Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page is come with me,

sweetheart.

Fal. Divide me like a bride-buck,1 each a haunch: I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman ? ha! Speak I like Herne the hunter ?-Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. As I am a true [Noise within. spirit, welcome!

Mrs. Page. Alas! What noise?
Mrs. Ford. Heaven forgive our sins!
Fal. What should this be?

Mrs. Ford.

Mrs. Page.

Away, away.

[They run off.

Fal. I think, the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that is in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus.

Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, like a satyr; MRS.
QUICKLY, and PISTOL; ANNE PAGE, as the
Fairy Queen, attended by her brother and others,
dressed like fairies, with waxen tapers on their heads.
Quick. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,
You moon-shine revellers, and shades of night,
You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny,
Attend your office, and your quality."-
Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy o-yes.

Pist. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.
Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:
Where fires thou find'st unrak'd, and hearths un-
swept,

There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:
Our radiant queen hates sluts, and sluttery.

Fal. They are fairies; he, that speaks to them,
shall dic:

I'll wink and couch: No man their works must eye. [Lies down upon his face.

Eva. Where's Pede ?-Go you, and where you find a maid,

6

That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,
Raise up the organs of her fantasy,
Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;

But those as sleep, and think not on their sins,
Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides,

and shins.

Quick. About, about;

Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out:
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room;
That it may stand till the perpetual doom,
In state as wholesome, as in state 'tis fit;
Worthy the owner, and the owner it.
you scour
The several chairs of order look
With juice of balm, and every precious flower:"
Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,
With loyal blazon, evermore be blest!

And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring:
The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;

was supposed to possess the power of restoring decayed
vigour. The kissing-comfits were principally made of
these and eringo roots, and were perfumed to make the
breath sweet. Gerarde attributes the same virtues to
the common potato which he distinguishes as the Vir-
ginian sort.

1 i. e. like a buck sent as a bribe.

2 The keeper. The shoulders of the buck were
among his perquisites.
3 The woodman was an attendant on the forester. It
is here however used in a wanton sense, for one who
chooses female game for the object of his pursuit.
4 The old copy reads orphan-heirs. Warburton reads
ouphen, and not without plausibility; ouphes being
Malone thinks it
mentioned before and afterward.
means mortals by birth, but adopted by the fairies: or-
phans in respect of their real parents, and now only de-
pendent on destiny herself.

5 Profession.

6 i. e. elevate her fancy, and amuse her tranquil mind with some delightful vision, though she sleep as soundly as an infant.

7 It was an article of ancient luxury to rub tables, &c. with aromatic herbs. So, in the Baucis and Philemon of Ovid, Met. viii.

-mensam

-aequatam Mentha abstersere virenti.

13

And, Hony soit qui mal y pense, write,
In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white
Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee ;
Fairies use flowers for their charactery
Away; disperse: But, 'till 'tis one o'clock,
Our dance of custom, round about the oak
Of Herne the hunter, let us not forget.

Eva. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves
in order set:

And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns bo,
To guide our measure round about the tree.
But, stay; I smell a man of middle earth.
Fal. Heaven defend me from that Welsh fairy!
lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!
Pist. Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd1o even in
thy birth.

Quick. With trial fire touch me his finger-end:
If he be chaste, the flame will back descend,
And turn him to no pain; but if he start,
Pist. A trial, come.
It is the flesh of a corrupted heart,

Eva. Come, will this wood take fire?
[They burn him with their tapers.
Fal. Oh, oh, oh!

Quick. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!
About him fairies; sing a scornful rhyme:
And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.
Eva. It is right; indeed he is full of lecheries
and iniquity.

SONG.

Fye on sinful fantasy!
Fye on lust and luxury!
Lust is but a bloody fire,
Kindled with unchaste desire.
Fed in heart; whose flames aspire,

As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.
Pinch him, fairies, mutually;

Pinch him for his villany;

Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
Till candles, and star-light, and moonshine be out.
During this song, the fairies pinch Falstaff. Doctor

Caius comes one way, and steals away a fairy
in green; Slender another way, and takes of a
fairy in white; and Fenton comes, and steals away
Mrs. Anne Page. A noise of hunting is made
within. All the fairies run away. Falstaff pulls
aff his buck's head, and rises.

Enter PAGE, FORD, MRS. PAGE, and MRS. FORD.
They lay hold on him.

Page. Nay, do not fly: I think, we have watch'd
you now;

Will none but Herne the hunter serve your turn?
Mrs. Page. I pray you, come; hold up the jest

no higher :

Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?
See you these, husband? do not these fair yokes11
Become the forest better than the town?

