INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

THIS comedy was first printed in the folio edition of 1623. The text is divided into acts and scenes; and the order of these has been undisturbed in the modern editions. With the exception of a few manifest typo- | graphical errors, the original copy is remarkably correct.

It was formerly supposed that this charming comedy was written by Shakspere late in life. But there was found in the British Museum, in 1828, a little manuscript diary of a student of the Middle Temple, extending from 1601 to 1603, which leaves no doubt that the play was publicly acted at the Candlemas feast of the Middle Temple in 1602; and it belongs, therefore, to the first year of the seventeenth century, or the last of the sixteenth; for it is not found in the list of Meres, in 1598.

It is scarcely necessary to enter into any analysis of the plot of this delightful 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 champain, and penetrates into every thicket and every dingle. From the first line to the last-from the Duke's

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

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 irreHis abandon to the instant op

"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 delights 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 thesistible.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

SCENE, A CITY IN ILLYRIA; AND THE SEA-COAST NEAR IT.

DUKE. If 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 had a dying fall1:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound a
That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing, and giving odour.-Enough; no more;
'T is not so sweet now as it was before.

O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!

a Like the sweet sound. To those who are familiar with the well-known text,

"O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,"

the restoration of the word sound, which is the reading of all the early editions, will at first appear strange and startling. The change from sound to south was made by Pope. See Illustration 2.

That, notwithstanding thy capacity

Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,

Of what validity and pitch soe'er,

But falls into abatement and low price,

Even in a minute! so full of shapes is fancy,
That it alone is high-fantastical.

CUR. Will you go hunt, my lord?

DUKE.

CUR.

What, Curio?

The hart.

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 a,)
That instant was I turn'd into a hart;

And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,

E'er since pursue me3.-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,

How will she love, when the rich golden shaft a

a Capell calls the matter of the line which we have printed in parentheses "extraneous." Of this we are not sure. The Duke complains that when he first saw Olivia he was " turn'd into a hart;" but he had thought, mistakingly, that she "purg'd the air of pestilence"-removed those malignant influences from the air which caused his transformation. In this sense "pestilence has the same meaning as the "taking airs" of ' Lear.' Whether this be the sense or not, the line is decidedly parenthetical.

b Heat-heated.

Season. This metaphor is repeated several times by our poet: the brine seasons, preserves, a brother's dead love fresh. So in 'Romeo and Juliet:'

"Jesu Maria! what a deal of brine

Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!

How much salt water thrown away in waste
To season love.”

a The rich golden shaft. The Cupid of the ancient mythology was armed (as Sydney notices) with

"But arrows two, and tipp'd with gold or lead."

The opposite effects of these weapons are described in Ovid ('Metamorph.'), and Shakspere might have read the passage in Golding's translation:

“That causeth love is all of gold with point full sharp and bright:
That chaseth love is blunt, whose steel with leaden head is dight."