The comedy of Twelfth Night; or, What You Will, was never printed,
that we know of, during the author's life. It first appeared in the
folio of 1623: consequently that edition, and the reprint of it in
1632, are our only authorities for the text. Fortunately, in this
instance, the original printing was very good for that time; the few
errors have proved, for the most part, easy of correction; so that the
text offers little matter of difficulty or disagreement among editors.
In default of positive information, this play was for a long time set
down as among the last-written of the Poet's dramas. This opinion was
based upon such slight indications, gathered from the work itself, as
could have no weight but in the absence of other proofs. No
contemporary notice of the play was discovered till the year 1828,
when Mr. Collier, delving among the "musty records of antiquity"
stored away in the Museum, lighted upon a manuscript _Diary_, written,
as was afterwards ascertained, by one John Manningham, a barrister who
was entered at the Middle Temple in 1597. Under date of February 2d,
1602, the author notes, "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 the Italian
called _Inganni_." The writer then goes on to state such particulars
of the action, as fully identify the play which he saw with the one
now under consideration. It seems that the benchers and members of the
several Inns-of-Court were wont to enrich their convivialities with a
course of wit and poetry. And the forecited notice ascertains that
Shakespeare's _Twelfth Night_ was performed before the members of the
Middle Temple on the old Church festival of the Purification, formerly
called Candlemas;--an important link in the course of festivities that
used to continue from Christmas to Shrovetide. We thus learn that one
of the Poet's sweetest plays was enjoyed by a gathering of his learned
and studious contemporaries, at a time when this annual jubilee had
rendered their minds congenial and apt, and when Christians have so
much cause to be happy and gentle and kind, and therefore to cherish
the convivial delectations whence kindness and happiness naturally
grow.
As to the date of the composition, we have little difficulty in fixing
this somewhere between the time when the play was acted at the Temple,
and the year 1598. In Act iii., scene 2, when Malvolio is at the
height of his ludicrous beatitude, Maria says of him, "He does smile
his face into more lines than are in the new map, with the
augmentation of the Indies." In 1598 was published an English version
of _Linschoten's Discourse of Voyages_, with a map exactly answering
to Maria's description. Nor is any such multilineal map known to have
appeared in England before that time. Besides, that was the first map
of the world, in which the _Eastern Islands_ were included. So that
the allusion can hardly be to any thing else; and the words _new map_
would seem to infer that the passage was written not long after the
appearance of the map in question.
Again: In Act iii., scene 1, the Clown says to Viola, "But, indeed,
words are very rascals, since bonds disgraced them." This may be
fairly understood as referring to an order issued by the Privy Council
in June, 1600, and laying very severe restrictions upon stage
performances. This order prescribes that "there shall be about the
city two houses and no more, allowed to serve for the use of common
stage plays"; that "the two several companies of players, assigned
unto the two houses allowed, may play each of them in their several
houses twice a-week, and no oftener"; and that "they shall forbear
altogether in the time of Lent, and likewise at such time and times as
any extraordinary sickness or infection of disease shall appear to be
in or about the city." The order was directed to the principal
magistrates of the city and suburbs, "strictly charging them to see
to the execution of the same"; and it is plain, that if rigidly
enforced it would have amounted almost to a total suppression of
play-houses, as the expenses of such establishments could hardly have
been met, in the face of so great drawbacks.
Therewithal it is to be noted that the Puritans were specially forward
and zealous in urging the complaints which put the Privy Council upon
issuing this stringent process; and it will hardly be questioned that
the character of Malvolio was partly meant as a satire on that
remarkable people. That the Poet should be somewhat provoked at their
action in bringing about such tight restraints upon the freedom of his
art, was certainly natural enough. Nor is it a small addition to their
many claims on our gratitude, that their aptness to "think, because
they were virtuous, there should be no more cakes and ale," had the
effect of calling forth so rich and withal so good-natured a piece of
retaliation. Perhaps it should be remarked further, that the order in
question, though solicited by the authorities of the city, was not
enforced; for even at that early date those magistrates had hit upon
the method of stimulating the complaints of discontented citizens till
orders were taken for removing the alleged grievances, and then of
letting such orders sleep, lest the enforcing of them should hush
those complaints, and thus take away all pretext for keeping up the
agitation.
* * * * *
The story upon which the more serious parts of _Twelfth Night_ were
founded appears to have been a general favourite before and during
Shakespeare's time. It is met with in various forms and under various
names in the Italian, French, and English literature of that period.