Pliny informs us that the Romans did so to drive away
evil spirits.

8 Charactery, is a writing by characters, or by strange marks."-Bullokar's English Expositor, 12

mo. 1656.

in

9 By this term is merely meant a mortal man, contradistinction to a spirit of the earth or of the air, such as a fairy or gnome. It was in use in the north of Scotland a century since, and appears borrowed from the Saxon Middan Eard.

10 By o'er-looked is here meant bewitched by an evil eye, the word is used in that sense in Glanvilli Sadducismi Triumphatus, p. 95. Steevens erroneously interprets it Slighted as soon as born. See note on the Merchant of Venice, Act iii. Sc. 2.

"Beshrew your eyes, They have o'er-looked me 11 The extremities of yokes for oxen, as still used in several counties of England. bent upwards, and rising In Cotgrave's very high, in shape resemble horns. Dictionary, voce Jouelles, we have Arched or yoked vines; vines so under propped or fashioned that one may go under the middle of them. See also Hutton's Latin, Greek, and English Lexicon, 1885, in voce ji

Slen. Whoo! ho! ho! father Page. Page. Son! how now? how now, son? have you despatched?

Slen. Despatched!-I'll make the best in Gloucestershire know on't; would I were hanged, 8, else.

Slen. I came yonder at Eton to marry mistress Anne Page, and she's a great lubberly boy. If it had not been i' the church, I would have swinged him, or he should have swinged me. If I did not think it had been Anne Page, would I might never stir, and 'tis a post-master's boy.

Page. Upon my life then you took the wrong.

Slen. What need you tell me that? I think so, when I took a boy for a girl: If I had been married to him, for all he was in woman's apparel, I would not have had him.

Page. Why this is your own folly. Did not I tell you, how you should know my daughter by her garments?

Slen. I went to her in white, and cry'd mum, and and yet it was not Anne, but a post-master's boy. she cry'd budget, as Anne and I had appointed;

Eva. Jeshu! Master Slender, cannot you see but marry boys?

Page. O, I am vexed at heart: What shall I do? Mrs. Page. Good George, be not angry: I knew of your purpose; turned my daughter into green; and, indeed, she is now with the doctor at the deanery, and there married.

Caius. Vere is mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened: I ha' married un garcon, a boy; un paiThis is enough to be the decay of lust and late walk-san, by gar, a boy; it is not Anne Page: by gar, ing through the realm.

99

Fal. When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are culous characters can confer praise only on him who
chas'd.
originally discovered it, for it requires not much of either

Eva. I will dance and eat plums at your wed-wit or judgment; its success must be derived almost

ding.

Mrs. Page. Well, I will muse no further :-mas-
ter Fenton,

Heaven give you many, many merry days!
Good husband, let us every one go home,
And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire;
Sir John and all.

Ford.
Let it be so-Sir John,
To master Brook you yet shall hold your word;
For he to-night shall lie with mistress Ford.

[Exeunt.

[Of this play there is a tradition preserved by Mr. Rowe, that it was written at the command of Queen Elizabeth, who was so delighted with the character of Falstaff, that she wished it to be diffused through more plays; but suspecting that it might pall by continued uniformity, directed the poet to diversify his manner, by showing him in love. No task is harder than that of writing to the ideas of another. Shakspeare knew what the queen, if the story be true, seems not to have known, that by any real passion of tenderness, the selfish craft, the careless jollity, and the lazy luxury of Falstaff must have suffered so much abatement, that little of his former cast would have remained. love, but by ceasing to be Falstaff. He could only Falstaff could not counterfeit love, and his professions could be prompted, not by the hope of pleasure, but of money. Thus the poet approached as near as he could to the work enjoined him; yet, having perhaps in the former plays completed his own idea, seems not to have been able to give Falstaff all his former power of entertainment.

This comedy is remarkable for the variety and number of the personages, who exhibit more characters, appropriated and discriminated, than perhaps can be found in any other play.

Whether Shakspeare was the first that produced upon the English stage the effect of language distorted and depraved by provincial or foreign pronunciation, I cannot certainly decide. This mode of forming ridi

1 Young and old, does as well as bucks. He alludes to Fenton's having run down Anne Page.

2 In The Three Ladies of London, 1584, is the character of an Italian Merchant very strongly marked by foreign pronunciation. Dr. Dodypoll, in the comedy of that name, is, like Caius, a French physician. This piece appeared at least a year before The Merry Wives

wholly from the player, but its power in a skilful mouth even he that dispises it is unable to resist.

