_The Fable._ Bened.i.c.k, a lord of Padua, pledges himself to bachelorhood. Beatrice, a disdainful lady, is scornful of men.

Claudio plans to marry Hero.

Don John, enemy of Claudio, plans to thwart the marriage by letting it appear that Hero is unchaste.

Don Pedro and Claudio make Bened.i.c.k believe that Beatrice is dying of love for him.

Ursula and Hero make Beatrice believe that Bened.i.c.k is dying of love for her.

The disdainful couple make friends. Don John thwarts the marriage of Claudio by his tale of Hero's unchast.i.ty. Claudio casts off Hero at the altar. Hero swoons, and is conveyed away as dead. Beatrice and Bened.i.c.k are brought into close alliance by their upholding of Hero's cause.

Proof is obtained that Hero has been falsely accused. She is recovered from her swoon. Claudio marries her. Bened.i.c.k and Beatrice plight troth.

In this play Shakespeare writes of the power of report, of the thing overheard, to alter human destiny. Antonio's man, listening behind a hedge, overhears Don Pedro telling Claudio that he will woo Hero. The report of his eavesdropping conveys no notion of the truth, and leads, no doubt, to a bitter moment for Hero. Borachio, hiding behind the arras, overhears the truth of the matter. The report of his eavesdropping leads to the casting off of Hero at the altar. Don John and Borachio vow to Claudio that they overheard Don Pedro making love to Hero. The report gives Claudio a bitter moment. Bened.i.c.k, reporting to the same tune, intensifies his misery.

Bened.i.c.k, overhearing the report of Beatrice's love for him, changes his mind about marriage. Beatrice, hearing of Bened.i.c.k's love for her, changes her mind about men. Claudio, hearing Don John's report of Hero, changes his mind about his love. The watch, overhearing Borachio's report of his villainy, are able to change the tragedy to comedy.

Leonato, hearing Claudio's report of Hero, is ready to cast off his child. Report is shown to be stronger than any human affection and any acquired quality, except the love of one unmarried woman for another, and that strongest of all earthly things, the fool in authority. The wisdom of Shakespeare is greater and more various than the brains of little men can imagine. It is one of the tragical things, that this great man, who interpreted the ways of fate in glorious, many-coloured vision, should be set aside in our theatres for the mockers and the accusers, whose vision scatters dust upon the brain and sand upon the empty heart.

Though the play is not one of the most pa.s.sionate of the plays, it belongs to Shakespeare's greatest creative period. It is full of great and wonderful things. The character-drawing is so abundant and precise that those who know how hard it is to convey the illusion of character can only bow down, thankful that such work may be, but ashamed that it no longer is. Every person in the play is pa.s.sionately alive about something. The energy of the creative mood in Shakespeare filled all these images with a vitality that interests and compels. The wit and point of the dialogue--

_Don Pedro._ I think this is your daughter.

_Leonato._ Her mother hath many times told me so.

_Bened.i.c.k._ Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?

_Leonato._ Signior Bened.i.c.k, no; for then you were a child;

or (as in the later pa.s.sage)--

_Beatrice._ I may sit in a corner and cry heigh ho for a husband.

_Don Pedro._ Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

_Beatrice._ I would rather have one of your father's getting. Hath your Grace ne'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them.

_Don Pedro._ Will you have me, lady?

_Beatrice._ No, my lord, unless I might have another for working days: your Grace is too costly to wear every day--

is plain to all; but it is given to few to see with what admirable, close, constructive art this dialogue is written for the theatre. Of poetry, of understanding pa.s.sionately put, there is comparatively little. The one great poetical scene is that at the opening of the fifth act. The worst lines of this scene have become proverbial; the best are

"'tis all men's office to speak patience To those that wring under the load of sorrow, But no man's virtue nor sufficiency, To be so moral when he shall endure The like himself."

There is little in the play written thus, but there are many scenes throbbingly alive. The scene in the church shows what power to understand the awakened imagination has. The scene is a quivering eight minutes in as many lives. Shakespeare pa.s.ses from thrilling soul to thrilling soul with a touch as delicate as it is certain.

Shakespeare's fun is liberally given in the comic scenes. In the last act there is a beautiful example of the effect of lyric to heighten a solemn occasion.

_Twelfth Night._

_Written._ 1600 (?)

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The story of Orsino, Viola, Olivia and Sebastian is to be found in the "Historie of Apolonius and Silla"

as told by Barnabe Riche in the book _Riche his Farewell to Militarie Profession_. Riche took the tale from Bandello's Italian, or from de Belleforest's French translation from it. Three sixteenth-century Italian plays are based on this fable. All of these sources may have been known to Shakespeare.

