I the benefit of my senses as well as your ladyship. I have your own letter that induced me to the semblance I put on; with the which I doubt not but to do myself much right, or you much shame. Think of me as you please. I leave my duty a little unthought of, and speak out of my injury.

Oli. Did he write this

Clo. Ay, madam.

THE MADLY-USED MALVOLIO."

Duke. This savours not much of distraction.

Oli. See him deliver'd, Fabian; bring him hither.

[Exit FABIAN.

My lord, so please you, these things further thought on,
To think me as well a sister as a wife,

One day shall crown the alliance on 't, so please you,

Here at my house, and at my proper cost.

Duke. Madam, I am most apt to embrace your offer. Your master quits you; [To VIOLA] and, for your service done him,

So much against the mettle of your sex,
So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,
And since you call'd me master for so long,
Here is my hand; you shall from this time be
Your master's mistress.

Mal. Lady, you have. Pray you, peruse that letter: You must not now deny it is your hand,

Write from it, if you can, in hand, or phrase;

Or say, 't is not your seal, not your invention:
You can say none of this: Well, grant it then,
And tell me, in the modesty of honour,

Why you have given me such clear lights of favour;
Bade me come smiling and cross-garter'd to you;

To put on yellow stockings, and to frown
Upon sir Toby and the lighter people :
And, acting this in an obedient hope,
Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd,
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
And made the most notorious geck and gull,
That e'er invention play'd on? tell me why.

a

Oli. Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing,
Though, I confess, much like the character:
But, out of question, 't is Maria's hand.
And now I do bethink me, it was she

First told me thou wast mad; thou cam'st in smiling,
And in such forms which here were presuppos'd
Upon thee in the letter. Prithee, be content:
This practice hath most shrewdly pass'd upon thee:
But, when we know the grounds and authors of it,
Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge

Of thine own cause.

Fab.

Good madam, hear me speak;

And let no quarrel, nor no brawl to come,

Taint the condition of this present hour,

Which I have wonder'd at. In hope it shall not,
Most freely I confess, myself, and Toby,
Set this device against Malvolio here,
Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts
We had conceiv'd against him: Maria writ
The letter, at sir Toby's great importance; ©
In recompense whereof he hath married her.
How with a sportful malice it was follow'd,
May rather pluck on laughter than revenge;
If that the injuries be justly weigh'd

That have on both sides pass'd.

Oli. Alas, poor fool! how have they baffled thee!

Clo. Why,

66

some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them." I was one,

a Geck. To geck is to deride, and hence a geck is one derided.

b Thou. The original has then; and so all other editions. The change to thou was suggested to us by Mr. Rodd.

c Importance-importunity.

sir, in this interlude; one sir Topas, sir; but that's all one" By the Lord, fool, I am not mad;"-But do you remember? "Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal? an you smile not, he's gagg'd:" And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Mal. I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you.
Oli. He hath been most notoriously abus'd.
Duke. Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace :
He hath not told us of the captain yet;
When that is known, and golden time convents,"
A solemn combination shall be made

Of our dear souls-Meantime, sweet sister,
We will not part from hence.-Cesario, come;
For so you
shall be while you are a man;
But, when in other habits you are seen,
Orsino's mistress, and his fancy's queen.

Clo.

SONG.

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man's estate,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas! to wive,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,

For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my bed,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken head,
For the rain it raineth every day.
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

But that's all one, our play is done,

And we'll strive to please you every day.

■ Convents-serves, agrees, is convenient.

[Exit.

[Exeunt.

[Exit.

THERE is something to our minds very precious in that memorial of Shakspere which is preserved in the little Table-book of the Student of the Middle Temple :* "Feb. 2, 1601 [2]. At our feast we had a play called Twelve night or what you will." What a scene do these few plain words call up before us! The Christmas festivities *See Introductory Notice.

have lingered on till Candlemas. The Lord of Misrule has resigned his sceptre; the Fox and the Cat have been hunted round the hall; the Masters of the Revels have sung their songs; the drums are silent which lent their noisy chorus to the Marshal's proclamations; and Sir Francis Flatterer and Sir Randle Rackabite have passed into the ranks of ordinary men.* But there is still a feast; and after the dinner a play; and that play Shakspere's Twelfth Night.' And the actual roof under which the happy company of benchers, and barristers, and students first listened to that joyous and exhilarating play, full of the truest and most beautiful humanities, especially fitted for a season of cordial mirthfulness, is still standing; and we may walk into that stately hall and think,-Here Shakspere's Twelfth Night' was acted in the Christmas of 1601; and here its exquisite poetry first fell upon the ear of some secluded scholar, and was to him as a fragrant flower blooming amidst the arid sands of his Bracton and his Fleta; and here its gentle satire upon the vain and the foolish penetrated into the natural heart of some grave and formal dispenser of justice, and made him look with tolerance, if not with sympathy, upon the mistakes of less grave and formal fellow-men; and here its ever-gushing spirit of enjoyment,-of fun without malice, of wit without grossness, of humour without extravagance,-taught the swaggering, roaring, overgrown boy, miscalled student, that there were higher sources of mirth than affrays in Fleet Street, or drunkenness in Whitefriars. Venerable Hall of the Middle Temple, thou art to our eyes more stately and more to be admired since we looked upon that entry in the Table-book of John Manningham! The Globe has perished, and so has the Blackfriars. The works of the poet who made the names of these frail buildings immortal need no associations to recommend them; but it is yet pleasant to know that there is one locality remaining where a play of Shakspere was listened to by his contemporaries; and that play, 'Twelfth Night.'

Accepting, though somewhat doubtingly, the statement of the commentators that Twelfth Night' was produced as late as 1614, Schlegel says, "If this was really the last work of Shakspere, as is affirmed, he must have enjoyed to the last the same youthfulness of mind, and have carried with him to the grave the whole fulness of his talents."+ There is something very agreeable in this theory; but we can hardly lament that the foundation upon which it rests has

* Consult Dugdale's 'Origines Juridiciales.'

Lectures on Dramatic Literature, Black's Translation, vol. ii., p. 175.