter. From the beginning to the end this is the dominant note. If the great trio of which this was the first be cla.s.sified as romantic comedies, we may perhaps say that in speaking of the others we should lay the stress on the word 'romantic,'

in this, on the word 'comedy.' As regards the main plot, _Much Ado_ is, to be sure, the most serious of the three. When the machinations of the villainous Prince John lead Claudio to believe his intended bride {166} unfaithful, and to reject this pure-scaled Hero with violence and contumely at the very steps of the altar, we have a situation which borders on the tragic. The mingled doubt, rage, and despair of Hero's father is, moreover, undoubtedly affecting.

Nevertheless, powerful as these scenes are, they are so girt about with laughter that they cannot destroy our good spirits. Even at their height, the manifestations of human wickedness, credulity, and weakness seem but the illusions of a moment, soon to be dissipated by the power of radiant mirth. It is not without significance that the deep-laid plot should be defeated through the agency of the immortal Dogberry, most deliciously foolish of constables. Nor is it mere chance that Hero and Claudio are so constantly accompanied by Beatrice and Bened.i.c.k, that amazing pair to whom life is one long jest. In the merry war which is constantly raging between these two, their shafts never fail of their mark, but neither is once wounded. Like magnesium lights, their minds send forth showers of brilliant sparks which hit, but do not wound. But their wit is something more than empty sparkle.

It is the effervescence of abounding life, a life too sound and perfect to be devoid of feeling. Their brilliancy does not conceal emptiness, but adorns abundance. When such an occasion as Hero's undeserved rejection called for it, the true affection of Beatrice and the true manliness of Bened.i.c.k appeared. Hence, although both seem duped by the trick which forms the underplot, the ruse which was to make each think the other to be the lovelorn one, it is really they who win the day.

Their feelings are not altered by this merry plot; they {167} are merely given a chance to drop the mask of banter and to express without confusion the love which had long been theirs. Thus the play which began with the silvery laughter of Beatrice ends in general mirth which is yet more joyous.

+Date+.--Since _Much Ado_ is not mentioned by Meres, it can hardly have been written before 1598. Entries in the Stationers' Register for August 4 and 24, 1600, and the appearance of a quarto edition in this same year limit the possibilities at the other end. Since the t.i.tle-page of the quarto a.s.serts that this play had been "sundry times publicly acted," we may a.s.sign the date 1599 with considerable confidence.

+Source+.--The main plot was derived originally from the twentieth novel of Bandello, but there is no direct evidence that Shakespeare used either this or its French translation in Belleforest. In this story Bened.i.c.k and Beatrice do not appear; there is no public rejection of Hero; there is no discovery of the plot by Dogberry and his fellows; and the deception of Claudio is differently managed. Shakespeare's treatment of this last detail has its source in an episode of the fifth book of Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_, a work several times done into English before Shakespeare's play was written. There is considerable reason for a.s.suming the existence of a lost original for _Much Ado_ in the shape of a play, known only by t.i.tle, called _Bened.i.c.ke and Betteris_; but it is, of course, impossible to say how much Shakespeare may have owed to this hypothetical predecessor.

+As You Like It+.--Of this most idyllic of all Shakespeare's comedies, the Forest of Arden is not merely the setting; it is the central force of the play, the power which brings laughter out of tears and harmony out of discord. It reminds us of Sherwood forest, the home of Robin Hood and his merry men; but it is more than this. Not only does it harbor beasts and trees never found on English soil, but its shadowy {168} glades foster a life so free from care and trouble that it becomes to us a symbol of Nature's healing, sweetening influence. Here an exiled Duke and his faithful followers have found a refuge where, free from the envy and bickerings of court, they "fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the Golden Age." To them comes the youth Orlando, fleeing from the treachery of a wicked elder brother and from the malice of the usurping Duke. To them comes Rosalind, daughter of the exiled Duke, who has lived at the usurper's court, but has, in her turn, been exiled, and who brings with her Celia, the usurper's daughter, and Touchstone, the lovable court fool. And through these newcomers the Duke and his friends are brought into contact with a shepherd and shepherdess as unreal and as charming as those of Dresden china, and with other country folk who smack more strongly of the soil.