The earliest form of it known to us is in Bandello's collection of
novels. From the Italian of Bandello it was transferred, with certain
changes and abridgments, into the French of Belleforest, and makes one
in his collection of _Tragical Histories_. From one or the other of
these sources the tale was borrowed again by Barnabe Rich, and set
forth as _The History of Apolonius and Silla_, making the second in
his collection of tales entitled _Farewell to the Military
Profession_, which was first printed in 1581.
Until the discovery of Manningham's _Diary_, Shakespeare was not
supposed to have gone beyond these sources, and it was thought
something uncertain to which of these he was most indebted for the raw
material of his play. It is now held doubtful whether he drew from
either of them. The passage I have quoted from that _Diary_ notes a
close resemblance of _Twelfth Night_ to an Italian play "called
_Inganni_." This has had the effect of directing attention to the
Italian theatre in quest of his originals. Two comedies bearing the
title of _Gl' Inganni_ have been found, both of them framed upon the
novel of Bandello, and both in print before the date of _Twelfth
Night_. These, as also the three forms of the tale mentioned above,
all agree in having a brother and sister, the latter in male attire,
and the two bearing so close a resemblance in person and dress as to
be indistinguishable; upon which circumstance some of the leading
incidents are made to turn. In one of the Italian plays, the sister is
represented as assuming the name of _Cesare_; which is so like
_Cesario_, the name adopted by Viola in her disguise, that the one may
well be thought to have suggested the other. Beyond this point,
_Twelfth Night_ shows no clear connection with either of those plays.
But there is a third Italian comedy, also lately brought to light,
entitled _Gl' Ingannati_, which is said to have been first printed in
1537. Here the traces of indebtedness are much clearer and more
numerous. I must content myself with abridging the Rev. Joseph
Hunter's statement of the matter. In the Italian play, a brother and
sister, named Fabritio and Lelia, are separated at the sacking of Rome
in 1527. Lelia is carried to Modena, where a gentleman resides, named
Flamineo, to whom she was formerly attached. She disguises herself as
a boy, and enters his service. Flamineo, having forgotten his Lelia,
is making suit to Isabella, a lady of Modena. The disguised Lelia is
employed by him in his love-suit to Isabella, who remains utterly deaf
to his passion, but falls desperately in love with the messenger. In
the third Act the brother Fabritio arrives at Modena, and his close
resemblance to Lelia in her male attire gives rise to some ludicrous
mistakes. At one time, a servant of Isabella's meets him in the
street, and takes him to her house, supposing him to be the messenger;
just as Sebastian is taken for Viola, and led to the house of Olivia.
In due time, the needful recognitions take place, whereupon Isabella
easily transfers her affection to Fabritio, and Flamineo's heart no
less easily ties up with the loving and faithful Lelia. In her
disguise, Lelia takes the name of _Fabio_; hence, most likely, the
name of Fabian, who figures as one of Olivia's servants. The Italian
play has also a subordinate character called Pasquella, to whom Maria
corresponds; and another named _Malevolti_, of which _Malvolio_ is a
happy adaptation. All which fully establishes the connection between
the Italian comedy and the English. But it does not follow necessarily
that the foreign original was used by Shakespeare; so much of the
lighter literature of his time having perished, that we cannot affirm
with any certainty what importations from Italy may or may not have
been accessible to him in his native tongue.
As for the more comic portions of _Twelfth Night_,--those in which Sir
Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and the Clown figure so
delectably,--we have no reason for believing that any part of them was
borrowed; there being no hints or traces of any thing like them in the
previous versions of the story, or in any other book or writing known
to us. And it is to be observed, moreover, that the Poet's borrowings,
in this instance as in others, relate only to the plot of the work,
the poetry and character being all his own; and that, here as
elsewhere, he used what he took merely as the canvas whereon to pencil
out and express the breathing creatures of his mind. So that the
whole workmanship is just as original, in the only right sense of that
term, as if the story and incidents had been altogether the children
of his own invention; and he but followed his usual custom of so
ordering his work as to secure whatever benefit might accrue from a
sort of pre-established harmony between his subject and the popular
mind.
