more account than as a matter of antiquarian curiosity where Shakspere picked up hints for the plots of his plays. He might have found the germ of Viola in Barnaby Rich; and he might have altogether invented Malvolio: but Viola and Malvolio are for ever indissolubly united, in the exact proportions in which the poetic and the comic work together for the production of a harmonious effect. The neutral title of 'Twelfth Night'-conveying as it does a notion of genial mirth-might warrant us in thinking that there was a preponderance of the comic spirit. Charles I. appears to have thought so, when, in his copy of the second edition of Shakspere, he altered the title with his own pen to that of Malvolio.'* But Malvolio is not the predominant idea of the comedy; nor is he of that exclusive interest that the whole action, even of the merely comic portions, should turn upon him. When Shakspere means one character to be the centre of the dramatic idea, he for the most part tells us so in his title: Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Timon. Not one of the comedies has such a personal title, for the evident reason that the effect in them must mainly depend upon the harmony of all the parts, rather than upon the absorbing passion of the principal character. The Twelfth Night' is especially of this description. It presents us with the golden and the silver sides of human life, the romantic and the humorous. But the two precious metals are moulded into one statue.

It is scarcely necessary for us to enter into any analysis of the plot of this charming comedy, or attempt any dissection of its characters, for the purpose of opening to the reader new sources of enjoyment. It is impossible, we think, for one of ordinary sensibility to read through the first act without yielding himself up to the genial temper in which the entire play is written. "The sunshine of the breast" spreads its rich purple light over the whole champaign, and penetrates into every thicket and every dingle.

*This copy, which formerly belonged to Steevens, was purchased for the private library of George III., and was retained when George IV. gave that valuable collection to the nation. It is now in the Queen's Library at Windsor.

From the first line to the last-from the Duke's

"That strain again;-it had a dying fall," to the Clown's

"With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,”— there is not a thought, nor a situation, that is not calculated to call forth pleasurable feelings. The love-melancholy of the Duke is a luxurious abandonment to one pervading impression-not a fierce and hopeless contest with one o'ermastering passion. It de

lights to lie " canopied with bowers,”—to listen to "old and antique songs, which dally with its "innocence," to be "full of shapes," and "high fantastical." The love of Viola is the sweetest and tenderest emotion that ever informed the heart of the purest and most graceful of beings with a spirit almost divine. Perhaps in the whole range of Shakspere's poetry there is nothing which comes more unbidden into the mind, and always in connection with some image of the ethereal beauty of the utterer, than Viola's "She never told her love." The love of Olivia, wilful as it is, is not in the slightest degree repulsive. With the old stories before him, nothing but the refined delicacy of Shakspere's conception of the female character could have redeemed Olivia from approaching to the anti-feminine. But as it is we pity her, and we rejoice with her. These are what may be called the serious characters, because they are the vehicles for what we emphatically call the poetry of the play. But the comic characters are to us equally poetical—that is, they appear to us not mere copies of the representatives of temporary or individual follies, but embodyings of the universal comic, as true and as fresh to-day as they were two centuries and a half ago. Malvolio is to our minds as poetical as Don Quixote; and we are by no means sure that Shakspere meant the poor cross-gartered steward only to be laughed at, any more than Cervantes did the knight of the rueful countenance. He meant us to pity him, as Olivia and the Duke pitied him; for, in truth, the delusion by which Malvolio was wrecked, only passed out of the romantic into the comic through the manifestation of the

vanity of the character in reference to his situation. But if we laugh at Malvolio we are not to laugh ill-naturedly, for the poet has conducted all the mischief against him in a spirit in which there is no real malice at the bottom of the fun. Sir Toby is a most genuine character,-one given to strong potations and boisterous merriment; but with a humour about him perfectly irresistible. His abandon to the instant opportunity of laughing at and with others is something so thoroughly English, that we are not surprised the poet gave him an English name. And like all genuine humorists Sir Toby must have his butt. What a trio is presented in that glorious scene of the second act, where the two Knights and the Clown

"make the welkin dance;"-the humorist, the fool, and the philosopher!-for Sir Andrew is the fool, and the Clown is the philosopher. We hold the Clown's epilogue song to be the most philosophical Clown's song upon record; and a treatise might be written upon its wisdom. It is the history of a life, from the condition of "a little tiny boy," through "man's estate," to decaying age—“ when I came unto my bed;" and the conclusion is, that what is true of the individual is true of the species, and what was of yesterday was of generations long past away-for

"A great while ago the world begun." Steevens says this "nonsensical ditty" is utterly unconnected with the subject of the comedy. We think he is mistaken.

THIS comedy was first printed in the folio collection of 1623, and there had been no previous claim to the right of printing it made by any entry in the registers of the Stationers' Company. We are very much inclined to think, from the state of the original text, that the editors of the first folio possessed no copy but that from which they printed. Some of the sentences throughout the play are so involved that they have very little the appearance of being taken from a copy which had been used by the actors; and in two cases a word is found in the text (prenzie) which could never have been given upon the stage, and appears to have been inserted by the printer in despair of deciphering the author's manuscript. On the other hand, the metrical arrangement, which has been called "rough, redundant, and irregular," was strictly copied, we have no doubt, from the author's original; for a printer does not mistake the beginnings and ends of blank-verse lines, although little attention might be paid to such matters in a prompter's book. The peculiar structure

of the versification in this comedy was, we are satisfied, the result of the author's system; and, from the integrity with which it has been preserved in the first edition, we believe that the original manuscript passed directly through the hands of the printer, who made the best of it without any reference to other copies.

