You must not now deny it is your hand,
Write from it, if you can, in hand, or phrase;
Or say, 'tis not your seal, nor your invention:
You can say none of this: Well, grant it then,
And tell me, in the modesty of honour,

Why you have given me such clear lights of favour;
Bade me come smiling, and cross-garter'd to you,
To put on yellow stockings, and to frown
Upon sir Toby, and the lighter people:
And, acting this in an obedient hope,
Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd,
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
And made the most notorious geck, and gull,
That e'er invention play'd on? tell me why.

7

Oli. Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing,
Though, I confess, much like the character:
But, out of question, 'tis Maria's hand.
And now I do bethink me, it was she

First told me, thou wast mad; then cam'st in smiling,

6

7

lighter-] People of less dignity or importance.

-geck,] A fool. Johnson.

So, in the vision at the conclusion of Cymbeline:

"And to become the geck and scorn

"Of th' other's villainy."

Johnson.

Again, in Ane verie excellent and delectabill Treatise intitulit PHILOTUS, &c. 1603:

"Thocht he be auld, my joy, quhat reck,

"When he is gane give him ane geck,

"And take another be the neck."

Again:

"The carle that hecht sa weill to treat you,
"I think sall get ane geck." Steevens.

8 then cam❜st in smiling,] i. e. then, that thou cam❜st in smiling. Malone.

I believe the lady means only what she has clearly expressed: then thou camest in smiling;" not that she had been in

66

And in such forms which here were presuppos'd'
Upon thee in the letter. Pr'ythee, be content:
This practice hath most shrewdly pass'd upon thee;
But, when we know the grounds and authors of it,
Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge

Of thine own cause.

Fab.

Good madam, hear me speak;

And let no quarrel, nor no brawl to come,
Taint the condition of this present hour,

Which I have wonder'd at. In hope it shall not,
Most freely I confess, myself, and Toby,
Set this device against Malvolio here,
Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts
We had conceiv'd against him:1 Maria writ
The letter, at sir Toby's great importance;2
In recompense whereof, he hath married her.
How with a sportful malice it was follow'd,
May rather pluck on laughter than revenge;
If that the injuries be justly weigh'd,
That have on both sides past.

Oli. Alas, poor fool!3 how have they baffled thee?

4

Clo. Why, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them. I was

formed of this circumstance by Maria. Maria's account, in short, was justified by the subsequent appearance of Malvolio. Steevens.

here were presuppos'd -] Presuppos'd, for imposed.

Warburton. Presuppos'd rather seems to mean previously pointed out for thy imitation; or such as it was supposed thou would'st assume after thou hadst read the letter. The supposition was previous to

the act.

Steevens.

1 Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts

We had conceiv'd against him:] Surely we should rather read-conceiv'd in him. Tyrwhitt.

2 at sir Toby's great importance ;] Importance is importunacy, importunement. Steevens.

3 Alas, poor foel!] See notes on King Lear, Act V, sc. iii.

Reed.

bow have they baffled thee?] See Mr. Tollet's note on a passage in the first scene of the first Act of King Richard II: "I am disgrac'd, impeach'd, and baffled here."

Steevens,

one, sir, in this interlude; one sir Topas, sir; but that's all one:-By the Lord, fool, I am not mad;-But do you remember? Madam,5 why laugh you at such a barren rascal? an you smile not, he 's gagg'd: And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Mal. I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you.

[Exit.

Oli. He hath been most notoriously abus'd.
Duke. Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace:
He hath not told us of the captain yet;
When that is known and golden time convents,7
A solemn combination shall be made

Of our dear souls-Meantime, sweet sister,
We will not part from hence.-Cesario, come;
For so you shall be, while you are a man;
But, when in other habits you are seen,
Orsino's mistress, and his fancy's queen.

SONG.

Clo. When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

[Exeunt.

5 But do you remember? Madam,] The old copy points this passage erroneously: "But do you remember madam," &c. I have followed the regulation proposed in the subsequent note. Steevens.

As the Clown is speaking to Malvolio, and not to Olivia, I think this passage should be regulated thus—but do you remember?-Madam, why laugh you, &c. Tyrwhitt.

6

and entreat him to a peace:] Thus in Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen:

"And fluently persuade her to a peace." Steevens.