* * * * *
I am quite at a loss to conceive why _Twelfth Night_ should ever have
been referred to the Poet's latest period of authorship. The play
naturally falls, by the internal notes of style, temper, and poetic
grain, into the middle period of his productive years. It has no such
marks of vast but immature powers as are often met with in his earlier
plays; nor, on the other hand, any of "that intense idiosyncrasy of
thought and expression,--that unparalleled fusion of the intellectual
with the passionate,"--which distinguishes his later ones. Every thing
is calm and quiet, with an air of unruffled serenity and composure
about it, as if the Poet had purposely taken to such matter as he
could easily mould into graceful and entertaining forms; thus
exhibiting none of that crushing muscularity of mind to which the
hardest materials afterwards or elsewhere became as limber and pliant
as clay in the hands of a potter. Yet the play has a marked severity
of taste; the style, though by no means so great as in some others, is
singularly faultless; the graces of wit and poetry are distilled into
it with indescribable delicacy, as if they came from a hand at once
the most plentiful and the most sparing: in short, the work is
everywhere replete with "the modest charm of not too much"; its
beauty, like that of the heroine, being of the still, deep, retiring
sort, which it takes one long to find, forever to exhaust, and which
can be fully caught only by the reflective imagination in "the quiet
and still air of delightful studies." Thus all things are disposed in
most happy keeping with each other, and tempered in the blandest
proportion of Art; so as to illustrate how
"Grace, laughter, and discourse may meet,
And yet the beauty not go less;
For what is noble should be sweet."
If the characters of this play are generally less interesting in
themselves than some we meet with elsewhere in the Poet's works, the
defect is pretty well made up by the felicitous grouping of them.
Their very diversities of temper and purpose are made to act as so
many mutual affinities; and this too in a manner so spontaneous that
we see not how they could possibly act otherwise. For broad comic
effect, the cluster of which Sir Toby is the centre--all of them drawn
in clear yet delicate colours--is inferior only to the unparalleled
assemblage that makes rich the air of Eastcheap. Of Sir Toby
himself--that most whimsical, madcap, frolicsome old toper, so full of
antics and fond of sprees, with a plentiful stock of wit, which is
kept in motion by an equally plentiful lack of money--it is enough to
say, with our Mr. Verplanck, that "he certainly comes out of the same
associations where the Poet saw Falstaff hold his revels"; and that,
though "not Sir John, nor a fainter sketch of him, yet he has an odd
sort of a family likeness to him." Sir Toby has a decided _penchant_
for practical jokes; though rather because he takes a sort of
disinterested pleasure in them, than because he loves to see himself
in the process of engineering them through: for he has not a particle
of ill-nature in him. Though by no means a coward himself, he
nevertheless enjoys the exposure of cowardice in others; yet this
again is not so much because such exposure feeds his self-esteem, as
because he delights in the game for its own sake, and for the nimble
pastime it yields to his faculties: that is, his impulses seem to rest
in it as an ultimate object, or a part of what is to him the _summum
bonum_ of life. And it is much the same with his addiction to vinous
revelry, and to the moister kind of minstrelsy; an addiction that
proceeds in part from his keen gust of fun, and the happiness he
finds in making sport for others as well as for himself: he will drink
till the world turns round, but not unless others are at hand to enjoy
the turning along with him.
* * * * *
Sir Andrew Aguecheek, the aspiring, lackadaisical, self-satisfied echo
and sequel of Sir Toby, fitly serves the double purpose of a butt and
a foil to the latter, at once drawing him out and setting him off.
Ludicrously proud of the most petty, childish irregularities, which,
however, his natural fatuity keeps him from acting, and barely suffers
him to affect, on this point he reminds us of that impressive
imbecility, Abraham Slender; yet not in such sort as to encroach at
all on Slender's province. There can scarcely be found a richer piece
of diversion than Sir Toby's practice in dandling Sir Andrew out of
his money, and paying him off with the odd hope of gaining Olivia's
hand. And the funniest of it is, that while Sir Toby understands him
thoroughly he has not himself the slightest suspicion or inkling of
what he is; he being as confident of his own wit as others are of his
want of it. Nor are we here touched with any revulsions of moral
feeling, such as might disturb our enjoyment of their fellowship; on
the contrary, we sympathize with Sir Toby's sport, without any
reluctances of virtue or conscience. To our sense of the matter, he
neither has nor ought to have any scruples or compunctions about the
game he is hunting. For, in truth, his dealing with Sir Andrew is all
in the way of fair exchange. He gives as much pleasure as he gets. If
he is cheating Sir Andrew out of his money, he is also cheating him
into the proper felicity of his nature, and thus paying him with the
equivalent best suited to his capacity. It suffices that, in being
stuffed with the preposterous delusion about Olivia, Sir Andrew is
rendered supremely happy at the time; while he manifestly has not
force enough to remember it with any twinges of shame or
self-reproach. And we feel that, while clawing his fatuous crotchets
and playing out his absurdities, Sir Toby is really doing Sir Andrew
no wrong, since the latter is then most himself, is in his happiest
mood, and in the most natural freedom of his indigenous gifts and
graces. All which quite precludes any division of our sympathies, and
just makes our comic enjoyment of their intercourse simply perfect.