The conduct of this drama is deficient; the action begins and ends often, before the conclusion, and the dif ferent parts might change places without inconvenience; but its general power, that power by which all works of genius shall finafly be tried, is such, that perhaps it never yet had reader or spectator who did not think it too soon at the end. JOHNSON.]

THE PASTORAL BY CH. MARLOWE.
Referred to Act iii. Sc. 1, of the foregoing Play
Come, live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That hills and valleys, dales and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals:
There will I make thee beds of roses
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from the pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw, and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come, live with me, and be my love.
Thy silver dishes for thy meat,
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on thy ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight, each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

of Windsor. The hero of it speaks such another jargon
of his mistress. In several other pieces, more ancient
as the antagonist of Sir Hugh, and like him is cheated
than the earliest of Shakspeare's, provincial characters
are introduced. In the old play of Henry V. French
soldiers are introduced speaking broken English.

STEEVENS

TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

THE plot of this admirable Comedy appears to have by exposing their absurdity. "How are his weaknesses been taken from the second tale in a collection by nursed and dandled by Sir Toby into something high Barnabe Riche, entitled, "Rich his Farewell to the fantastical when, on Sir Andrew's commendation of Militarie Profession," which was first printed in 1583. himself for dancing and fencing, Sir Toby answersIt is probably borrowed from Les Histoires Tragiques Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have de Belleforest, vol. iv. Hist. viime. Belleforest, as usual, these gifts a curtain before them? Are they like to take copied Bandello. In the fifth eglog of Barnaby Googe, dust like Mistress Mall's picture? Why dost thou not published with his poems in 1563, an incident some-go to church in a galliard, and come home in a coranto? what similar to that of the duke sending his page to My very walk should be a jig! I would not so much as plead his cause with the lady, and the lady falling in make water in a cinque-a pace. What dost thou mean? love with the page, may be found. tion is the more probable source, and resembles the plot cellent constitution of thy leg, it was framed under the But Rich's narra- Is this a world to hide virtues in? I did think by the exmore completely. It is too long for insertion here, but star of a galliard ! may be found in the late edition of Malone's Shak- the clown chirp over their cups; how theyrouse the speare, by Mr. Boswell. How Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and The comic scenes appear to have been entirely the weaver!-What can be better than Sir Toby's unannight-owl in a catch able to draw three souls out of one creation of the poet, and they are worthy of his tran-swerable answer to Malvolio: Dost thou think, bescendent genius. It is indeed one of the most delightful cause thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes of Shakspeare's comedies. Dr. Johnson thought the and ale ?-We have a friendship for Sir Toby; we panatural fatuity of Ague-cheek hardly fair game, but the tronize Sir Andrew; we have an understanding with good-nature with which his folly and his pretensions the clown, a sneaking kindness for Maria and her ro are brought forward for our amusement, by humouring queries; we feel a regard for Malvolio, and sympa. ⚫hie whims, are almost without a spice of satire. It is thize with his gravity, his smiles, his cross-garters, rather an attempt to give pleasure by exhibiting an ex- his yellow stockings, and imprisonment in the stocks aggerated picture of his foibles, than a wish to give pain But there is something that excites in us a stronge

834190

feeling than all this, it is Viola's confession of her love.

Duke, What's her history?

Viola. A blank, my lord: She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought;
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love, indeed?
We men may say more, swear more; but, indeed,
Our shows are more than will; for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love.

Duke. But died thy sister of her love, my boy?
Viola. I am all the daughters of my father's house,
And all the brothers too;-and yet I know not.

"Shakspeare alone could describe the effect of his own poetry:

"O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing, and giving odour."

“What we so much admire here is not the image of Patience on a monument, which has been so generally quoted, but the lines before and after it, "They give a very echo to the seat where love is throned." How long ago it is since we first learnt to repeat them; and still they vibrate on the heart like the sounds which the pas

sing wind draws from the trembling strings of a harp left on some desert shore! There are other passages of not less impassioned sweetness. Such is Olivia's address to Sebastian, whom she supposed to have already deceived her in a promise of marriage.

'Blame not this haste of mine :

Plight me the full assurance of your faith;
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul
May live at peace.'

"One of the most beautiful of Shakspeare's Songs occurs in this play with a preface of his own to it.

'Duke. O fellow, come, the song we had last night: Mark it, Cesario; it is old, and plain;

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones
Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age."

