e left in
the freedom of whatever time we may choose antecedent to that of the
composition, provided we do not exceed the proper limits of
imaginative reason.

This variety in the grouping of the persons, whether so intended or
not, very well accords with the spirit in which, or the occasion for
which, the title indicates the play to have been written. Twelfth Day,
anciently so called as being the twelfth after Christmas, is the day
whereon the Church has always kept the feast of "The Epiphany, or the
Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles." So that, in preparing a
Twelfth-Night entertainment, the idea of fitness might aptly suggest,
that national lines and distinctions should be lost in the paramount
ties of a common Religion; and that people the most diverse in kindred
and tongue should draw together in the sentiment of "one Lord, one
Faith, one Baptism"; their social mirth thus relishing of universal
Brotherhood.

The general scope and plan of _Twelfth Night, as a work of art_, is
hinted in its second title; all the comic elements being, as it were,
thrown out simultaneously, and held in a sort of equipoise; so that
the readers are left to fix the preponderance where it best suits
their several bent or state of mind, and each, within certain limits
and conditions, may take the work in _what sense he will_. For, where
no special prominence is given to any one thing, there is the wider
scope for individual aptitude or preference, and the greater freedom
for each to select for virtual prominence such parts as will best knit
in with what is uppermost in his thoughts.

The significance of the title is further traceable in a peculiar
spontaneousness running through the play. Replete as it is with
humours and oddities, they all seem to spring up of their own accord;
the comic characters being free alike from disguises and pretensions,
and seeking merely to let off their inward redundancy; caring nothing
at all whether everybody or nobody sees them, so they may have their
whim out, and giving utterance to folly and nonsense simply because
they cannot help it. Thus their very deformities have a certain grace,
since they are genuine and of Nature's planting: absurdity and
whimsicality are indigenous to the soil, and shoot up in free, happy
luxuriance, from the life that is in them. And by thus setting the
characters out in their happiest aspects, the Poet contrives to make
them simply ludicrous and diverting, instead of p