INTRODUCTION.

TWELFTH NIGHT is not included in Francis Meres's list of comedies, assigned in his Palladis Tamia of 1598, to Shakespeare.

In the second scene of the third act of Twelfth Night Maria says of Malvolio, that "he does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies.' This has been regarded as an allusion to some one of many maps contained in the folio volume of the translation by William Philip of "J. Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages into the Easte and West Indies, in foure Bookes," published in 1598. The reference is really to a Map of the World-"the New Map "-published in 1600. This was the first Map of the World engraved in England on Mercator's projection. It was given in that year by Hakluyt in his "Voyages." The latest geographical discovery recorded on it was of

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Northern Nova Zemlya, made by the Dutchman Barents in 1596. Earlier in the same second scene of the Third Act of Twelfth Night Fabian says to Sir Andrew Aguecheek, "You are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard." Shakespeare seems, therefore, to have been lately reading Hakluyt. The year of the New Map was also the year of the foundation of the India Company, which then began its trade by fitting out four ships, and obtained its first charter in December, 1600. Use was made, therefore, of all information that could be obtained from Linschoten or others in aid of a right mapping of the Indies, and the map excelled all that had preceded it in its delineation of the Eastern seas.

Of Mercator it may be said, by the way, that the name was the Latinised surname of Gerhard Kauffmann, who died in 1594. He invented his projection in 1556. Edward Wright, who died in 1615, first applied Kauffmann's idea to Navigation. Wright published in 1599 "Certain Errors in Navigation Detected and Corrected," and

was then occupied with Hakluyt, Molyneux, and others in the production, upon Mercator's plan, of

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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 suggestion 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, Malvolio, Maria, and their doings, are interwoven

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 tales, showing how "Nicuola, enamoured of 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 of "Apolonius and Silla." It is the second story that Riche tells, and will be found in this volume appended to Shakespeare's play.

The subject of Bandello's novel was made also