productions. In 1828, however, a manuscript diary was discovered in the British Museum, kept by one John Manningham, a student of the Middle Temple, which shews that it was performed five years before the earliest period that had been assigned to its composition. Manningham's entry is so precise as to leave no doubt on the subject:- 1601 [1602], Feb. 2. At our feast we had a play called Twelve 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 practise 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, &c., and then when he came to practise, making him believe they took him to be mad,' &c. It appears that, prior to the date of Twelfth Night, two Italian comedies existed bearing the title of Gl' Inganni, and both derived from a novel by Bandello. Shakespeare, as Mr Hunter conjectures, may have read both of these plays. "In both he found a brother and a sister, the latter clothed in man's attire, and bearing towards each other so near a resemblance as to produce entertaining embarrassments, which is the pivot on which the main incidents in the serious part of the Twelfth Night turn. The name assumed by the lady in disguise in Gonzaga's play is Cesare, which will easily be admitted to have suggested the name Cesario in Shakespeare adopted by Viola in her disguise.' But there was a third Italian comedy to which our poet was more strikingly indebted. This was a play of the Accademici Intronati, having for its general title Il Sacrificio, and of which Mr Hunter has given an analysis: 'Fabritio and Lelia, a brother and sister, are separated at the sack of Rome in 1527. Lelia is carried to Modena, where resides Flamineo, to whom she had formerly been attached. Lelia disguises herself as a boy, and enters his service. Flamineo had forgotten Lelia, and was a suitor to Isabella, a Modenese lady. Lelia, in her male attire, is employed in love-embassies from Flamineo to Isabella. ... Isabella is insensible to the importunities of Flamineo, but conceives a violent passion for Lelia, mistaking her for a man. In the third act, Fabritio arrives at Modena, when mistakes arise owing to the close resemblance there is between Fabritio and his sister in their male attire. Ultimately recognitions take place: the affections of Isabella are easily transferred from Lelia to Fabritio, and Flamineo takes to his bosom the affectionate and faithful Lelia. . . . We have in the Italian play a subordinate character, named Pasquella, to whom Maria corresponds; and in the subordinate incidents we find Fabritio mistaken in the street for Lelia by the servant of Isabella, who takes him to her mistress's house, exactly as Sebastian is taken for Viola, and led to the house of Olivia. . . The name of Fabian, given by Shakespeare to one of his characters, was probably suggested to him by the name of Fabia, which Lelia in the Italian play assumed in her disguise. Malvolio is a happy adaptation from Malevolti, a character in the Il Sacrificio. A phrase occurring in a long prologue or preface prefixed to this play in the Italian ['la notte di Beffana'], appears to have suggested the title Twelfth Night!* Here, undoubtedly, we have the scaffolding or outline of the serious portion of Shakespeare's drama; and in addition to the Italian comedies, some of the incidents were given in 'The History of Apollonius and Silla,' a tale in Barnabe Rich's Farewell to Military Profession (1581). Rich, like the Italian dramatists, had derived his materials from Bandello's novel, or from the translation of it in that popular repertory, Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques. Shakespeare had probably read them all, but whether in the Italian originals, or in English translations not now extant, is uncertain. They afforded him but a bare outline-a mere foundation on which to build his fascinating superstructure. 'As to a sentence,' says Mr Armitage Brown, 'that might have given rise, however remotely, to a sentiment in the play, I find not one; but there is half a one, which, literally translated, is thus * Hunter's Illustrations of Shakespeare. spoken by the disguised Nicuola [in Bandello's novel] to her master: "Because I have often heard say, that girls in their first loves love much more tenderly, and with greater warmth, than do the men." This is in keeping with the character of Viola, which the poet has invested with such grace and tenderness; and it may recall that passage in Twelfth Night which Malone, De Quincey, and others supposed to have been written by Shakespeare in reference to the disparity of years between himself and his wife: 'Let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent.'-Act II. sc. 4. A perusal of the whole dialogue between the Duke and Viola will, we think, shew that this sentiment is natural to the character of the former, and appropriate to the scene, so that there is no reason to believe that it had a personal application. The poet himself is always lost in his creations. The comic portions of Twelfth Night, characters and incidents, are wholly Shakespeare's. Who but himself could have given such a finished portrait as that of the vain, pedantic, and sententious Malvolio, or drawn the roystering Sir Toby Belch and his foil and butt, Sir Andrew Aguecheek? And these seem to have been added from the mere exuberance of his genius and love of humour, for they are scarcely necessary to the progress of the story. Although written apparently in 1601, this play remained unpublished until the appearance of the folio of 1623. 'Shakespeare's comedy is of a pastoral and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to the soil, and shoots out with native, happy, unchecked luxuriance. Absurdity has every encouragement afforded it, and nonsense has room to flourish in it. Nothing is stunted by the churlish, icy hand of indifference or severity. The poet runs riot in a conceit, and idolises a quibble. His whole object is to turn the meanest or rudest objects to a pleasurable account. The relish which he has of a pun, or of the quaint humour of a low character, does not interfere with the delight with which he describes a beautiful image, or the most refined love. The clown's forced jests do not spoil the sweetness of the character of Viola; the same house is big enough to hold Malvolio, the Countess, Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. For instance, nothing can fall much lower than this last character in intellect or morals; yet how are his weaknesses nursed and dandled by Sir Toby into something "high fantastical," when, on Sir Andrew's commendation of himself for dancing and fencing, Sir Toby answers: "Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them?" &c. How Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown afterwards chirp over their cups; how they "rouse the night-owl in a catch, able to draw three souls out of one weaver!" What can be better than Sir Toby's unanswerable answer to Malvolio : "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" In a word, the best turn is given to everything, instead of the worst. There is a constant infusion of the romantic and enthusiastic, in proportion as the characters are natural and sincere; whereas, in the more artificial style of comedy, everything gives way to ridicule and indifference, there being nothing left but affectation on one side, and incredulity on the other.'-HAZLITT. |