ish,
vain Sir Andrew; and shake in sympathy with his glee over Malvolio's
plight when that unlucky man is beguiled into thinking Olivia loves
him, and into appearing before her cross-gartered and wreathed in the
smiles {171} which accord so ill with his sour visage. All the more
affecting in contrast to this boisterous merriment is the frail figure
of Viola, who knows so well "what love women to men may owe." Amid the
perfume of flowers and the sob of violins the Duke learns to love this
seeming boy better than he knows, and easily forgets the romantic
melancholy which was never much more than an agreeable pose.

+Date+.--In the diary of John Manningham for February 2, 1602, is a
record of a performance of _Twelfth Night_ in the Middle Temple. The
absence of the name from Meres's list again limits the date at the
other end. The internal evidence, aside from that of style and meter,
is negligible, while the latter confirms the usually accepted date of
1601.

+Source+.--The principal source of the plot was probably _Apolonius and
Silla_, a story by Barnabe Riche, apparently an adaptation of
Belleforest's translation of the twenty-eighth novel of Bandello.
There was also an Italian play, _Gl' Ingannati_, acted in Latin
translation at Cambridge in 1590 and 1598, which has a similar plot. A
German play on the same subject, apparently closely connected with
Riche, has given rise to the hypothesis that a lost English play
preceded _Twelfth Night_; but this is only conjectural, and there is
some evidence that Shakespeare was familiar with Riche's story. If
this be the original, Shakespeare improved on it as much as he did on
_Rosalynde_, condensing the beginning, knitting together the loose
strands at the end, and introducing the whole of the underplot with its
rich variety of characters. The only hint for this known is a slight
suggestion for Malvolio's madness found in another story of Riche's
volume.

{172}

CHAPTER XII

THE PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD--TRAGEDY

The Second and Third periods slightly overlap; for _Julius Caesar_, the
first play of the later group, was probably written before _Twelfth
Night_ and _As You Like It_. But the change in the character of the
plays in these two periods is sharp and decisive, like the change from
day to night. Shakespeare has studied the sunlight of human
cheerfulness and found it a most interesting problem; now in the
mysterious starlight and shadow of human