PERSONS REPRESENTED. ORSINO, Duke of Illyria. SEBASTIAN, a young Gentleman, Brother to Viola. Lords, Priests, Sailors, Officers, Musicians, and other Attendants. SCENE, a City in Illyria; and the Sea-coast near it. TWELFTH-NIGHT: OR, WHAT YOU WILL. ACT I. SCENE I. An Apartment in the Duke's Palace. Enter DUKE, CURIO, Lords; Musicians attending. DUKE. If musick be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting1, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again;-it had a dying fall 2: I Give me EXCESS of it; that, SURFEITING, &c.] So, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona : "And now excess of it will make me surfeit." STEEVENS. 2 That strain again;-it had 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.] Milton, in his Paradise Lost, b. iv. has very successfully introduced the same image : 66 66 now gentle gales, Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense "Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole "That strain again;-it had a dying fall." Hence Pope, in his Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day: "The strains decay, "And melt away, "In a dying, dying fall." Again, Thomson, in his Spring, v. 722, speaking of the night ingale : 66 "Takes Still at every dying fall up the lamentable strain." HOLT WHITE. O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet South", Stealing, and giving odour.—Enough; no more; 'Tis not so sweet now, as it was before. O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou! 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, 3 the sweet SOUTH,] The old copy reads-sweet sound, which Mr. Rowe changed into wind, and Mr. Pope into south. The thought might have been borrowed from Sidney's Arcadia, lib. i.: " more sweet than a gentle South-west wind, which comes creeping over flowery fields," &c. This work was published in 1590. STEEVENS. I see no reason for disturbing the text of the old copy, which reads-sound. The wind, from whatever quarter, would produce a sound in breathing on the violets, or else the simile is false. Besides, sound is a better relative to the antecedent, strain. Douce. 4 That breathes upon a bank of VIOLETS,] Here Shakspeare makes the wind steal odour from the violet. In his 99th Sonnet, the violet is made the thief: "The forward violet thus did I chide : "Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, "If not from my love's breath?" MALONE. 5 of what VALIDITY and pitch soe'er,] Validity is here used for value. MALONE. So, in King Lear : "No less in space, validity, and pleasure." STEEVENS. 6 That it alone is HIGH-FANTASTICAL.] means 'fantastical to the height.' High-fantastical, So, in All's Well That Ends Well, vol. x. p. 474 : "My high-repented blames, "Dear sovereign, pardon me." STEEVENS. Methought, she purg'd the air of pestilence; And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E'er since pursue me'.-How now? what news from her? 7 That instant was I turn'd into a hart; And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E'er since pursue me.] This image evidently alludes to the story of Acteon, by which Shakspeare seems to think men cautioned against too great familiarity with forbidden beauty. Acteon, who saw Diana naked, and was torn to pieces by his hounds, represents a man, who, indulging his eyes, or his imagination, with the view of a woman that he cannot gain, has his heart torn with incessant longing. An interpretation far more elegant and natural than that of Sir Francis Bacon, who, in his Wisdom of the Ancients, supposes this story to warn us against enquiring into the secrets of princes, by showing, that those who know that which for reasons of state is to be concealed, will be detected and destroyed by their own servants. JOHNSON. "That instant was I turn'd into a hart; "And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, "E'er since pursue me." Our author had here undoubtedly Daniel's fifth Sonnet in his thoughts: "Whilst youth and error led my wand'ring mind, "And sette my thoughts in heedles waies to range, "All unawares, a goddesse chaste I finde, 66 (Diana like) to worke my suddaine change. "For her no sooner had mine eye bewraid, "But with disdaine to see mee in that place, 66 66 "Are made by her to murder thus theyr lord." Delia and Rosamond, augmented, 16mo. 1594. The same observation has been made by an anonymous writer in the Gentleman's Magazine; but I had noticed this parallelism in my manuscript notes long before. Daniel, however, was not the original proprietor of this thought. He appears to have borrowed it from Whitney's Emblems; 1586, p. 15, where it thus appears: Enter VALENTINE. VAL. So please my lord, I might not be admitted, But from her handmaid do return this answer: "Actæon, heare, [here] unhappie man, behoulde, 66 66 By which is ment, that those whoe do pursue "And as his howndes, so theire affections base "Shall them devoure, and all theire deedes deface." And Whitney himself should seem to have been indebted in this instance to a passage of the Dedication to the Earl of Sussex, prefixed by William Adlington to his translation of The Golden Ages of Apuleius, 4to. 1566: "And not only that profit ariseth to children by such fained fables, but also the vertues of men are covertly thereby commended and their vices discommended and abhorred. For by the fable of Acteon, where it is feined that when he saw Diana washing herselfe in a well, he was immediately turned into a hart, and so was slaine of his owne dogs, may be meant, that when a man casteth his eies on the vaine and soon-fading beauty of the world, consenting thereto in his minde, he seemes to be turned into a bruite beast, and so to be slaine through the inordinate desire of his own affects." MALONE. 8 The element itself, till seven years HEAT,] Heat for heated, The air, till it shall have been warmed by seven revolutions of the sun, shall not, &c. So, in King John: "The iron of itself, though heat red hot-." Again, in Macbeth : 66 And this report "Hath so exasperate the king-." MALONE. Again, in Chapman's version of the nineteenth Odyssey: 66 “And darkness rose, they slept till days fire het |