The sub-plot, and the characters contained in it, seem to be original creations.

_The Fable._ Viola, who thinks that she has lost her brother Sebastian by shipwreck, disguises herself as a boy, and calls herself Cesario. She takes service with the Duke Orsino, who is in love with the lady Olivia. She carries love messages from the Duke to Olivia.

Olivia, who is in mourning for her brother, refuses the Duke's suit, but falls in love with Cesario.

In her house is Malvolio, the steward, who reproves her uncle, Sir Toby Belch, for rioting at night with trivial companions. The trivial companions forge a letter, which causes Malvolio to think that his mistress is in love with him. The thought makes his behaviour so strange that he is locked up as a madman.

Sir Toby Belch finds further solace for life in making his gull, Sir Andrew, challenge Cesario to a duel. The duel is made dangerous by the sudden appearance of Sebastian, who is mistaken for Cesario.

He beats Sir Andrew and Sir Toby, and encounters the lady Olivia.

Olivia woos him as she has wooed Cesario, but with better fortune.

They are married. The Duke marries Viola. Malvolio is released from prison. Sir Toby marries Maria, Olivia's waiting-woman. Sir Andrew is driven out like a plucked pigeon. Malvolio, unappeased by his release, vows to be revenged for the mock put upon him.

This is the happiest and one of the loveliest of all the Shakespearean plays. It is the best English comedy. The great mind that mixed a tragedy of intellect with a tragedy of stupidity, here mixes mirth with romantic beauty. The play is so mixed with beauty that one can see it played night after night, week after week, without weariness, even in a London theatre.

The play presents images of self-deception, or delusional sentimentality, by means of a romantic fable and a vigorous fable. It shows us three souls suffering from the kind of sickly vanity that feeds on day-dreams. Orsino is in an unreal mood of emotion. Love is an active pa.s.sion. Orsino is in the clutch of its dangerous pa.s.sive enemy called sentimentality. He lolls upon a couch to music when he ought to be carrying her glove to battle. Olivia is in an unreal mood of mourning for her brother. Grief is a destroying pa.s.sion. Olivia makes it a form of self-indulgence, or one sweet the more to attract flies to her.

Malvolio is in an unreal mood of self-importance. Long posing at the head of ceremony has given him the faith that ceremony, of which he is the head, is the whole of life. This faith deludes him into a life of day-dreams, common enough among inactive clever people, but dangerous to the indulger, as all things are that distort the mental vision. At the point at which the play begins the day-dream has brought him to the pitch of blindness necessary for effective impact on the wall.

The only cure for the sickly in the mind is reality. Something real has to be felt or experienced. Life that is over-delicate and remote through something unbalanced in the mind is not life but decay. The knife, the bludgeon, the practical joke, and the many-weaponed figure of Sorrow are life's remedies for those who fail to live. We are the earth's children; we have no business in limbo. Living in limbo is like living in the smoke from a crater: highly picturesque, but too near death for safety.

Orsino is cured of sentiment by the sight of Sebastian making love like a man. He rouses to do the like by Viola. Olivia is piqued out of sentiment by coming to know some one who despises her. She falls in love with that person. Malvolio is mocked out of sentiment by the knowledge that other minds have seen his mind. He has not the happiness to be rewarded with love at the end of the play; but he has the alternative of hate, which is as active a pa.s.sion and as real. All three are roused to activity by the coming of something real into their lives; and all three, in coming to the active state, cease to be interesting and beautiful and pathetic.

Shakespeare's abundant power created beings who look before and after, even while they keep vigorous a pa.s.sionate present. It is difficult to praise that power. Even those who know how difficult art is find it hard to praise perfect art. Art is not to be praised or blamed, but understood. This play will stand as an example of perfect art till a greater than Shakespeare set a better example further on. It is

"All beauty and without a spot."

The scene of the roisterers, rousing the night-owl in a catch, rouses the heart, as all real creation does, with the thought that life is too wonderful to end. The next, most lovely scene, where the Duke and Viola talk of love that keeps life from ending, and so often brings life down into the dust, a.s.sures the heart that even if life ends for us it will go on in others.

"the song we had last night.

Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain; The spinsters and the knitters in the sun And the free maids that weave their thread with bones Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth, And dallies with the innocence of love, Like the old age."

In his best plays Shakespeare used a double construction to express by turn the twofold energy of man, the energy of the animal and of the spirit. The mind that brooded sadly in

"For women are as roses, whose fair flower Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour,"

and in

"She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,"

belonged to earth, and got a gladness from earth. Within two minutes of the talk of the woman who died of love he showed Contemplation making a rare turkey-c.o.c.k of the one wise man in his play.