* * * * *
Malvolio, the self-love-sick Steward, has hardly had justice done him,
his bad qualities being indeed of just the kind to defeat the
recognition of his good ones. He represents a perpetual class of
people, whose leading characteristic is moral demonstrativeness, and
who are never satisfied with a law that leaves them free to do right,
unless it also give them the power to keep others from doing wrong. To
quote again from Mr. Verplanck, Malvolio embodies "a conception as
true as it is original and droll; and its truth may still be
frequently attested by comparison with real Malvolios, to be found
everywhere from humble domestic life up to the high places of
learning, of the State, and even of the Church." From the central idea
of the character it follows in course that the man has too much
conscience to mind his own business, and is too pure to tolerate mirth
in others, because too much swollen and stiffened with self-love to be
merry himself. His highest exhilaration is when he contemplates the
image of his self-imputed virtues: he lives so entranced with the
beauty of his own inward parts, that he would fain hold himself the
wrong side out, to the end that all the world may duly appreciate and
admire him. Naturally, too, the more he hangs over his own moral
beauty, the more pharisaical and sanctimonious he becomes in his
opinion and treatment of others. For the glass which magnifies to his
view whatever of good there may be in himself, also serves him as an
inverted telescope to _minify_ the good of those about him; and, which
is more, the self-same spirit that prompts him to invert the
instrument upon other men's virtues, naturally moves him to turn the
big end upon their faults and the small end upon his own. Of course,
therefore, he is never without food for censure and reproof save when
he is alone with himself, where, to be sure, his intense consciousness
of virtue just breathes around him "the air of Paradise." Thus his
continual frothing over with righteous indignation all proceeds from
the yeast of pride and self-importance working mightily within him.
Maria, whose keen eye and sure tongue seldom fail to hit the white of
the mark, describes him as not being "any thing constantly, but a
time-pleaser." And it is remarkable that the emphasized moral rigidity
of such men is commonly but the outside of a mind secretly intent on
the service of the time, and caring little for any thing but to trim
its sails to the winds of self-interest and self-advancement. Yet
Malvolio is really a man of no little talent and accomplishment, as he
is also one of marked skill, fidelity, and rectitude in his calling;
so that he would be a right worthy person all round, but for his
inordinate craving
"to be dress'd in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
As who should say, _I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark_."
This overweening moral coxcombry is not indeed to be reckoned among
the worst of crimes; but perhaps there is no other one fault so
generally or so justly offensive, and therefore none so apt to provoke
the merciless retaliations of mockery and practical wit.
* * * * *
Maria, the little structure packed so close with mental spicery, has
read Malvolio through and through; she knows him without and within;
and she never speaks of him, but that her speech touches the very pith
of the theme; as when she describes him to be one "that cons State
without book, and utters it by great swaths; the best-persuaded of
himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellences, that it is his
ground of faith that all who look on him love him." Her quaint
stratagem of the letter has and is meant to have the effect of
disclosing to others what her keener insight has long since
discovered; and its working lifts her into a model of arch, roguish
mischievousness, with wit to plan and art to execute whatsoever falls
within the scope of such a character. Her native sagacity has taught
her how to touch him in just the right spots to bring out the reserved
or latent notes of his character. Her diagnosis of his inward state is
indeed perfect; and when she makes the letter instruct him,--"Be
opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang
arguments of State; put thyself into the trick of singularity,"--her
arrows are so aimed as to cleave the pin of his most characteristic
predispositions.
The scenes where the waggish troop, headed by this "noble
gull-catcher" and "most excellent devil of wit," bewitch Malvolio into
"a contemplative idiot," practising upon his vanity and conceit till
he seems ready to burst with an ecstasy of self-consequence, and they
"laugh themselves into stitches" over him, are almost painfully
diverting. It is indeed sport to see him "jet under his advanced
plumes"; and during this part of the operation our hearts freely keep
time with theirs who are tickling out his buds into full-blown
thoughts: at length, however, when he is under treatment as a madman,
our delight in his exposure passes over into commiseration of his
distress, and we feel a degree of resentment towards his ingenious
persecutors. The Poet, no doubt, meant to push the joke upon him so
far as to throw our sympathies over on his side, and make us take his
part. For his character is such that perhaps nothing but excessive
reprisals on his vanity and conceit could make us do justice to his
real worth.
* * * * *
The shrewd, mirth-loving Fabian, who in greedy silence devours up fun,
tasting it too far down towards his knees to give any audible sign of
the satisfaction it yields him, is an apt and willing agent in
putting the stratagem through. If he does nothing towards inventing or
cooking up the repast, he is at least a happy and genial partaker of
the banquet that others have prepared.--Feste, the jester, completes
this illustrious group of laughing and laughter-moving personages.
