INTRODUCTION.

was then occupied with Hakluyt, Molyneux, and others in the production, upon Mercator's plan, of "a true hydrographical description of so much of the world as hath been hitherto discovered." In this map, besides a full supply of lines of latitude and longitude, there are lines radiating in all directions from a dozen or more centres on different parts of the map. These lines, intersecting one another, form to profane eyes such a web as might be spun by a mad spider.

Shakespeare's allusion to this New Map fixes the date of Twelfth Night as not earlier than the year 1600.

The next piece of evidence as to the date of the play is in the autograph diary of John Manningham preserved in the British Museum (Harleian MSS. 5353). Of the Readers' Feast at the Middle Temple on the 2nd of February, 1602 (new style), Manningham says:-" At our feast wee had a play called Twelve Night or What You Will, much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the steward

beleeve his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a lettre, as from his lady, in generall termes, telling him what shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparraile, &c., and then when he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad." Olivia being in mourning for her brother, Manningham mistook her for a widow.

This passage proves that the play was written before February, 1602. The reference to the New Map shows that it was not written before the year 1600. The time of writing may, therefore, be positively fixed within a limit of about eighteen months; and we may fairly assume it to have been late in the year 1600 or early in the year 1601.

There was no edition of Twelfth Night earlier than the first folio of 1623.

Question as to the possible source of the sug gestion of the plot only concerns the tale of the shipwreck, of the love of Viola, and of cross purposes arising out of her resemblance to her brother Sebastian. Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown,

INTRODUCTION.

with the tale by Shakespeare. They are all his, and are no part of any piece that might or might not be thought to have suggested the plot of Twelfth Night.

One starting-point for the invention of the tale of Viola and Sebastian was an Italian novel by Matteo Bandello, the thirty-sixth of the second part of his collection of two hundred and fourteen "Nicuola, enamoured of tales, showing how Lattantio, goes into his service dressed as a page, and after many incidents marries him; and what happens to a brother of hers." In the "Histoires Tragiques" of Belleforest (1572), largely founded on Bandello, the story is told again in French, with some abridgments. In a book by Barnaby Riche, first published in 1581 (reprinted in 1606), entitled "Riche his Farewell to the Military Profession," the novel was recast and told in English, with change in the names of the characters, as the tale It is the second story of "Apolonius and Silla." that Riche tells, and will be found in this volume appended to Shakespeare's play.

The subject of Bandello's novel was made also

10

the groundwork of two early comedies in Italy, one

called Gl' Ingannati (the Mistaken), the other Inganni (Mistakes).

Of these, Gl' Ingannati was the earlier.

It was

Some part of the other acted at Siena in 1531. play (by M. Sechi) was perhaps borrowed with variation from its predecessor, but the differences are of a kind to make its resemblance to Twelfth Night less instead of greater. The oldest known copy of Inganni is of the year 1562, but the title of the play describes it as having been acted at Milan in 1547. Inganni was turned into French by Pierre de Larivey, who wrote nine comedies, all This was printed in 1611 taken from the Italian.

as Les Tromperies.

There were frequent editions of both these Italian plays; of Gl' Ingannati in 1537, 1538, 1550, 1554, 1562, 1563, 1569, 1585; of Inganni in 1562, 1566, 1582, 1587, 1602, and other years.

A sketch of Gl' Ingannati, with a full translation most suggestive of the of the scenes which are

sation in Twelfth Night, was published in 1862 by

scene is in Modena.

An old merchant, Virginio,

has a son and a daughter, Fabrizio and Lelia.

He

lost his son and his property in the sack of Rome, when Lelia was thirteen years old. The comedy being first acted in 1531, Lelia was supposed to be, at the time of performance, in her seventeenth year. A rich old man, Gherardo Foiani, desired to marry her. But the damsel's love was for a youth Flaminio de' Carandini, who had once flirted with her and was now enamoured of Isabella, daughter of the old Gherardo. Lelia left, therefore, the convent where she had been placed, put on male dress, took the name of Fabio degl' Alberini, and supplied the place of a page whose service she knew that Flaminio had lost. Flaminio sent her often with letters and messages of his love to Isabella Foiani. Isabella, taking Lelia for a young man, fell madly in love with her. Lelia, as Fabio, replied that she could not return love for love unless Isabella put an end to Flaminio's pursuit of her. That, and some jesting with the old man Gherardo, and the servant who had not succeeded in fetching Lelia from the convent to be married