All the unsigned footnotes in this volume are by the writer of the article to which they are appended. The interpretation of the initials signed to the others is: I. G. = Israel Gollancz, M.A.; H. N. H.=Henry Norman Hudson, A.M.; C. H. H.= C. H. Herford, Litt.D.

PREFACE

By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A.

THE FIRST EDITION

Twelfth Night; or, What You Will, was first printed in the First Folio, where it occupies pages 255-275 in the division of Comedies. There is no record of any earlier edition. The text is singularly free from misprints and corruptions. The list of "Dramatis Persona" was first given by Rowe, as in the case of many of the plays.

THE DATE OF COMPOSITION

John Manningham, a member of the Middle Temple from January, 1601(-2) to April, 1603, entered in his Diary, preserved in the British Museum (MSS. Harleian 5,353), the following statement :—

"Feb. 2, 1601(-2).—At our feast, we had a play called Twelve Night, or What You Will. Much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menechmi in Plautus; but most like and near to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practice in it to make the steward believe his lady widowe was in love with him, by counterfeiting as from his lady in general terms, telling him what she liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparel, etc., and then when he came to practise, making him believe they took him to be mad," etc. Seeing that Twelfth Night is not mentioned by Meres in 1598, and as the play contains fragments of the song "Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone, from the Book of Ayres, by Robert Jones, first published

1 Cp. The Diary of John Manningham, ed. by John Bruce (Camden Society, 1869).

in 1601, the date of composition may with some certainty be assigned to 1601-1602.

TITLE OF THE PLAY

According to Halliwell-Phillipps, Twelfth Night was one of four plays acted by Shakespeare's Company, "the Lord Chamberlain's servants," before the Court at Whitehall during the Christmas of 1601-1602; possibly it owed its name to the circumstance that it was first acted as the Twelfth-Night performance on that occasion. Others hold that the name of the play was suggested by its "embodiment of the spirit of the Twelfth-Night sports and revels a time devoted to festivity and merriment." second name, Or What You Will, was perhaps given in something of the same spirit as As You Like It; it probably implies that the first title has no very special meaning. It has been suggested that the name expresses Shakespeare's indifference to his own production-that it was a sort of farewell to Comedy; in his subsequent plays the tragic element was to predominate. This far-fetched, subtle view of the matter has certainly little to commend it.1

THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT

(i) There are at least two Italian plays called Gl’Inganni (The Cheats), to which Manningham may have referred in his entry as containing incidents resembling those of Twelfth Night; one of these plays, by Nicolo Secchi, was printed in 1562; another by Curzio Gonzalo, was first published in 1592. In the latter play the sister, who dresses as a man, and is mistaken for her brother, gives herself the name of Cesare, and it seems likely that we have here the source of Shakespeare's "Cesario." (ii) A third play, however, entitled Gl'Ingannati (Venice, 1537), translated by Peacock in 1862, bears a much stronger resemblance to Twelfth Night; in its poetical induction, 1 Marston took the name What You Will for a play of his own in 1607.