Though not, perhaps, quite so wise a fellow as Touchstone, of
_As-You-Like-It_ memory, nor endowed with so fluent and racy a fund of
humour, he nevertheless has enough of both to meet all the demands of
his situation. If, on the one hand, he never launches the ball of fun,
neither, on the other, does he ever fail to do his part towards
keeping it rolling. On the whole, he has a sufficiently facile and
apposite gift at jesting out philosophy, and moralizing the scenes
where he moves; and whatever he has in that line is perfectly original
with him. It strikes me, withal, as a rather note-worthy circumstance
that both the comedy and the romance of the play meet together in him,
as in their natural home. He is indeed a right jolly fellow; no note
of mirth springs up but he has answering susceptibilities for it to
light upon; but he also has at the same time a delicate vein of tender
pathos in him; as appears by the touchingly-plaintive song he sings,
which, by the way, is one of
"The very sweetest Fancy culls or frames,
Where _tenderness_ of heart is strong and deep."
I am not supposing this to be the measure of his lyrical invention,
for the song probably is not of his making; but the selection marks at
least the setting of his taste, or rather the tuning of his soul, and
thus discovers a choice reserve of feeling laid up in his breast.
* * * * *
Such are the scenes, such the characters that enliven Olivia's mansion
during the play: Olivia herself, calm, cheerful, of "smooth, discreet,
and stable bearing," hovering about them; sometimes unbending, never
losing her dignity among them; often checking, oftener enjoying their
merry-makings, and occasionally emerging from her seclusion to be
plagued by the Duke's message and bewitched by his messenger: and
Viola, always perfect in her part, yet always shrinking from it,
appearing among them from time to time on her embassies of love;
sometimes a partaker, sometimes a provoker, sometimes the victim of
their mischievous sport.
All this array of comicalities, exhilarating as it is in itself, is
rendered doubly so by the frequent changes and playings-in of poetry
breathed from the sweetest spots of romance, and which "gives a very
echo to the seat where Love is thron'd"; ideas and images of beauty
creeping and stealing over the mind with footsteps so soft and
delicate that we scarce know what touches us,--the motions of one that
had learned to tread
"As if the wind, not he, did walk,
Nor press'd a flower, nor bow'd a stalk."
Upon this portion of the play Hazlitt has some spirited remarks: "We
have a friendship for Sir Toby; we patronize Sir Andrew; we have an
understanding with the Clown, a sneaking kindness 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: but there is something that excites in us a stronger
feeling than all this."
* * * * *
Olivia is a considerable instance how much a fair and candid
setting-forth may do to render an ordinary person attractive, and
shows that for the homebred comforts and fireside tenour of life such
persons after all are apt to be the best. Nor, though something
commonplace in her make-up, such as the average of cultivated
womanhood is always found to be, is she without bright and penetrative
thoughts, whenever the occasion calls for them. Her reply to the
Steward, when, by way of scorching the Clown, he "marvels that her
ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal," gives the true
texture of her mind and moral frame: "O, you are sick of self-love,
Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite. To be generous,
guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for
bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. There is no slander in an
allowed Fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known
discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove." Practical wisdom
enough to make the course of any household run smooth! The instincts
of a happy, placid temper have taught Olivia that there is as little
of Christian virtue as of natural benignity in stinging away the
spirit of kindness with a tongue of acid and acrimonious pietism. Her
firm and healthy pulse beats in sympathy with the sportiveness in
which the proper decorum of her station may not permit her to bear an
active part. And she is too considerate, withal, not to look with
indulgence on the pleasantries that are partly meant to divert her
thoughts, and air off a too vivid remembrance of her recent sorrows.
Besides, she has gathered, even under the discipline of her own
afflictions, that as, on the one hand, "what Nature makes us mourn she
bids us heal," so, on the other, the free hilarities of wit and
humour, even though there be something of nonsense mixed up with them,
are a part of that "bland philosophy of life" which helps to knit us
up in the unions of charity and peace; that they promote cheerfulness
of temper, smooth down the lines of care, sweeten away the asperities
of the mind, make the eye sparkling and lustrous; and, in short, do
much of the very best stitching in the embroidered web of friendship
and fair society. So that she finds abundant motive in reason, with no
impediment in religion, to refrain from spoiling the merry passages of
her friends and servants by looking black or sour upon them.
Olivia is manifestly somewhat inclined to have her own way. But then
it must also be acknowledged that her way is pretty apt to be right.
