Perhaps, then, it may not be thought a very improbable conjecture, that this comedy was written in the summer of 1612, and produced on the stage in the latter-end of that year; and that the author availed himself of a circumstance then fresh in the minds of his audience, by affixing a title to it, which was more likely to excite curiosity than any other that he could have chosen, while at the same time it was sufficiently justified by the subject of the drama.

Mr. Steevens, in his observations on this play, has quoted from the tragedy of Darius by the earl of Sterline, first printed in 1603, some lines * so strongly

"Let greatness of her glassy sceptres vaunt,

resembling

"Not sceptres, no but reeds, soon bruis'd, soon

broken,

"And let this worldly pomp our wits enchant,

66

All fades, and scarcely leaves behind a token. "Those golden palaces, those gorgeous halls,

"With furniture superfluously fair,

"Those stately courts, those sky-encount'ring walls,

"Evanish all like vapours in the air."

Darius, A& III. Ed. 1603.

"These our actors,

"As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
"Are melted into air, into thin air;
"And, like the baseless fabrick of this vision,
"The cloud-capt tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
"The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

resembling a celebrated passage in The Tempest, that one author must, I apprehend, have been indebted to the other. Shakspere, I imagine, borrowed from lord Sterline*.

Mr. Holt conjectured †, that the masque in the fifth act of this comedy was intended by the poet as a compliment to the Earl of Essex, on his being united in wedlock, in 1611, to lady Frances Howard, to whom he had been contracted some years before 1. However this might have been, the date, which that commentator has assigned to this play (1614), is certainly too late; for it appears from the MSS. of Mr. Vertue, that the Tempest was acted by John Heminge

"Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
"And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
"Leave not a rack behind."

Tempest, A& IV. Sc. i.

Whether we suppose Shakspere to have imitated lord Sterline, or lord Sterline to have borrowed from him, the fourth line above quoted from the tragedy of Darius renders it highly probable that Shakspere wrote,

"Leave not a track behind."

*See a note on Julius Cæsar, A& I. Sc. i.

+ Observations on the Tempest, p. 67. Mr. Holt imagined, that lord Essex was united to lady Fr. rces Howard in 1610; but he was mistaken; their union did not take place till the next year.

Jan. 5, 1606—7. The carl continued abroad four years from that time; so that he did not cohabit with his wife till 1611,

and

and the rest of the King's Company, before prince Charles, the lady Elizabeth, and the prince Palatine elector, in the beginning of the year 1613.

The names of Trinculo and Antonio, two of the characters in this comedy, are likewise found in that of Albumazar; which was first printed in 1614, but is supposed by Dryden to have appeared some years before.

36. TWELFTH NIGHT, 1614.

It has been generally believed, that Shakspere retired from the theatre, and ceased to write, about three years before he died. The latter supposition must now be considered as extremely doubtful; for Mr. Tyrwhitt, with great probability, conjectures, that Twelfth Night was written in 1614: grounding his opinion on an allusion*, which it seems to contain, to those parliamentary undertakers, of whom frequent mention is made in the Journals of the House of Commons for that year†; who were stigmatized with this invidious name, on account of their having undertaken to inanage the elections of knights and burgesses, in such a manner as to secure a majority in parliament for the court. If this allusion was intended, Twelfth

"Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you." See Twelfth Night, Act IV. Sc. iii. and the note there.

+ Comm. Journ, Vol. I. p. 456, 457, 470.

Night was probably our author's last production; and, we may presume, was written after he had retired to Stratford. It is observable, that Mr. Ashley, a meinber of the House of Commons, in one of the debates on this subject, says, "that the rumour concerning these undertakers had spread into the country."

When Shakspere quitted London and his profession, for the tranquillity of a rural retirement, it is improbable that such an excursive genius should have been immediately reconciled to a state of mental inactivity. It is more natural to conceive, that he should have occasionally bent his thoughts towards the theatre, which his muse had supported, and the interest of his associates whom he had left behind him, to struggle with the capricious vicissitudes of publick taste, and whom, his last Will shews us, he had not forgotten. To the necessity, therefore, of literary amusement to every cultivated mind, or to the dictates of friendship, or to both these incentives, we are, perhaps, indebted for the comedy of Twelfth Night; which bears evident marks of having been composed at leisure, as most of the characters that it contains are finished to a higher degree of dramatick perfection, than is discoverable in some of our author's earlier comick performances *.

* The comedies particularly alluded to are, Love's Labour Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Comedy of Errors.

In the third act of this comedy, Decker's Westward Hoe seems to be alluded to. Westward Hoe was printed in 1607, and, from the prologue to Eastward Hoe, appears to have been acted in 1604, or before.

Maria, in Twelfth Night, speaking of Malvolio, says, "he does smile his face into more lines than the new map with the augmentation of the Indies." I have not been able to learn the date of the map here alluded to; but, as it is spoken of as a recent publication, it may, when discovered, serve to ascertain the date of this play more exactly.

The comedy of What You Will (the second title of the play now before us), which was entered at Stationers-Hall, August 9, 1607, was probably Marston's play, as it was printed in that year; and it appears to have been the general practice of the booksellers at that time, recently before publication, to enter those plays of which they had procured copies.

Twelfth Night was not entered on the Stationers' books, nor printed, till 1623.

It has been thought, that Ben Jonson intended to ridicule the conduct of this play, in his Every Man out of his Humour, at the end of Act III. Sc. vi. where he makes Mitis say,- -"That the argument of his comedy might have been of some other nature, as of a duke to be in love with a countess, and that countess to be in love with the duke's son, and the son in love with the lady's waiting-maid; some such cross Mm iij wooing,