7 convents,] Perhaps we should read-consents. To con vent, however, is to assemble; and therefore, the count may mean, when the happy hour calls us again together. Steevens.

· convents] i. e. shall serve, agree, be convenient. Douce. 8 When that I was and a little tiny boy, &c.] Here again we have an old song, scarcely worth correction. Gainst knaves and thieves must evidently be, against knave and thief. When I was a boy, my folly and mischievous actions were little regarded; but when I came to manhood, men shut their gates against me, as a knave and a thief.

But when I came to man's estate,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

'Gainst knave and thief men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my bed,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken head,
For the rain it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world begun,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that's all one, our play is done,

And we'll strive to please you every day. [Exit.

Sir Thomas Hanmer rightly reduces the subsequent words, beds and beads, to the singular number; and a little alteration is still wanting at the beginning of some of the stanzas.

Mr. Steevens observes in a note at the end of Much Ado about Nothing, that the play had formerly passed under the name of Benedict and Beatrix. It seems to have been the court-fashion to alter the titles. A very ingenious lady, with whom I have the honour to be acquainted, Mrs. Askew of Queen's-Square, has a fine copy of the second folio edition of Shakspeare, which for merly belonged to King Charles I, and was a present from him to his Master of the Revels, Sir Thomas Herbert. Sir Thomas has altered five titles in the list of the plays, to "Benedick and Beatrice,-Pyramus and Thisby,-Rosalinde,-Mr. Paroles,—and Malvolio."

It is lamentable to see how far party and prejudice will carry the wisest men, even against their own practice and opinions. Milton, in his Emovonλases, censures King Charles for reading one whom (says he) we well knew was the closet companion of his solitudes, William Shakspeare." Farmer.

I have followed the regulations proposed by Sir T. Hanmer and Dr. Farmer; and consequently, instead of knaves, thieves, beds, and heads, have printed "knave, thief," &c.

Dr. Farmer might have observed, that the alterations of the titles are in his Majesty's own hand-writing, materially differing from Sir Thomas Herbert's, of which the same volume affords more than one specimen. Ilearn from another manuscript note

in it, that John Lowine acted King Henry VIII, and John Taylor the part of Hamlet. The book is now in my possession.

To the concluding remark of Dr. Farmer, may be added the following passage from An Appeal to all rational Men concerning King Charles's Trial, by John Cooke, 1649: "Had he but studied scripture half so much as Ben Jonson or Shakspeare, he might have learnt that when Amaziah was settled in the kingdom, he suddenly did justice upon those servants which killed his father Joash," &c. With this quotation I was furnished by Mr. Malone.

A quarto volume of plays attributed to Shakspeare, with the cipher of King Charles II, on the back of it, is preserved in Mr. Garrick's collection.

Though we are well convinced that Shakspeare has written slight ballads for the sake of discriminating characters more strongly, or for other necessary purposes, in the course of his mixed dramas, it is scarce credible, that after he had cleared his stage, he should exhibit his Clown afresh, and with so poor a recommendation as this song, which is utterly unconnected with the subject of the preceding comedy. I do not therefore hesitate to call the nonsensical ditty before us, some buffoon actor's composition, which was accidentally tacked to the Prompter's copy of Twelfth Night, having been casually subjoined to it for the diversion, or at the call, of the lowest order of spectators. In the year 1766, I saw the late Mr. Weston summoned out and obliged to sing Johnny Pringle and his Pig, after the performance of Voltaire's Mahomet, at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane. Steevens.

The copy of the second folio of Shakspeare, which formerly belonged to King Charles, and mentioned in the preceding notes, is now in the library of his present Majesty, who has corrected a mistake of Dr. Farmer's, relative to Sir Thomas Herbert, inadvertently admitted by Mr. Steevens, but here omitted. Reed.

This play is in the graver part elegant and easy, and in some of the lighter scenes exquisitely humorous. Ague-cheek is drawn with great propriety, but his character is, in a great measure, that of natural fatuity, and is therefore not the propor prey of a satirist. The soliloquy of Malvolio is truly comic; he is betrayed to ridicule merely by his pride. The marriage of Olivia, and the succeeding perplexity, though well enough contrived to divert on the stage, wants credibility, and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of life. Johnson.