This wilfulness, or something that borders upon it, is shown alike in
her impracticability to the Duke's solicitations, and in her
pertinacity in soliciting his messenger. And it were well worth the
while to know, if we could, how one so perverse in certain spots can
manage notwithstanding to be so agreeable as a whole. Then too, if it
seems rather naughty in her that she does not give the Duke a better
chance to try his power upon her, she gets pretty well paid in falling
a victim to the eloquence which her obstinacy stirs up. Nor is it
altogether certain whether her conduct springs from a pride that will
not listen where her fancy is not taken, or from an unambitious
modesty that prefers not to "match above her degree." Her "beauty
truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand
laid on," saves the credit of the fancy-smitten Duke in such an
urgency of suit as might else breed some question of his manliness;
while her winning infirmity, as expressed in the tender violence with
which she hastens on "a contract and eternal bond of love" with the
astonished and bewildered Sebastian, "that her most jealous and too
doubtful soul may live at peace," shows how well the sternness of the
brain may be tempered into amiability by the meekness of womanhood.
Manifold indeed are the attractions which the Poet has shed upon his
heroes and heroines; yet perhaps the learned spirit of the man is more
wisely apparent in the home-keeping virtues and unobtrusive beauty of
his average characters. And surely the contemplation of Olivia may
well suggest the question, whether the former be not sometimes too
admirable to be so instructive as those whose graces walk more in the
light of common day. At all events, the latter may best admonish us,
"How Verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth."
Similar thoughts might aptly enough be suggested by the Duke, who,
without any very splendid or striking qualities, manages somehow to be
a highly agreeable and interesting person. His character is merely
that of an accomplished gentleman, enraptured at the touch of music,
and the sport of thick-thronging fancies. It is plain that Olivia has
only enchanted his imagination, not won his heart; though he is not
himself aware that such is the case. This fancy-sickness--for it
appears to be nothing else--naturally renders him somewhat capricious
and fantastical, "unstaid and skittish in his motions"; and, but for
the exquisite poetry which it inspires him to utter, would rather
excite our mirth than enlist our sympathy. To use an illustration from
another play, Olivia is not so much his Juliet as his Rosalind; and
perhaps a secret persuasion to that effect is the real cause of her
rejecting his suit. Accordingly, when he sees her placed beyond his
hope, he has no more trouble about her; but turns, and builds a true
affection where, during the preoccupancy of his imagination, so many
sweet and tender appeals have been made to his heart.
In Shakespeare's delineations as in nature, we may commonly note that
love, in proportion as it is deep and genuine, is also inward and
reserved. To be voluble, to be fond of spreading itself in discourse,
or of airing itself in the fineries of speech, seems indeed quite
against the instinct of that passion; and its best eloquence is when
it ties up the tongue, and _steals_ out in other modes of expression,
the flushing of the cheeks and the mute devotion of the eyes. In its
purest forms, it is apt to be a secret even unto itself, the subjects
of it knowing indeed that something ails them, but not knowing exactly
what. So that the most effective love-making is involuntary and
unconscious. And I suspect that, as a general thing, if the true
lover's passion be not returned before it is spoken, it stands little
chance of being returned at all.
Now, in Orsino's case, the passion, or whatever else it may be, is too
much without to be thoroughly sound within. Like Malvolio's virtue, it
is too glass-gazing, too much enamoured of its own image, and renders
him too apprehensive that it will be the death of him, if disappointed
of its object. Accordingly he talks too much about it, and his
talking about it is too ingenious withal; it makes his tongue run
glib and fine with the most charming divisions of poetic imagery and
sentiment; all which shrewdly infers that he lacks the genuine thing,
and has mistaken something else for it. Yet, when we hear him dropping
such riches as this,--
"O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purg'd the air of pestilence!"
and this,--
"She that hath a heart of that fine frame
To pay this debt of love but to a brother,
How will she love when the rich golden shaft
Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else
That live in her!"--
we can hardly help wishing that such were indeed the true vernacular
of that passion. But it is not so, and on the whole it is much better
than so: for love, that which is rightly so called, uses a diviner
language even than that; and this it does when, taking the form of
religion, it sweetly and silently embodies itself in deeds. And this
is the love that Southey had in mind when he wrote,--
"They sin who tell us love can die."
In Viola, divers things that were else not a little scattered are
thoroughly composed; her character being the unifying power that draws
all the parts into true dramatic consistency. Love-taught herself, it
was for her to teach both Orsino and Olivia how to love: indeed she
plays into all the other parts, causing them to embrace and cohere
within the compass of her circulation. And yet, like some subtile
agency, working most where we perceive it least, she does all this
without rendering herself a special prominence in the play.
