LIST. Act III., Sc. 1. "She is the list of my voyage." List is the limit, the boundary. LOST. Act II., Sc. 2. "Her eyes had lost her tongue." The verb is used passively-caused her tongue to be lost. MESSALINE. Act II., Sc. 1. "Sebastian of Messaline." Mitylene (Lesbos) is probably meant. Possibly Shakspere wrote Mettaline, and the word was mistaken by the printer. Mettaline is quite near enough the modern Metelin. METTLE. Act V., Sc. 1. "So much against the mettle of your sex." Mettle is here the temper, disposition. MISTRESS MALL. Act I., Sc. 3. "Are they like to take dust, like Mistress Mall's picture?" This has been supposed to be an allusion to a woman named Mary Frith, better known as Moll Cutpurse, who dressed as a man, and committed many robberies. Middleton and Dekker made her the subject of a comedy. But it is very doubtful whether Mistress Mall had attained her celebrity at the time Twelfth Night' was written. It was acted at the Middle Temple, in 1601; Mall was born, according to a life of her, in 1589. Malone states that she was born in 1584; but he supposed 'Twelfth Night' was produced in 1614. The authentic date of the comedy removes Mary Frith from her Shaksperean niche. We may add that pictures at that time were often covered by a curtain, to preserve them from the dust, and as "Mistress Mall's picture was perhaps not considered perfectly correct, it was probably kept covered for the alleged reason of being "like to take dust." OPPOSITE. Act II., Sc. 5. "Be opposite with a kinsman." Be contrary with, of a different opinion to. OWE. Act I., Sc. 5. "Ourselves we do not owe." The use of owe in the sense of own was common with Shakspere and the writers of his age. POINT-DEVICE. Act II., Sc. 5. See As You Like It.' POSSESS. Act II., Sc. 3. "Possess us; tell us something of him." Possess us, is inform us; put us in possession of your plan. PREVENTED. Act III., Sc. 1. "But we are prevented." Prevented is anticipated. PROPER-FALSE. Act II., Sc. 2. "How easy is it for the proper-false.” Proper is here used for handsome. In 'Othello' it is said,"This Ludovico is a proper man." RECEIVING. Act III., Sc. 1. 66 Receiving is here used in the sense of comprehension. RULE. Act II., Sc. 3. "You would not give means for this uncivil rule." Rule here means conduct, method of life. SCATHFUL. Act V., Sc. 1. "With which such scathful grapple did he make." Scathful is hurtful, destructive. SEASON. Act I., Sc. 1. To season is to preserve. See 'All's Well that Ends Well.' SHENT. Act IV., Sc. 2. "I am shent for speaking to you." Shent, from the Anglo-Saxon scendan, is to be blamed, reproved. SHERIFF'S POST. Act I., Sc. 5. "He'll stand at your door like a sheriff's post." Posts were set up at the magistrate's door as tokens of authority, and to mark his residence. In the old play or 'Lingua,' Act II.. Sc. 3, we have "knows he how to become a scarlet gown? hath he a pair of fresh posts at his door?" Dekker and Jonson also allude to these posts in the same way. SNECK-UP. Act II., Sc. 3. This phrase was equivalent to "hang yourself." Taylor, the 66 'Snickup, which is in English gallow grass." STATE. Act II., Sc. 5. "Sitting in my state." The state was a canopied chair, a throne. STANNYEL. Act II., Sc. 5. "And with what wing the stannyel checks at it!" The stannyel is the common hawk. The original folio has stallion, an obvious error. STOCK. Act I., Sc. 3. "A damask-coloured stock.” Stock is stocking. STONE-BOW. Act II., Sc. 5. "O, for a stone-bow." A stone-bow was a cross-bow for discharging of stones. TALL. Act I., Sc. 3. "He's as tall a man as any 's in Illyria." Tall is stout or bold. TASTE. Act III., Sc. 1. "Taste your legs, sir.” By the Elizabethan poets the word taste was not limited to touch by palate, but was often used for try. In Chapman's 'Odyssey' we have "He now began To taste the bow." TRAY-TRIP. Act II., Sc. 5. "Shall I play my freedom at tray-trip." Tray-trip was a game of tables. Tyrwhitt conjectures it was "But, leaving cards, let's go to dice awhile,— TRIPLEX. Act V., Sc. 1. "The triplex, sir, is a good tripping measure.' The triplex is the triple-time in music, in which each bar is divided into three equal parts, and is counted one, two, three. UNDERTAKER. Act III., Sc. 4. "Nay, if you be an undertaker." This has been explained by Ritson as an undertaker of another's quarrel. VIOL-DE-GAMBOYS. Act I., Sc. 3. This instrument was a kind of