don't know how old is this particular romantic device, nor can remember having found it in anything earlier than Boccaccio. There is something not unlike it in one of Lucian's Dialogues, and it probably is, like most notions, of Greek invention.

It is a delicate subject, treated by Shakespeare — in "Twelfth Night" at least with beautiful, delicate discretion. If I am right in thinking that he took the story from Bandello, one can admire his honesty without reserve; for Bandello- a thick-fingered, heavy-handed prelate - was at no pains to refine away what he thought helpful to a good story. He prefixes the following argument to his tale: How Nicuola, being in love with Lattanzio, goes to serve him dressed as a page, and after many adventures marries him; and what happened to a brother of hers.

It should be added to that, for the fact is, that Nicuola and a brother Paolo are twins, and as like as two peas in a pod; and one may be pardoned for thinking that

upon that matter of dates: the probabilities point to a common origin for both, but it is not yet clear from which Shakespeare drew his profit. I should have said, myself, that Bandello would have been the more accessible, and I remember that our man quarried from him more than once. This is curious, perhaps, that Gl'Ingannati, or rather Il Sacrificizio, which is the "induction" to it, contains a character called Malevolti, a well-known Sienese family namename, in fact, of the historian of the city. Mr. Morton Luce suggests that Olivia's steward may be scented here; but Malvolio has nothing else in common with Malevolti except that first syllable of his name, and against the vantage of that I can set the fact that in Bandello's story the phrase Mala Voglia occurs on nearly every page so much so as to become an eyesore and offence. It is impossible to read the tale and not be conscious of this "damn'd iteration;" and Mala Voglia is much nearer Malvolio than Malevolti is. The question of origin has only an academic interest, except in the case of the Malvolio underplot — and here the learned fail me.

Shakespeare's version would have gained in probability if he had contrived to hint at some such previous inclination of Viola to Orsino as Nicuola had to Lattanzio. But Shakespeare thought otherwise; or wanted his shipwreck; or did not trouble himself in the matter; and Bandello, as might be expected, must needs wreck his own invention by another, and fatal, touch, whereby he asks us to believe that Lattanzio had also been in love with Nicuola before the story opens. This necessitates the extreme absurdity that he has totally forgotten her, and can go so far as to talk to her of his former mistress Nicuola. The incredible postulate is too much; imagination boggles at it, and finds all that depends upon such a shift a weariness. Such as it is, however, the rest of the story is nearly preserved in "Twelfth Night": there is much interwoven love-making. Nicuola, as a page, goes the embassy to Catella, whom her oblivious Lattanzio now loves; Catella falls in love with her; Paolo arrives and takes his sister's place in Catella's heart; Lattanzio returns to his Nicuola; the bells ring. Instead of the complications of Antonio and Sebastian in our play, Bandello has some not too savoury intrigues of an old Gherardo, who wants to marry Nicuola and mistakes her brother for herself. The novel becomes, indeed, as it proceeds, highly Bandellian, and shows clearly enough in what, to the likes of him, lay the attractiveness of the theme. Shakespeare saves us all that, and gives us instead some of his most delicate love-music. The growth of the emotion in Olivia, from her "Why, what would you?" to her serious, "You might do much," and

almost final "What is your parentage?" is surely as subtle a thing as one can find in Shakespeare. Directly we catch the drift of the pondered words, see that they tend to a confession of love, they become charged with significance, a significance which really, in themselves, they do not hold; and it is an instance of the admirable frugality of Shakespeare's literary economy that he contents himself with a bare disclosure of their import, and confidently leaves us to do the rest. What Olivia has said is in truth almost nothing-yet there is no abrupt transition into her swift, following rush of soliloquy, when after she has mused over her questions and Cesario's

answers

"What's your parentage?'

'Above my fortunes, yet my state is well;
'I am a gentleman

she breaks out,

"I'll be sworn thou art:

Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit,

Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast: soft! soft!"

The woman is in an ecstasy of love; we accept it as a matter of course; and there's the work of a master. Equally fine, equally delicate and gradual, is the same sort of suggestion of the dawn of Viola's love for Orsino, if we except, as surely we must, her tag at the end of I, iv,

"a barful strife! Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife.”

That was for the ears of the groundlings; and it is one of the puzzles of the play that an audience needing such italics as those before they could grasp at a plot could be made to understand the subtle revealing of Olivia's hearttrouble. Once over that shoal, Viola's story is exquisitely displayed. She is too eloquent one day; she nearly betrays herself-when to her Duke's "How dost thou like this tune?" she thrills her answer,

"It gives a very echo to the seat

Where love is thron'd."

Orsino hears that is indeed to "speak

Says he:

speak masterly !"

"My life upon 't, young though thou art, thine eye
Hath stayed upon some favour that it loves;

Hath it not, boy?"

She owns to it. What kind of a woman? he asks her. Of his complexion, saith she, of about his years - and so Here is wonderful comedy, full of "sudden glory” for us; which deepens, when Feste and his wailing song

on.

"Not a flower, not a flower sweet

On my

black coffin let there be strown"

have departed, into the lovely gravity, the measured words of the girl-page —

"My father had a daughter loved a man,

As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,

I should your lordship'

and then music which will never die so long as the English have ears and hearts. This too is comedy, even

as "Come away, Death," is comedy; for there is nothing to prevent our sudden glory of laughter ending in a lump in the throat.

All the scenes that follow between these three were never to be surpassed by their poet. There is a dainty perfume about them, a noble discretion, a parsimony beyond words exciting. It is with the introduction of Sebastian that interest threatens to flag: one has had no chance of loving the young man; one would have him get out of the garden and leave us alone with our enchanted trio. As things are, the business ends with unmannerly haste. In IV, i, which is the first meeting of Sebastian with Olivia, he falls in love with her; in IV, iii, he marries her. This will never do! Let be for Sebastian, in whom our only interest is that he is Viola's brother; let be for Bandello, whose Paolo thought Catella a lady of the town, and behaved accordingly; but for Olivia, whose privilege had been to love Viola, to slip so lightly into wedlock with a mere surface image of that lovely person—this, for Viola's lovers, is too much. We feel that we have been tricked into it. It is almost an affront that Shakespeare, having suffered us to linger in a garden of delights, should on a sudden give a smack with his wand. The yew-tree bowers fall down and discover pasteboard; the flowers droop their heads and show us canvas-backing; the moon is a lantern behind a cloth. Or we have been at our dreaming, our make-believe: he tells us there's nothing in it, and hardly feigns an interest in his own magic.

But he has dealt so with us during four acts that