It is observable that the Poet has left it uncertain whether Viola was
in love with the Duke before assuming her disguise, or whether her
heart was won afterwards by reading "the book even of his secret soul"
while wooing another. Nor does it much matter whether her passion
were the motive or the consequence of her disguise, since in either
case such a man as Olivia describes him to be might well find his way
to tougher hearts than Viola's. But her love has none of the
skittishness and unrest which mark the Duke's passion for Olivia:
complicated out of all the elements of her being, it is strong without
violence; never mars the innate modesty of her character; is deep as
life, tender as infancy, pure, peaceful, and unchangeable as truth.
Mrs. Jameson--who, with the best right to know what belongs to woman,
unites a rare talent for taking others along with her, and letting
them see the choice things which her apprehensive eye discerns, and
who, in respect of Shakespeare's heroines, has left little for others
to do but quote her words--remarks that "in Viola a sweet
consciousness of her feminine nature is for ever breaking through her
masquerade: she plays her part well, but never forgets, nor allows us
to forget, that she is playing a part." And, sure enough, every thing
about her save her dress "is semblative a woman's part": she has none
of the assumption of a pert, saucy, waggish manhood, which so delights
us in Rosalind in _As You Like It_; but she has that which, if not
better in itself, is more becoming in her,--"the inward and spiritual
grace of modesty" pervading all she does and says. Even in her
railleries with the comic characters there is all the while an
instinctive drawing-back of female delicacy, touching our sympathies,
and causing us to feel most deeply what she is, when those with whom
she is playing least suspect her to be other than she seems. And the
same is true concerning her passion, of which she never so speaks as
to compromise in the least the delicacies and proprieties of her sex;
yet she lets fall many things from which the Duke easily gathers the
drift and quality of her feelings directly he learns what she is. But
the great charm of her character lies in a moral rectitude so perfect
and so pure as to be a secret unto itself; a clear, serene composure
of truth, mingling so freely and smoothly with the issues of life,
that while, and perhaps even because she is herself unconscious of it,
she is never once tempted to abuse or to shirk her trust, though it be
to play the attorney in a cause that makes so much against herself. In
this respect she presents an instructive contrast to Malvolio, who has
much virtue indeed, yet not so much but that the counter-pullings have
rendered him intensely conscious of it, and so drawn him into the
vice, at once hateful and ridiculous, of moral pride. The virtue that
fosters conceit and censoriousness is like a dyspeptic stomach, the
owner of which is made all too sensible of it by the conversion of his
food to wind,--a wind that puffs him up. On the other hand, a virtue
that breathes so freely as not to be aware of its breathing is the
right moral analogue of a thoroughly eupeptic state; as "the healthy
know not of their health, but only the sick."
Sundry critics have censured, some of them pretty sharply, the
improbability involved in the circumstance of Viola and Sebastian
resembling each other so closely as to be mistaken the one for the
other. Even so just and liberal a critic as Hallam has stumbled at
this circumstance, so much so as quite to disconcert his judgment of
the play. The improbability is indeed palpable enough; yet I have to
confess that it has never troubled me, any more than certain things
not less improbable in _As You Like It_. But even if it had, still I
should not hold it any just ground for faulting the Poet, inasmuch as
the circumstance was an accepted article in the literary faith of his
time. But indeed this censure proceeds from that old heresy which
supposes the proper effect of a work of art to depend on the imagined
reality of the matter presented; that is, which substitutes the
delusions of insanity for the half-voluntary illusions of a rational
and refining pleasure.
* * * * *
Of Sebastian himself the less need be said, forasmuch as the leading
traits of his character, in my conception of it, have been
substantially evolved in what I have said of his sister. For the two
are really as much alike in the inward texture of their souls as in
their visible persons; at least their mutual resemblance in the former
respect is as close as were compatible with proper manliness in the
one, and proper womanliness in the other. Personal bravery, for
example, is as characteristic of him as modesty is of her. In
simplicity, in gentleness, in rectitude, in delicacy of mind, and in
all the particulars of what may be termed complexional harmony and
healthiness of nature,--in these they are as much twins as in birth
and feature. Therewithal they are both alike free from any notes of a
pampered self-consciousness. Yet in all these points a nice
discrimination of the masculine and feminine proprieties is everywhere
maintained. In a word, there is no confusion of sex in the delineation
of them: as like as they are, without and within, the man and the
woman are nevertheless perfectly differentiated in all the essential
attributes of each.
