truth is, that this account of our poet's having performed the part of an old man in one of his own comedies, came originally from Mr. Thomas Jones of Tarbick, in Worcestershire, who related it from the information, not of one of Shakespeare's brothers, but of a relation of our poet, who lived to a good old age, and who had seen him act in his youth.' Coleridge (as reported by Collier) and HalliwellPhillipps gave credence to the Stratford tradition, and it is now generally accepted as containing a germ of truth. TWELFTH NIGHT SOURCES OF THE PLOT-In the main plot of Twelfth Night are combined two of the most popular stories which English and Italian playwrights of the sixteenth century derived from the comedy of ancient Rome. The one story, dealing with the complications produced by the appearance in the same town of twin brothers mutually unconscious of each other's presence, reached modern literature from the Menæchmi of Plautus, and with comparatively little modification had already furnished Shakespeare material for one of his earliest plays - The Comedy of Errors. The other story, treating the perplexities of love which are bound to arise when a charming young lady disguises herself as an even more irresistible young man, owes its origin, rather less directly, to several plays of Terence and Plautus. It was variously elaborated by Italian and Spanish writers of the Renaissance, and passed then to England, where it became perhaps the most important plot device in all the Elizabethan drama. Taking it up in his early play of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare gave it final and masterly form in As You Like It, and returned to it a dozen years later when writing Cymbeline. The combination of these two stories, achieved by representing the indistinguishable twins, not as brothers but as brother and masculinely-garbed sister, had been made in Italy long before Shakespeare began to write; and the resultant plot, doubly rich in comic and romantic possibilities, had been largely utilized both on the stage and in prose narrative. In 1531, a literary society of Siena called Gľ Intronati (The Thundersmitten) acted under the title of Gl' Ingannati (The Deceived) a play in which it is possible to recognize the general outlines of the parts of Viola, Sebastian, Orsino, and Olivia. Viola is called Lelia, while the other three characters of Shakespeare answer roughly to the Fabrizio, Flaminio, and Isabella of the Italian work. A Latin version of the latter, called Lælia after the heroine's name, was performed at Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1595, but remained unprinted till 1910. From one of these dramas Shakespeare might have got the first vague suggestion for the romantic incidents in Twelfth Night, but in fact there is no proof that he knew either. There is still less likelihood that the poet was acquainted with the two somewhat similar Italian plays called G Inganni (The Deceivers), though the later of the two, printed at Venice in 1592, introduces an approximation to Shakespeare's "Cesario" in the name "Cesare" which the disguised girl assumes. The story of Gl' Ingannati is repeated in prose narrative, with changed names and some alteration of details, in the twenty-eighth novel of Bandello's famous collection (1554). Bandello's tale was the basis of a French version made by Belleforest, and Belle forest's appears to have been used by Barnabe Riche, who in his collection of English stories called Riche his Farewell to Military Profession (1581) gave a new shape to the novel. He renamed the characters once more, calling them Apolonius (Orsino), Silla (Viola), Silvio (Sebastian), and Julina (Olivia); he removed the scene of action from Italy to Constantinople; and first suggested the episode of shipwreck and the mourning of Julina (Olivia). Though possessed of decided merits when compared in point of structure with the earlier versions, Riche's novel, Apolonius and Silla, is in spirit probably the coarsest of them all; and Dr. Furness was shocked by the general belief that Twelfth Night is indebted to it. "I venture to dissent," he says in the preface to his Variorum edition of the play; "not on the score that there are no incidents common to both story and comedy, because there are such, but I cannot believe that Shakespeare was ever in the smallest degree influenced by Riche's coarse repulsive novel. I doubt that Shakespeare ever read it, at least I hope he never did; his hours were more precious to us all than those of any poet who ever lived; it would be grievous to think that he wasted even half a one over Apolonius and Silla." But it is Shakespeare's particular