A great while ago the world begon,
hey ho, the winde and the raine:
But that's all one, our Play is done,
and wee'] striue to please you euery day.

THUS Feste's Epilogue concludes the comedy of Twelfth Night; and indeed the play effectually did "striue to please" its audience and well earned its subtitle of "What You Will." It was probably first given in January 1601; in January 1602 (N.S.) it was revived before the Middle Temple, presumably by request. The diarist Manningham enjoyed the performance; and many other re- vivals doubtless followed. At least twice it was given before James I, and, for more than twenty years, Shakespeare's com- pany kept the piece from getting into print and so into the hands of rival players. In 164, Digges testified to the con- tinued popularity of Malvolio; and, shortly after the Restora- tion, Downes records its "mighty success."

CHAPTER ONE

In a less fortunate sense, Twelfth Night has been "What
You Will" to a long line of critics, who have generally been
so consumed with laughter at its gaiety and so charmed with
its romance that they have ignored its Elizabethan background,
and therefore have missed its significance of theme, blamed
it for structural incoherence, and found it in effect the merest
farce. Thus they condemn it in toto while they praise it in
detail: they find it scintillating and disunified, imaginatively
romantic and insignificant. They ignore, or give but formal
recognition to, Shakespeare's vivid and subtle Elizabethan real-
ism, despite Hamlet's advice to the players and despite the
Preface to Troilus and Cressida ( 1609), which declared that

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