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months.

"Three months this youth hath tended upon me," says Orsino of Viola in the Fifth Act. But the three months are supposed to pass between the third and fourth scenes of the First Act. From the fourth scene of the First Act to the end of the play, the time of action is two days.

Brother and sister, Viola and Sebastian, are thrown separately ashore on the coast of Illyria from a wreck, and the saving of Viola with her resolve to serve the Duke for a time as a page is set between the first scene showing the Duke's scene which sets love-passion, and the third forth the relations of Sir Toby Belch with Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria humouring Sir Toby.

Then the three months pass, and we find Viola, as the boy Cesario, high in Orsino's confidence, employed by him as ambassador of love to Olivia. And she is faithful in the trust, although her own dream of love has come to her, with Orsino for In the fifth scene we may note that the ideal. Clown has a quick eye for Maria's policy. "Well,

drinking, thou wert as witty a piece of Eve's flesh as any in Illyria." To which Maria replies, "Peace, you rogue; no more o' that."

When Malvolio speaks contemptuously of the Clown-whereby he whets in him the appetite for a revenge to come-Olivia defines her steward's weakness: "O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite." Richard III. gives us the tragic side of life to a man's self alone-"Richard loves Richard. That is, I am I"; in Malvolio we may say we have the same fault shown on the comic side. Malvolio aspires to the hand of Olivia as Richard to the crown, with motives alike selfish and therefore mean.

Thus we have the young love that sacrifices all to its ideal, in Orsino, Viola, Olivia, brighter by contrast with the less ethereal ways by which Sir Toby and Maria become man and wife, and with the yet more opposite nature of the man by selflove wedded to himself.

The First Act ends with Olivia's love fixed upon the youth Cesario, upon the sister saved out

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The Second Act begins by opening the story of the shipwrecked brother.

Of his escape

from

drowning, it may be observed that hope enough was given to Viola in the second scene of the First Act to take the tragic element out of the action of the play. The captain then had said—

"I saw your brother,

Most provident in peril, bind himself—

Courage and hope both teaching him the practice

To a strong mast, that lived upon the sea;

Where like Arion on the dolphin's back,

I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves
So long as I could see.

Viola.

For saying so there's gold.

Mine own escape unfoldeth to my hope

Whereto thy speech serves for authority

The like of him."

Sebastian had been saved by Antonio when he was a wreck past hope, and after three months' nursing is fully recovered.

He goes to the town;

"When came he to this

Antonio following.

town?" Orsino asks at the end;

and Antonio

"To-day, my lord; and for three months before
No interim, not a minute's vacancy,

Both day and night did we keep company."

"Today" here means the second day of the action after the third scene of the First Act. At the end of the First Act Viola had left Olivia, and Malvolio was sent after her with a ring. After the scene that prepares for Sebastian's coming, we have in the Second Act Malvolio following with the ring, and asking Viola, "Were not you even now with the Countess Olivia?" Viola answering, "Even now, sir." In the third scene of the Second Act it is night of the same day. Sir Toby and his friends are making a night of it. Malvolio comes as steward to rebuke them-again preparing the way for a retaliation on himself—and Maria says: "Sweet Sir Toby, be patient for to-night. Since the youth of the Count's was to-day with my lady, she is much out of quiet. For Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him."

It may be worth noting that when, immediately afterwards, Maria says of Malvolio, "sometimes he is a kind of Puritan," it is into the mouth of the

witless Sir Andrew Aguecheek that Shakespeare puts an expression of unreasoning ill-will to the

name:

"Sir Andrew. O, if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog.

Sir Toby. What, for being a uritan! Thy exquisite reason, dear knight?

Sir Andrew. I have no exquisite reason for 't, but I have reason good enough."

And to the same imbecile knight Shakespeare gives (Act III. scene 2) a reference to the Brownists, who were much dreaded in Elizabeth's time for their advocacy of freedom of opinion in

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matters of doctrine. Policy I hate," says Sir Andrew; "I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician." Was not this meant for good-natured satire upon that unreasoning clamour against earnest men which comes often from poverty of wit?

The first day of action after the three months' interval ends with the third scene of the Second Act, when Sir Toby's making a night of it has gone

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