"After reading other parts of this play, and particularly the garden scene where Malvolio picks up the letter, if we were to say that Shakspeare's genius for comedy was less than his genius for tragedy, it would perhaps only prove that our own taste in such matters is more saturnine than mercurial."*

* Hazlitt's Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, p. 256

no more;

Ir music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.-
That strain again;-it hath a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,'
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing, and giving odour.-Enough;
"Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!
That notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity3 and pitch soever,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute! so full of shapes is fancy,
That it alone is high-fantastical.4

1 The old copies read sound, the emendation is
Pope's. Rowe had changed it to wind. In Sidney's Ar-
cadia, 1590, we have more sweet than a gentle south-
west wind which comes creeping over flowery fields.'
2 Milton has very successfully introduced the same
Image in Paradise Lost:

Now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native prefumes and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils."

Shakspeare, in the Ninty-ninth Sonnet, has made the violet the thief.

The forward violet thus did I chide :

FABIAN, Servants to Olivia.
Clown,

OLIVIA, a rich Countess.
VIOLA, in love with the Duke.
MARIA, Olivia's Woman.

Lords, Priests, Sailors, Officers, Musicians, and othe
Attendants.

SCENE, a City in Illyria; and the Sea Coast near it.

Cur. Will you go hunt, my lord?

Duke.

What, Cario?

The hart.

Cur.
Duke. Why, so I do, the noblest that I have:
O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purg'd the air of pestilence;
That instant was I turn'd into a hart;
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me."-How now? what news
from her?

Enter VALENTINE.

Val. So please my lord, I might not be admitted,
But from her handmaid do return this answer:
The element itself, till seven years heat,
Shall not behold her face at ample view;
But, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk,
And water once a day her chamber round
With eye-offending brine: all this, to season
A brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh,
And lasting, in her sad remembrance.

Duke. O, she, that hath a heart of that fine frame,
To pay this debt of love but to a brother,

3 Value.

4 Fantastical to the height.

5 Shakspeare seems to think men cautioned against too great familiarity with forbidden beauty by the fable of Acteon, who saw Diana naked, and was torn to pieces by his hounds; as a man indulging his eyes or his imagination with a view of a woman he cannot gain, has his heart torn with incessant longing. An interpretation far more elegant and natural than Lord Bacon's, who, in his Wisdom of the Ancients, supposes this story to warn us against inquiring into the secrets of princes, by showing that those who know that which for reasons of state ought to be concealed will be detected and destroyed by their own servants. The thought

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that may have been suggested by Daniel's Fifth Sonnet, in

smells,

If not from my love's breath.'

Pope, in his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; and Thomson, in his Spring have availed themselves of the epithet a dying fall

his Delia; or by Whitney's Emblems, 1586, p. 15; and a passage in the Dedication to Aldington's trans. lation of The Golden Ass of Apuleius,' 1666, may have suggested these.

Heat for heated.

How will she love, when the rich golden shaft
Hath kill'd the flock' of all affections else
That live in her! when liver, brain, and heart,2
These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd
(Her sweet perfections) with one self king!-
Away before me to sweet beds of flowers;
Love-thoughts lie rich, when canopied with bowers.
[Exeunt.
SCENE II. The Sea Coast. Enter VIOLA, Cap-
tain, and Sailors.

Vio. What country, friends, is this?
Cap.

Vio. And what should I do in Illyria?
My brother he is in Elysium.

i

Vio. There is a fair behaviour in thee, captain; -
And though that nature with beauteous wall
Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee
I will believe, thou hast a mind that suits
With this thy fair and outward character.
I pray thee, and I'll pay thee bounteously,
Conceal me what I am; and be my aid
For such disguise as, haply, shall become
The form of my intent. I'll serve this duke
Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him,'
It may be worth thy pains; for I can sing,
And speak to him in many sorts of music,
Illyria, lady. That will allow me very worth his service.
What else may hap, to time I will commit;
Only shape thou thy silence to my wit.
Cap. Be you his eunuch, and your mute I'll be:
my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see!
Vio. I thank thee: Lead me on. [Exeunt.
SCENE III. A Room in Olivia's House. Enter

Perchance he is not drown'd:-What think you,
sailors?

Cap. It is perchance that you yourself were saved.
Vio. O my poor brother! and so, perchance, may

he be.