glory that he achieved just such marvelous feats of purification, and time can hardly be said to have been wasted which led to the substitution of the serene beauty of Twelfth Night for the mere vulgarity of the work it supplanted. Apart from the fact that Riche's novel must have been far better known to the English public of these Illyrian knights, where they display themselves Shakespeare's day than any other extant treatment hardly less delightfully than in their original setting. of the story, the dramatist's use of Apolonius and DATE-Twelfth Night is not mentioned in Meres's Silla is strongly suggested by the circumstance that list of Shakespeare's plays (1598) and may be fairly it alone presents the Viola-Orsino-Sebastian-Olivia assumed not to have appeared when Meres wrote. complication in the way Shakespeare presents it. In Bandello, Gl'Ingannati, and Lalia this plot is confused by the presence of a very important alien element in the fact that Viola is beloved by the old father of Olivia. Only Riche, moreover, of all Shakespeare's predecessors, makes Orsino (Apolonius) a duke and a man of authority instead of a mere Italian gallant; and Riche alone offers a hint for the great dramatic scene (V. i. 100-174) in which Olivia confronts Viola in the presence of Orsino and claims her as her husband. It may be added that another story in Riche's volume, "Of Two Brethren and their Wives," offers the only known parallel to any part of the Malvolio plot in a husband's attempt to reform a shrewish wife by locking her up "in a darke house" and pretending to the neighbors that she is lunatic. In 1608, a band of English actors performing at Gratz in Austria gave a play of which the outline is known only from a rough German version published in 1677 with the title, Tugend- und Liebesstreit (The Strife of Virtue and Love). This work, evidently based closely upon the Apolonius and Silla story of Riche, suggests the speculation whether in the case of Twelfth Night, as in so many of his other plays, Shakespeare may not have found his plot material already worked up into a crude drama when he approached it. The extant evidence, however, is too slight to admit of definite conclusions. The earliest evidence for the existence of any part of the drama dates from the following year, 1599, when the finest of the songs, "O mistress mine, where are you roaming," (II. iii.) was published in a musical miscellany, Morley's Consort Lessons. This by no means proves the existence of the play, for the songs introduced into Elizabethan dramas were very often not the original compositions of the dramatists. There is, indeed, pretty general agreement that the poor song with which Twelfth Night closes can hardly be by Shakespeare. Yet one would be sorry to deprive the poet of the charming lyric, "O mistress mine;" and there is no apparent reason to deny the possibility either that Twelfth Night may have been acted in 1599 or that a song of Shakespeare's may have become known a year or two before the presentation of the play in which it found its final place. In any case, an unusually satisfying piece of evidence proves that Twelfth Night was performed in February, 1602, and that it was then a relatively fresh play. John Manningham, a student of law in the Middle Temple, London, recorded in his diary, under date of February 2, 1601⁄2: “At our feast we had a play called "Twelfth Night, or What you Will,' much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practice in it to make the Steward believe his lady widow was in love with him, by counterfeiting a letter as from his lady in general terms, telling him what she liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparel, etc., and then when he came to practice making him believe they took him to be mad." An editor can hardly escape a feeling of shame and impatience at the necessity of giving so much space to the discussion of Shakespeare's indebtedness in a play which, when all is said, must be acknowledged as one of the most brilliantly original of the poet's works. The relationship discussed applies only This is conclusive proof of the existence of Twelfth to the rudimentary conception of four figures. Even Night at the beginning of the year which we call, for these four the humanizing traits and nearly all by modern reckoning, 1602. Nineteenth century inthe vivifying plot details are quite new; while for vestigations have carried a little farther Manningham's the rest of the play Shakespeare is indebted to no approximately correct indication of the play's source. one but himself. Except for the remote parallel The only obvious difference between the comedy