The Variorum Twelfth Night

THE appearance of each new volume of Dr. Furness’s great Variorum Shakespeare has come to be a matter of periodic congratulation among all serious students of the dramatist. The mass of criticism, illustration, and interpretation, wise and unwise, which three centuries have accumulated, makes the task of mastering the material on even one play almost terrifying. Thus it is no wonder that, when a scholar of sufficient learning and judgment undertakes to sift and condense this mass, his successful and continued activity should become the grateful concern of all.

In the edition of Twelfth Night¹ which has just been issued, Dr. Furness supplies the generous equipment which we have become accustomed to expect. The play is printed from the First Folio, and the results of textual criticism are fully yet concisely given. A summary of explanatory comment follows; and here one notices the greater frequency and fullness of remarks by the editor himself in contrast with the severe self-repression of the earlier volumes. It would be ungracious to grudge the veteran scholar the opportunity to express the personal opinions to which a lifelong devotion has given a kind of authority as well as a high value. Yet one is constrained to remark that, in an edition which has justly come to be regarded as an impartial compendium of dicta from which the student draws his inferences for himself, it now becomes necessary to guard against the adventitious official weight which the summing up sentences from the editor’s own pen are apt to claim.

It is no fault of Dr. Furness’s that much of the material which he has been obliged to present is of such a nature as to give the enemies of scholarship occasion to blaspheme. Two solid pages devoted to arguing that the Lady of the Strachy who married the yeoman of the wardrobe was really the Lady of the Starchy and a fashionable laundress may seem an excessive amount, even if taken as a joke. Yet, except as food for a cynical humor, it is hard to defend the perpetuation of this and many another such instance of ingenuity and enthusiasm gone ludicrously wrong. But fullness is surely the safer side to err on in such an edition, and one does not cease to wonder at Dr. Furness’s catholicity and tolerance.

The Appendix deals with the date of composition and the source of the plot, and contains the usual selection of criticisms, notes on actors, costume, scenery, and time-analysis, with “ sundry translations of Come away, come away, death.”

The Preface, in which is summed up the result of investigation on date and sources, is the part of the volume most calculated to provoke discussion. Once more the editor has his fling at those who find the chronology of an author’s works a valuable aid in the study of his genius. “ We must distinguish, so it is urged, his earliest plays from his latest; we shall then be enabled, so we are told, to perceive the growth of his mind; though how this is to help the growth of our minds is not evident; possibly, it is assumed that our minds, being fully grown, can watch with genial smile his early struggles; under such circumstances, who can resist the charm of suggesting that the young poet does very well now, but he will do better when he grows older and wiser ? ” Respect for the writer forbids the natural exclamation on such a passage. It is surely too late in the day for it to be worth while arguing against it. In any case, it is satisfactory that Dr. Furness none the less faithfully presents all the data available for the discussion of the question which he regards so contemptuously.

The criticism evoked by his treatment of the sources is more serious. Considerable confusion has prevailed in this matter in the more recent authorities, and it was to be hoped that an exhaustive presentation in the Variorum of the ascertained facts and the actual documents would clear things up. But we regret to find that this hope is imperfectly fulfilled.

The problem of the exact source of the main plot of Twelfth Night involves at least three plays and three novels. Of these the two Italian plays with the same title, Gl’ Inganni, written by Nicolo Secchi and Curtio Gonzaga, may be set aside at once, since neither contains the central situation represented in Twelfth Night by Olivia’s love for Viola. The only evidence pointing to Shakespeare’s having seen either of them lies in the fact that in Gonzaga’s play the girl, in assuming male costume, takes the name Cesare, which may have suggested Cesario.

In 1531 the society of Gl’ Intronati of Siena produced the comedy of Gl’ Ingannati. Its plot presents important similarities to that of Twelfth Night. There are a brother and a sister of a marvelous resemblance who are separated ; the girl dons a page’s costume and enters the service of the man she loves ; she is sent as messenger to woo another lady on her master’s behalf; this lady falls in love with her, and later with her brother whom she supposes to be the same person ; and in the end the disguised girl marries her master, while her brother marries the other lady. The beginning and the end, however, the underplot, and many of the complications, in no way correspond to Twelfth Night. In 1590 and in 1598 a Latin translation of this play was acted at Queens’ College, Cambridge ; and this unprinted Latin version is, in Dr. Furness’s opinion, the source of the main plot of Shakespeare’s comedy.