In the forest, Rosalind, who has for safety's sake a.s.sumed man's attire, again meets Orlando, and the love between them, born of their first meeting at court, becomes stronger and truer amid scenes of delicate comedy and merry laughter. Once in Arden, Orlando ceases to brood morosely over the wrongs done him; Rosalind's wit becomes sweeter while losing none of its keenness; and Touchstone feels himself no longer a plaything, but a man. So we are not surprised when Oliver, the wicked brother, lost in the forest and rescued from mortal danger by the lad he has always sought to injure, awakens to his better self; nor when the usurping Duke, leading an armed expedition against the man he has deposed, is converted at the forest's edge by an old hermit, abandons the throne to {169} its rightful occupant, and enters upon the religious life. Thus the old Duke comes into his own again, wiser and better than before; and if, among the many marriages which fill the last act with the chiming of marriage bells, there are some which seem little likely to bring lasting happiness, the magic of the woods does much to dissipate our doubts. Only Jaques, the melancholy philosopher, fails to share in the general rejoicing and the glad return. He has been too hardened by the pursuit of his own pleasure and is too shut in by his delightfully cynical philosophy to feel quickly the forest's touch. Yet not even his brilliant perversities can sadden the joyous atmosphere; it is only made the more enjoyable by force of contrast.

Since Jaques wishes no joy for himself, we wish none for him, and with little regret we leave him as he has lived, a lonely, fascinating figure.

+Date+.--Like _Much Ado_, _As You Like It_ is not mentioned by Meres, and was entered in the Stationers' Register on August 4, 1600. Some critics have placed this play before _Much Ado_, but, although there is little evidence on either side, the style and tone of the play incline us to place it after, dating it 1599-1600.

+Source+.--_As You Like It_ is a dramatization of Lodge's pastoral novel ent.i.tled _Rosalynde_, which was founded in its turn on the _Tale of Gamelyn_, incorrectly ascribed to Chaucer. Shakespeare condensed his original to great advantage, leaving out many episodes and so changing others as to give the subject a new and higher unity. The atmosphere of the forest is all of his creation, as are many of the characters, including Jaques and Touchstone.

+Twelfth Night, or What You Will+.--In _Twelfth Night_ romance and comedy are less perfectly fused than in {170} the comedy which preceded it. Here there are two distinct groups of characters, on the one hand riotous old Sir Toby and his crew leading the Puritanical steward Malvolio into the trap baited by his own egotism; on the other, the dreaming Duke, in love with love rather than with the beautiful Olivia whom he woos in vain, and ardently loved by Viola, whose gentle nature is in touching contrast with the doublet and hose which misfortune has compelled her to a.s.sume. There is, however, no lack of dramatic unity.

In Olivia the two groups meet, for Toby is Olivia's uncle, Malvolio her steward, the Duke her lover, Viola--later happily supplanted by her twin brother Sebastian--the one she loves. Thus the romantic and comic forces act and react upon each other. Yet this play, by reason of its setting, the court of Illyria, was bound to lack the magical atmosphere of the forest, which inspired kindly humor in the serious and gentle seriousness in the merry. If Peste is as witty as Touchstone, he is less of a man; if Viola is more appealing than Rosalind, she has a less sparkling humor. Here the love story is more pa.s.sionate, the fun more uproarious. Toby is not Falstaff; he is overcome by wine and difficulties as that amazing knight never was; but it is a sad soul which does not roar with Toby in his revels; shout with laughter over the duel which he arranges between the shrinking Viola and the foolish, vain Sir Andrew; and shake in sympathy with his glee over Malvolio's plight when that unlucky man is beguiled into thinking Olivia loves him, and into appearing before her cross-gartered and wreathed in the smiles {171} which accord so ill with his sour visage. All the more affecting in contrast to this boisterous merriment is the frail figure of Viola, who knows so well "what love women to men may owe." Amid the perfume of flowers and the sob of violins the Duke learns to love this seeming boy better than he knows, and easily forgets the romantic melancholy which was never much more than an agreeable pose.

+Date+.--In the diary of John Manningham for February 2, 1602, is a record of a performance of _Twelfth Night_ in the Middle Temple. The absence of the name from Meres's list again limits the date at the other end. The internal evidence, aside from that of style and meter, is negligible, while the latter confirms the usually accepted date of 1601.

+Source+.--The princ.i.p.al source of the plot was probably _Apolonius and Silla_, a story by Barnabe Riche, apparently an adaptation of Belleforest's translation of the twenty-eighth novel of Bandello.

There was also an Italian play, _Gl' Ingannati_, acted in Latin translation at Cambridge in 1590 and 1598, which has a similar plot. A German play on the same subject, apparently closely connected with Riche, has given rise to the hypothesis that a lost English play preceded _Twelfth Night_; but this is only conjectural, and there is some evidence that Shakespeare was familiar with Riche's story. If this be the original, Shakespeare improved on it as much as he did on _Rosalynde_, condensing the beginning, knitting together the loose strands at the end, and introducing the whole of the underplot with its rich variety of characters. The only hint for this known is a slight suggestion for Malvolio's madness found in another story of Riche's volume.

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