dementioned in the preceding paragraph, no source of scribed by the diarist and that which we know lies any of the Malvolio business has been found; nor in the fact that in the former Olivia is said to be is there any pre-Shakespearean antecedent of Sir a "lady widow." This may easily be a misconception Toby, Sir Andrew, or Maria. In the two knights, in- due to her mourning for her brother's death; but it deed, the poet is simply continuing the great Falstaff is noteworthy that in Riche's novel Julina (Olivia) comedy of the slightly earlier Henry IV plays. The is actually in mourning for a deceased husband. It souls of Sir John, of Justice Shallow and Master would be quite in accord with what we know of the Slender have suffered metempsychosis, as it were, into careful revision Shakespeare gave the plays of his middle period, if he had introduced this change in the reason for Olivia's mourning-a change making for delicacy and romance-after he had seen his comedy presented on the stage. TEXT-The suggestion just made cannot be corroborated, for we have only one text of Twelfth Night; namely, that which appeared in the 1623 Folio of Shakespeare's plays and which represents the final theatrical version of the drama. This edition is very accurately printed, and the comedy would call for little textual criticism, if it were not for the intentionally mystifying nonsense of some of the speeches of Sir Andrew and the Clown. Macklin, the great Shylock of the eighteenth century, acted Malvolio at the Drury Lane Theater; on the latter occasion with Peg Woffington as Viola. The closing quarter of this century witnessed a number of great revivals of Twelfth Night; and it was the remembrance of these performances, when Bensley acted Malvolio, Mrs. Jordan Viola, and Dodd Aguecheek, that twenty-five years later inspired Charles Lamb's fine essay "On Some of the Old Actors." A revival at Edinburgh early in the nineteenth century was much praised both by Sir Walter Scott, who introduces an allusion to the actors of Sebastian and Viola into his novel of Waverley, and STAGE HISTORY-That Twelfth Night should by the great Shakespeare scholar, Dyce, who writes have been selected by the gentlemen of the Middle that Terry on this occasion presented Malvolio Temple for performance at their great feast in 1602 "much better than any one I have since seen in the is evidence of the contemporary regard for the play. part." At the Princess's Theater, London, Charles Canon Ainger speculates very interestingly upon the Kean produced Twelfth Night forty times during probability that Shakespeare himself took the part the season of 1850-51, much oftener than any other either of Malvolio or of Orsino on this occasion play of the season. The next notable London re(Shakespeare in the Middle Temple, English Illus-vival was that first given at the Lyceum Theater, trated Magazine, 1884, p. 373). On Easter Monday, July 8, 1884. On this occasion Ellen Terry acted 1618, two years after the poet's death, the comedy was Viola and Sir Henry Irving Malvolio. Miss Terry's presented at court before James I; and another court Viola was praised in the highest degree and it reperformance, under the title of Malvolio, was given mains one of the standard interpretations of the on Candlemas Day, 1623. In some commendatory rôle. On the whole, however, this revival was not verses prefixed to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's a success, perhaps from the ineffective presentation sonnets, Leonard Digges makes special allusion to of the comic parts of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the drawing power of Malvolio's part: the Clown. "The Cockpit, Galleries, Boxes, all are full, To hear Malvolio, that cross-garter'd gull." Twelfth Night appears to have been popular with Restoration audiences, though no play of Shakespeare is more opposed to Restoration taste. Pepys witnessed three performances in 1661, 1663, and 1668 respectively, drawn by the general concourse, as his diary records on the first occasion, "against my own mind and resolution." It is not surprising under the circumstances that he thought the comedy "silly" and "one of the weakest plays that ever I saw on the stage." Downes, however, writing of the same time in his Roscius Anglicanus (1708) reports: "Twelfth Night, or what you will; wrote by Mr. Shakespeare, had mighty success by its well performance: Sir Toby Belch, by Mr. Betterton.. All the parts being justly acted crown'd the play. Note, It was got up on purpose to be acted on Twelfth Night." About a score of revivals in London are recorded between the time of Pepys and the performance of the comedy at