o'er the greene corne field did passe In spring tyme, in spring tyme, in spring tyme, The on - lie prettie ring tyme, When birds doo sing, Hey ding a ding a ding, Hey ding a ding a ding, Hey ding a ding a ding; Sueet lovers love the spring. COSTUME. Although Shakspere has not given a name either to the duchy in which the scene is laid, or the duke who has been deprived of it, we have one point to guide us in our selection of the costume of this exquisite comedy,-namely, the circumstance of an independent duchy in France. The action must therefore be supposed to take place before the union of the great fiefs to the crown, and consequently not later than the reign of Louis XII., whose marriage with Anne of Brittany incorporated that last and most independent province with the royal dominions. Illuminations of the reign of Charles VIII., the immediate predecessor of Louis XII., have been elsewhere suggested as furnishing a picturesque and appropriate costume for the usurping duke and his courtiers, and a MS. in the Royal Library at Paris (Rondeaux Chants a 'Costume of Shakespear's Comedy of As You Like It, by J. R. Planché.' 12mo, London, 1825. Royal, No. 6989) as supplying the hunting dress of the time. Many of the former are engraved in Montfaucon's 'Monarchie Française,' and some figures from the latter will be found in Mons. Willemin's superb work, Monumens inédites, &c.' The dress of a shepherd of this period may be found in Pynson's 'Shepherd's Kalendar:' and the splendid Harleian MS. No. 4425, presents us with the ordinary habits of an ecclesiastic when not clad in the sacred vestments of his office or order. The late Mr. Douce, in his admirable disserSee also Modus le Roy. Livre de Chasse.' Folio, Chambery, 1486. tation on the clowns of Shakspere, has made the following remarks on the dress of this character:-"Touchstone is the domestic fool of Frederick, the duke's brother, and belongs to the class of witty or allowed fools. He is threatened with the whip, a mode of chastisement which was often inflicted on these motley personages. His dress should be a party. coloured garment. He should occasionally carry a bauble in his hand and wear ape's ears to his hood, which is probably the head-dress intended by Shakespeare, there being no allusion whatever to a cock's head or a comb." INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. THIS Comedy was first printed in the folio edition of 1623. The text is divided into acts and scenes; and the order of these has been undisturbed in the modern editions. With the exception of a few manifest typographical errors, the original copy is remarkably correct. It was formerly supposed that this charming comedy was written by Shakspere late in life. But there was found in the British Museum, in 1828, a little manuscript diary of a student of the Middle Temple, extending from 1601 to 1603, which leaves no doubt that the play was publicly acted at the Candlemas feast of the Middle Temple in 1602; and it belongs, therefore, to the first year of the seventeenth century, or the last of the sixteenth; for it is not found in the list of Meres, in 1598. sweetest and tenderest emotion that ever informed the heart of the purest and most graceful of beings with a spirit almost divine. Perhaps in the whole range of Shakspere's poetry there is nothing which comes more unbidden into the mind, and always in connection with some image of the ethereal beauty of the utterer, than Viola's "She never told her love." The love of Olivia, wilful as it is, is not in the slightest degree repulsive. With the old stories before him, nothing but the refined delicacy of Shakspere's conception of the female character could have redeemed Olivia from approaching to the anti-feminine. But as it is, we pity her, and we rejoice with her. These are what may be called the serious characters, because they are the vehicles for what we emphatically call the poetry of the play. But the comic characters are to us equally poetical—that is, they appear to us not mere copies of the representatives of temporary or individual follies, but embodyings of the universal comic, as true and as fresh to-day as they were two centuries and a half ago. Malvolio is to our minds as poetical as Don Quixote; and we are by no means sure that Shakspere meant the poor cross-gartered steward only to be laughed at, any more than Cervantes did the knight of the rueful countenance. He meant us to pity him, as Olivia and the Duke pitied him; for, in truth, the delusion by which Malvolio was wrecked, only passed out of the romantic into "With hey, ho, the wind and the rain," the comic through the manifestation of the there is not a thought, nor a situation, that vanity of the character in reference to his is not calculated to call forth pleasurable situation. But if we laugh at Malvolio we feelings. The love-melancholy of the Duke are not to laugh ill-naturedly, for the poet is a luxurious abandonment to one pervading has conducted all the mischief against him impression-not a fierce and hopeless contest in a spirit in which there is no real malice with one o'ermastering passion. It delights at the bottom of the fun. Sir Toby is a to lie "canopied with bowers,"-to listen to most genuine character,-one given to strong "old and antique" songs, which dally with potations and boisterous merriment; but its "innocence,”—to be “full of shapes," and | with a humour about him perfectly irre"high fantastical." The love of Viola is the ❘ sistible. His abandon to the instant op It is scarcely necessary to enter into any analysis of the plot of this delightful comedy, or attempt any dissection of its characters, for the purpose of opening to the reader new sources of enjoyment. It is impossible, we think, for one of ordinary sensibility to read through the first Act without yielding himself up to the genial temper in which the entire play is written. "The sunshine of the breast" spreads its rich purple light over the whole champain, and penetrates into every thicket and every dingle. From the first line to the last-from the Duke's "That strain again;-it had a dying fall," to the Clown's portunity of laughing at and with others is something so thoroughly English, that we are not surprised the poet gave him an English name. And like all genuine humorists, Sir Toby must have his butt. What a trio is presented in that glorious scene of the second Act, where the two Knights and the Clown "make the welkin dance; "-the humorist, the fool, and the philosopher ;-for Sir Andrew is the fool, and the Clown is the philosopher! We hold the Clown's epilogue song to be the most philosophical Clown's song upon record; and a treatise might be written upon its wisdom. It is the history of a life, from the condition of "a little tiny boy," through "man's estate," to decaying age-" when I came unto my bed;" and the conclusion is, that what is true of the individual is true of the species, and what was of yesterday was of generations long passed away-for "A great while ago the world begun." Steevens says this "nonsensical ditty" is utterly unconnected with the subject of the comedy. We think he is mistaken. |