The conditions of the plot did not require nor even permit Sebastian
to be often or much in sight. We have indeed but little from him, but
that little is intensely charged with significance; in fact, I hardly
know of another instance in Shakespeare where so much of character is
accomplished in so few words. The scene where he is first met with
consists merely of a brief dialogue between him and Antonio, the man
who a little before has recovered him from the perils of shipwreck. He
there has neither time nor heart for any thing but gratitude to his
deliverer, and sorrow at the supposed death of his sister: yet his
expression of these is so ordered as to infer all the parts of a
thorough gentleman; the efficacies of a generous nature, of good
breeding, of liberal culture, and of high principle, all concurring in
one result, and thus filling up the right idea of politeness as
"benevolence guided by intelligence."
The society delineated in this play is singularly varied and
composite; the names of the persons being a mixture Of Spanish,
Italian, and English. Though the scene is laid in Illyria, the period
of the action is undefined, and the manners and costumes are left in
the freedom of whatever time we may choose antecedent to that of the
composition, provided we do not exceed the proper limits of
imaginative reason.
This variety in the grouping of the persons, whether so intended or
not, very well accords with the spirit in which, or the occasion for
which, the title indicates the play to have been written. Twelfth Day,
anciently so called as being the twelfth after Christmas, is the day
whereon the Church has always kept the feast of "The Epiphany, or the
Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles." So that, in preparing a
Twelfth-Night entertainment, the idea of fitness might aptly suggest,
that national lines and distinctions should be lost in the paramount
ties of a common Religion; and that people the most diverse in kindred
and tongue should draw together in the sentiment of "one Lord, one
Faith, one Baptism"; their social mirth thus relishing of universal
Brotherhood.
The general scope and plan of _Twelfth Night, as a work of art_, is
hinted in its second title; all the comic elements being, as it were,
thrown out simultaneously, and held in a sort of equipoise; so that
the readers are left to fix the preponderance where it best suits
their several bent or state of mind, and each, within certain limits
and conditions, may take the work in _what sense he will_. For, where
no special prominence is given to any one thing, there is the wider
scope for individual aptitude or preference, and the greater freedom
for each to select for virtual prominence such parts as will best knit
in with what is uppermost in his thoughts.
The significance of the title is further traceable in a peculiar
spontaneousness running through the play. Replete as it is with
humours and oddities, they all seem to spring up of their own accord;
the comic characters being free alike from disguises and pretensions,
and seeking merely to let off their inward redundancy; caring nothing
at all whether everybody or nobody sees them, so they may have their
whim out, and giving utterance to folly and nonsense simply because
they cannot help it. Thus their very deformities have a certain grace,
since they are genuine and of Nature's planting: absurdity and
whimsicality are indigenous to the soil, and shoot up in free, happy
luxuriance, from the life that is in them. And by thus setting the
characters out in their happiest aspects, the Poet contrives to make
them simply ludicrous and diverting, instead of putting upon them the
constructions of wit or spleen, and thereby making them ridiculous or
contemptible. Hence it is that we so readily enter into a sort of
fellowship with them; their foibles and follies being shown up in such
a spirit of good-humour, that the subjects themselves would rather
join with us in laughing than be angered or hurt at the exhibition.
Moreover the high and the low are here seen moving in free and
familiar intercourse, without any apparent consciousness of their
respective ranks: the humours and comicalities of the play keep
running and frisking in among the serious parts, to their mutual
advantage; the connection between them being of a kind to be felt, not
described.
Thus the piece overflows with the genial, free-and-easy spirit of a
merry Twelfth Night. Chance, caprice, and intrigue, it is true, are
brought together in about equal portions; and their meeting and
crossing and mutual tripping cause a deal of perplexity and confusion,
defeating the hopes of some, suspending those of others: yet here, as
is often the case in actual life, from this conflict of opposites
order and happiness spring up as the final result: if what we call
accident thwart one cherished purpose, it draws on something better,
blighting a full-blown expectation now, to help the blossoming of a
nobler one hereafter: and it so happens in the end that all the
persons but two either have _what they will_, or else grow willing to
have what comes to their hands.
Such, I believe, as nearly as I know how to deliver it, is the
impression I hold of this charming play; an impression that has
survived, rather say, has kept growing deeper and deeper through many
years of study, and after many, many an hour spent in quiet communion
with its scenes and characters. In no one of his dramas, to my sense,
does the Poet appear to have been in a healthier or happier frame of
mind, more free from the fascination of the darker problems of
humanity, more at peace with himself and all the world, or with Nature
playing more kindly and genially at his heart, and from thence
diffusing her benedictions through his whole establishment. So that,
judging from this transpiration of his inner poetic life, I should
conclude him to have had abundant cause for saying,--
"Eternal blessings on the Muse,
And her divine employment;--
The blameless Muse who trains her sons
For hope and calm enjoyment."