We cannot trace that any allusion to 'Measure for Measure' is to be found in the works of Shakspere's contemporaries. There is, indeed, a passage in a poem published in 1607 which conveys the same idea as a passage in 'Measure for Measure :'"And like as when some sudden extasy

Seizeth the nature of a sickly man; When he's discern'd to swoon, straight by and by

Folk to his help confusedly have ran, And seeking with their art to fetch him back, So many throng, that he the air doth lack." (Myrrha, the Mother of Adonis,' by William Barksted.)

"So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons; Come all to help him, and so stop the air By which he should revive." Malone says of this coincidence, "That 'Measure for Measure' was written before 1607 may be fairly concluded from the following passage in a poem published in that year, which we have good ground to believe was copied from a similar thought in this play, as the author, at the end of his piece, professes a personal regard for Shakspeare, and highly praises his 'Venus and Adonis.' The other arguments of Malone as to the date of this play, which he assigns to 1603, have reference to public circumstances. Chalmers contends for the date of 1604.

Conjectures such as these are too often laborious trifling. But, for once, they are pretty nearly borne out by incontrovertible testimony. The perseverance of Mr. Peter Cunningham has been rewarded by discovering in the Audit Office certain passages in the original Office Books of the Masters and Yeomen of the Revels, which fix the date of the representation at Court of some of Shakspere's plays. The Office Book shows that 'Measure for Measure' was presented at Court by the King's Players in 1604.

The 'Promos and Cassandra' of George Whetstone, printed in 1578, but not acted, was, there can be no doubt, the foundation upon which Shakspere built his 'Measure for Measure.' Whetstone tells us in a subsequent work that he constructed his play upon a novel of Giraldi Cinthio, of which he gives us a translation; observing, "This history, for rareness thereof, is livelily set out in a comedy by the reporter of the work, but yet never presented upon stage.”+

The performance of Whetstone, as might be expected in a drama of that date, is feeble and monotonous, not informed with any real dramatic power, drawling or bombastic in its tragic parts, extravagant in its comic. It is scarcely necessary to offer to our readers any parallel examples of the modes in which Whetstone and Shakspere have treated the same incidents.

“Look, the unfolding star calls up the shepherd." In the midst of the most business-like and familiar directions occur these eight words of the highest poetry. By a touch almost magical Shakspere takes us in an instant out of that dark prison, where we have been surrounded with crime and suffering, to make us see the morning star bright over the hills, and hear the tinkle of the sheep-bell in the folds, and picture the shepherd bidding the flock go forth to pasture, before the sun has lighted up the dewy lawns. In the same way, throughout this very extraordinary drama, in which the whole world is represented as one great prison-house, full of passion, and ignorance, and sorrow, we have glimpses every now and then of something beyond, where there shall be no alternations of mildness and severity, but a condition of equal justice, serene as the valley under "the unfolding star," and about to rejoice in the dayspring.

The little passage which we have quoted is one amongst the numberless poetical gems which are scattered up and down this comedy with a profusion such as only belongs to one poet. It has been said of Shakspere, "He is the text for the moralist and the philosopher. His bright wit is cut out ‘into little stars;' his solid masses of knowledge are meted out in morsels and proverbs; and, thus distributed, there is scarcely a corner which he does not illuminate, or a cottage which he does not enrich."* This is by no

means his highest praise, and his 'Beauties give a very imperfect idea of his attributes; but certainly no other man ever wrote single sentences that to such an extent have now become mixed up with the habits of thought of millions of human beings. This play appears to us especially glittering with these "little stars." We cannot open a scene in which we do not encounter some passage that has set us thinking at some moment of our lives. Of such distinct passages, which the memory never parts from, the following will be recognised by all as familiar friends:"Heaven doth with us as we with torches do; Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues

*Retrospective Review,' vol. vii. p. 381.

It may be convenient if we first regard this comedy as a work of art, constructed with reference to the production of such dramatic effect. Without referring, then, to the peculiar character of the Duke, and his secret objects in delegating "mercy and mortality" to Angelo, we have to look only

at the sudden and severe sentence which the

fault of Claudio has called down upon him,

and at the circumstances which arise out of the intervention of Isabella to procure a remission of his punishment. This is the simple view of the matter which we find in the novel of Cinthio, in Whetstone's play of 'Promos and Cassandra,' and in the pseudohistorical stories which deal with the same popular legend. It is in this point of view that we may consider the character of Isabella, acting upon one single and direct principle, without reference to the machinery of which she afterwards forms a part for carrying out the complicated management of the Duke. She is a being separated from all the evil influences-criminal, or ignorant, or weak-by which she is surrounded. In the eyes of the habitual profligate with whom she comes in contact she is

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; And He that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy: How would you be, If He, which is the top of judgment, should But judge you as you are? O, think on that; And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made."

From this moment she is self-possessed; and she stands before the organ of power pouring forth an impassioned eloquence with all the authority of a heavenly messenger. Then she is bold, even to the point of attacking the self-consciousness of the individual judge:—

"Go to your bosom ;

Knock there; and ask your heart, what it doth know

That's like my brother's fault: if it confess A natural guiltiness, such as is his,

Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue Against my brother's life."

And at last, when she believes he will relent, she offers him no thanks, she supplicates him with no tears; but she promises him the re