violoncello, called de Gamba, because placed between the legs in playing. Vox. Act V., Sc. 1. "You must allow vox." Olivia asks, "Art thou mad?" The Clown replies, "You must allow vox," i. e. you must allow me to use my voice if I am to read madness. WORTH. Act III., Sc. 3. "But, were my worth, as is my conscience, firm.” Worth is here fortune or wealth; we still ask what is a man worth? in reference to his property. PLOT AND CHARACTERS. IN the Queen's private Library at Windsor, there is a copy of the second folio edition of Shakspere, which belonged to Charles I.; and in that copy the king altered, with his own pen, the title of 'Twelfth Night' to that of 'Malvolio.' It is plain that Charles I., who, as Milton tells us, chose our poet as "the closet-companion of his solitudes," considered that Malvolio was the predominant idea of this play. It would appear, also, that it was so considered by Shakspere's contemporaries. Amongst the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, there is a small Diary of a Student of the Middle Temple, extending from 1601 to 1603, in which the following passage occurs : "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 Menechmis in Plautus, but most like & neere to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the steward believe his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a letter, as from his lady, in generall termes telling him what shee liked best in him, & prescribing his gestures, inscribing his apparaile, &c., and then when he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad." This passage from the Student's Diary has a great value, as giving us the true date of this charming comedy. We know, through this record, that it belongs to the middle period of the poet's career, when his genius had attained its mature development, and his art had established a complete mastery over all the subjects with which it dealt. It was this mastery that enabled him to blend the romantic with the comic in such perfect union as we find exhibited in 'Twelfth Night.' The commentators upon our poet tell us, with regard to 'Twelfth Night,' “There is great reason to believe that the serious part of this comedy is founded on some old translation of the seventh history in the fourth volume of Belleforest's 'Histoires Tragiques.' Belleforest took the story, as usual, from Bandello. The comic scenes appear to have been entirely the production of Shakspeare." He did create, then, Sir Andrew, and Sir Toby, and Malvolio, and the Clown. But who created Viola, and Sebastian, and Olivia, and the Duke? They were made, say the critics, according to the recipe of Bandello:—Item, a twin brother and sister; item, the sister in love, and becoming a page in the service of him she loved; item, the said page sent as a messenger to the lady whom her master loved; item, the lady falling in love with the page; item, the lady meeting with the twin brother; item, all parties happily matched. Shakspere, it is held, did not create these characters. He merely evoked them from their hiding-places, in the rude outlines of story books without poetry, and comedies without wit. A better school of criticism has taught us, that whether a writer invents, in the commonly-received meaning of invention,—that is, whether his incidents and characters be spick-and-spán new;-or whether he borrows, using the same ordinary phraseology, his incidents and characters from tradition, or history, or written legends, he is not a poet unless his materials are worked up into a perfect and consistent whole: and if the poetry be not in him, it matters little whether he raises his fabric "all out of his own head," as children say, or adopts a bit here and a bit there, and pieces them together with a bit of his own,-for his house will not stand; it is built upon the sands. The Hall of the Middle Temple is a stately room, adorned with noble portraits, and full of grave and elevating associations. But there is no association connected with this building more interesting than that at the Christmas festivities of 1601 was here performed "a play called 'Twelve Night, or what you will "—that joyous and exhilarating play, full of the truest and most beautiful humanities, especially fitted for a season of cordial mirthfulness. Here, then, its exquisite poetry first fell upon the ear of some secluded scholar, and was to him as a fragrant flower blooming amidst |