Among the novelle of Bandello, published in 1554, there is a story based on Gl’ Ingannati, and preserving essentially the same main plot. Dr. Furness, in pointing out the true relation of the play and the novel, corrects Sidney Lee, who reverses the relation. This story of Bandello’s was in turn translated into French by Belleforest, whose version is here shown to have been the probable source of the English tale of Apolonius and Silla, the second of the novels contained in Barnabe Riche, his Farewell to Militarie Profession.² Since the announcement by J. Payne Collier in 1820 that Apolonius and Silla was “ the indisputable source of Twelfth Night,” there has been a general acquiescence in his opinion. It seems advisable, then, to examine the reasons which induce Dr. Furness to reverse this judgment in favor of the manuscript Latin version of Gl’ Ingannati. These reasons seem hardly scientific. He dissents, he says, “ not on the score that there are no incidents common to both story and comedy, because there are such, but I cannot believe that Shakespeare was ever in the smallest degree influenced by Riche’s coarse, repulsive novel. I doubt that Shakespeare ever read it, — at least, I hope he never did; his hours were more precious to us all than those of any poet who ever lived ; it would be grievous to think that he wasted even half a one over Apolonius and Silla.” He goes on to note the discrepancies between Twelfth Night and Apolonius and Silla. These consist in a different introduction, a greater refinement in Shakespeare’s version, especially in the treatment of the relations of Olivia and Sebastian as compared with the corresponding characters in Riche, a difference in the occasion that brings Sebastian to Orsino’s city, and the fact that in Riche the brother and sister, though extraordinarily alike, are not twins.

In reply to all this it is to be noted that the discrepancies between Twelfth Night and Gl’ Ingannati in all these points are equally great, and in the Introduction still greater. The coarseness of tone in the prose tale counts for nothing, as Shakespeare constantly refined his material, and does not seem to have been so easily shocked as Dr. Furness, who surely strains his editorial rights when he tells us that in his reprint of Riche’s story the “ coarsenesses have all been omitted, where possible,” and that he has “ sedulously avoided all intimation of the omission.” If this argument is to have weight it is surely unwise to withhold its chief basis. As for the matter of the twins, it does not appear that the brother and sister are twins either in the Italian play or in Riche, though they are in Bandello and Shakespeare. But when the identity of members of the same family is confused it was a convention to make them twins, and Shakespeare had already done so in the Comedy of Errors, so that the source of this detail is hardly of importance.

On the other hand, there are several resemblances between Riche and Shakespeare not found in either of the Italian forms of the story. For example : a shipwreck lands the heroine near the city of the Duke in both English versions, the sack of Rome separates her from her family in the Italian ; the gentleman loved by the heroine is a reigning Duke in both English versions, he is untitled and without authority in the Italian ; the first mistaking of the brother for the sister is made by Olivia herself in both English versions, by a servant in both Italian ; the dénouement in Shakespeare is much closer to Riche than to either Gl’ Ingannati or Bandello.

A final proof of Shakespeare’s knowledge of Riche’s volume, and one which does not seem to have been observed hitherto, helps to clinch the argument. The Farewell to Militarie Profession contains eight stories, of which Apolonius and Silla is the second. The fifth is the history Of two Brethren and their Wives. In it the younger brother married a rich woman who turned out an inveterate scold. After enduring much he adopted heroic measures. With the assistance of a neighbor he dressed her in rags, tied her in a dark house, with a great chain about her leg, and then “ callyng his neibours about her, he would seeme with greate sorrowe to lament his wives distresse, telling them that she was sodainly become lunatique ; whereas, by his geasture, he tooke so greate greefe, as though he would likewise have runne madde for companie. But his wife (as he had attired her) seemed in deede not to be well in her wittes ; but, seeyng her housebandes maners, shewed her self in her conditions to bee aright Bedlem: she used no other wourdes but cursynges and banninges, criyng for the plague and the pestilence, and that the devill would teare her housbande in peeces. The companie that were about her, thei would exhorte her, Good neighbour, forget these idle speeches, which doeth so muche distemper you, and call upon God, and he will surely helpe you. — Call upon God for help? (quoth the other) wherein should he helpe me, unlesse he would consume this wretche with fire and brimstone ? other help I have no need of. Her housebande, he desired his neighbours, for God’s love, that thei would helpe him to praie for her ; and thus, altogether kneeling doune in her presence, he beganne to saie, Miserere, whiche all theie saied after him ; but this did so spight and vexe her, that she never gave over her railyng and ragyng againste them all.”

It seems more than probable that we have here the suggestion of the episode in Twelfth Night where the charge of madness is put upon Malvolio and he is shut up in a dark house and baited, — an episode which has hitherto been regarded as of Shakespeare’s own invention. If this inference is correct, there is one more reason for restoring Apolonius and Silla to its place as the source of the main plot of Twelfth Night, as it shows that Riche’s volume must have been in Shakespeare’s hands. But, indeed, the case is clear enough already. Of all the candidates for the honor of having supplied Shakespeare with his plot, Riche is the only one whose version is in English ; its date suits admirably ; it has more in common with Shakespeare’s comedy than any other ; and no feature common to Gl’ Ingannati and Twelfth Night has been pointed out which is not also contained in Apolonius and Silla.

The criticism of Dr. Furness’s results implied in this difference of view relates, of course, only to his introductory statement. The main value of the edition is unaffected by this, and depends, as was said at the outset, upon the skill, the judgment, the learning, and the industry, for which all who care for Shakespeare must remain the grateful debtors of its compiler.

William Allan Neilson.