Cap. True, madam: and, to comfort you with
chance,

Assure yourself, after our ship did split,
When you, and that poor number saved with you,
Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,
Most provident in peril, bind himself

(Courage and hope both teaching him the practice)
To a strong mast, that lived upon the sea.
Where, like Arion on the dolphin's back,
I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves,
So long as I could see.

Vio.
For saying so, there's gold:
Mine own escape unfoldeth to my hope,
Whereto thy speech serves for authority,
The like of him. Know'st thou this country?
Cap. Ay, madam, well; for I was bred and born
Not three hours travel from this very place.
Vio. Who governs here?
Cap.

As in his name?

Vio.
Cap.

A noble duke, in nature,

What is his name?

Orsino.

Vio. Orsino! I have heard my father name him: He was a bachelor then.

Cap.

And so is now,

Or was so very late: for but a month
Ago I went from hence; and then 'twas fresh
In murmur (as you know, what great ones do,
The less will prattle of,) that he did seek
The love of fair Olivia.

Vio.

What's she?

Cap. A virtuous maid, the daughter of a count
That died some twelvemonth since; then leaving her
In the protection of his son, her brother,
Who shortly also died: for whose dear love
They say she hath abjur'd the company
And sight of men.

Vio.

O, that I serv'd that lady:
And might not be delivered to the world,
Till I had made mine own occasion mellow,
What my estate is.

Cap.
That were hard to compass;
Because she will admit no kind of suit,
No, not the duke's.

1 So, in Sidney's Arcadia-" the flock of unspeakable virtues,"

2 The liver, brain, and heart were then considered the seats of passion, judgment, and sentiments. These are what Shakspeare calls her sweet perfections, though he has not very clearly expressed it.

3 Self king signifies seif same king, i. e. one and the same king.

When

SIR TOBY BELCH and MARIA.

Sir To. What a plague means my niece, to take the death of her brother thus? I'm sure, care's an enemy to life.

Mar. By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o'nights; your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.

Sir To. Why, let her except before excepted." Mar. Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits of order.

Sir To. Confine? I'll confine myself no finer than I am: these clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too; an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.

Mar. That quaffing and drinking will undo you: I heard my lady talk of it yesterday; and of a foolish knight, that you brought in one night here, to be her wooer.

Sir To. Who? Sir Andrew Ague-cheek?
Mar. Ay, he.

Sir To. He's as tall a man as any's in Illyria.
Mar. What's that to the purpose?

Sir To. Why, he has three thousand ducats year.

Mar. Ay, but he'll have but a year in all these ducats; he's a very fool and a prodigal.

Sir To. Fye, that you'll say so! he plays o' the viol-de-gambo, and speaks three or four languages word for word without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature.

Mar. He hath, indeed,-almost natural: for, besides that he's a fool, he's a great quarreller; and, but that he hath the gift of a coward to allay the gust he hath in quarrelling, 'tis thought among the prudent, he would quickly have the gift of a grave.

Sir To. By this hand they are scoundrels, and substracters, that say so of him. Who are they? Mar. They that add moreover, he's drunk nightly in your company.

Sir To. With drinking healths to my niece; I'll drink to her, as long as there is a passage in my throat, and drink in Illyria: He's a coward, and a coystril, that will not drink to my niece, till his brains turn o' the toe like a parish-top.10 What,

with the Duke, but it would have been inconsistent with her delicacy to have made an open confession of it to the Captain.

5 This plan of Viola's was not pursued, as it would have been inconsistent with the plot of the play. She was presented as a page not as an eunuch. 6 Approve.

7 A ludicrous use of a formal law phrase.

8 That is as valiant a man, as tall a man, is used here by Sir Toby with more than the usual licence of the word; he was pleased with the equivoque, and ban ters upon the diminutive stature of poor Sir Andrew, and his utter want of courage.

4 i. e. I wish I might not be made public to the world, with regard to the state of my birth and fortune, till I have gained a ripe opportunity for my design. Johnson remarks that Viola seems to have formed a deep design with very little premeditation. In the novel upon which the play is founded, the Duke being 9 A coystril is a low, mean, or worthless fellow. driven upon the isle of Cyprus, by a tempest, Silla, the 10 A large top was formerly kept in every village, to daughter of the governor, falls in love with him, and on his departure goes in pursuit of him. All this Shak-be whipped in frosty weather, that the peasants might speare knew, and probably intended to tell in some fu- be kept warm by exercise, and out of mischief when To sleep like a Town-top' is a bare scene, but afterwards forgot it. Viola, in Act ii. Sc. they could not work. 4, platoly alludes to her having been secretly in love proverbial expression.