Covent Garden, November, 1820, "degraded to an opera." In 1741 and again in 1746, The only recorded American performance of the play during the eighteenth century was given at Boston, May 5, 1794. First acted in New York at the Park Theater, June, 1804, the play has since been almost as popular in that city, and as well performed, as in London. The most remarkable nineteenth-century performances in America have perhaps been those in which Viola was presented by Adelaide Neilson (1877-1880), by Madame Modjeska, and by Ada Rehan (1893). The very elaborate production of the play on the last occasion, under the management of Augustin Daly, called forth two excellent essays by William Winter (Shadows of the Stage, Third Series, p. 20-46). The recent stage history of this always actable and popular play includes a notable revival at the Hudson Theatre, New York, March, 1914, in which the Viola of Margaret Anglin and Sir Toby of Sidney Greenstreet were highly praised. In November of the same year an English actress, Miss Phyllis Neilson-Terry, produced Twelfth Night at the Liberty Theatre, New York; and in 1917 an interesting interpretation in French was given in the same city by the Vieux Colombier Company. Performances in America by the Sothern-Marlowe Company and in England by the Birmingham Repertory Players and by the company of Lillah McCarthy and Granville Barker met with great success. In November, 1918, Mr. Bernard Fagan presented the play at the Court Theatre, London, with Leah Bateman as Viola; and in March, 1922, it was produced by Miss Lillian Baylis at the "Old Vic." One of the most recent revivals opened at the Kingsway Theatre, London, in November, 1925, with Miss Dorothy Cheston as Viola. amusing exaggeration of the prevailing foibles of his characters, but in a way that they themselves, instead of being offended at, would almost join in to humor; he rather contrives opportunities for them to show themselves off in the happiest lights, than renders them contemptible in the perverse construction of the wit or malice of others. . . . This may be called the comedy of nature, and it is the comedy which we generally find in Shakespeare." for Maria and her rogueries; we feel a regard for Malvolio, and sympathize with his gravity, his smiles, his cross garters, his yellow stockings, and imprisonment in the stocks. But there is something that excites in us a stronger feeling than all this-it is Viola's confession of her love." "The great and secret charm of Twelfth Night," Hazlitt says truly, "is the character of Viola. Much CRITICAL COMMENT-"This play is in the as we like catches and cakes and ale, there is somegraver part elegant and easy," Dr. Johnson remarked thing that we like better. We have a friendship for rather ponderously, "and in some of the lighter | Sir Toby; we patronize Sir Andrew; we have an scenes exquisitely humorous." This praise he quali- understanding with the Clown, a sneaking kindness fies by adding that Aguecheek's character, though drawn with great propriety, is not "the proper prey of a satirist," and that the marriage of Olivia "wants credibility, and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of life." Hazlitt's criticism (Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 1817) is the best explanation Of Malvolio, whose rôle most of the great actors of those features of romantic comedy which puzzle have preferred to that of Sir Toby or Orsino, Charles or offend writers who judge the play, like Johnson, Lamb has written the finest appreciation (On Some by the rules of classic drama: "This is justly con- of the Old Actors, 1823): "Malvolio is not essentisidered as one of the most delightful of Shake-ally ludicrous. He becomes comic but by accident. speare's comedies. It is full of sweetness and He is cold, austere, repelling; but dignified, conpleasantry. It is perhaps too good-natured for comedy. It has little satire, and no spleen. It aims at the ludicrous rather than the ridiculous. It makes us laugh at the follies of mankind, not despise them, and still less bear any ill-will towards them. Shakespeare's comic genius resembles the bee rather in its power of extracting sweets from weeds or poisons, than in leaving a sting behind it. He gives the most sistent, and, for what appears, rather of an overstretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan; and he might have worn his gold chain with honor in one of our old round-head families, in the service of a Lambert, or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his manners are misplaced in Illyria. He is opposed to the proper levities of the piece, and falls in the unequal contest." B. |