Page:Twelfth Night (1922) Yale.djvu/123

self, or sale nothyng at all. Silla abashed to heare these wordes, began in her minde to accuse the blindnesse of Loue, that Iulina neglectyng the good will of so noble a Duke, woulde preferre her love vnto suche a one, as Nature it self had denaied to recompence her likyng.'

Investigation of the sources of Twelfth Night has included the examination of various other works such as the eighth novel of the fifth decade of Cinthio's Hecatommithi (1565), Montemayor's Diana Enamorada, of which an English version appeared in 1598, Sidney's Arcadia (1590), and a comedy called Tugend- und Liebesstreit, presented in 1608 by a company of English actors in Austria and conceivably a German version of a lost English play based on Apolonius and Silla. Detailed analysis of such possible source-material of Twelfth Night concerns chiefly the specialist. The general reader will doubtless be content with the conjecture that Shakespeare knew more than a single version of a story popular in Italian comedy and tale, reproduced in various Continental translations, and known in England through its Latin dramatization at Cambridge and its English narrative rendering by Riche.

Apart from the romantic main plot, the characters and scenes of Twelfth Night are original with Shakespeare. The humors of Malvolio, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew, the 'very gracious fooling' of Feste, and the arch-conspiracy of the 'little villain' Maria are alike Shakespeare's inventions. But though, like Fabian, the reader 'will not give his part of this sport for a pension of thousands to be paid from the Sophy,' he may perhaps question whether in reality Shakespeare's creative genius is more clearly shown in the subplot of his own invention than in the main plot which he borrowed to transform.