"Tragical Discourses," written out of French and Latin by Geoffrey Fenton, and published in 1567, were praised by his friend George Turbervile (who himself versified "Tragical Tales"), for helping to bring Bandello home to English readers "Now men of meanest skill what Bandel wrought may view, Of loving ladies' hapless haps, their deaths and deadly cares." The "tragical affair" of Hero is, however, treated as fortunate by Bandello for its happy ending. "Much Ado about Nothing." In Shakespeare's treatment of the story-which is itself a tale of Much Ado about a supposition that was Nothing-though the old tale, skilfully adapted, is the story of the play, yet it becomes wholly subordinate to the scenes showing the loves of Benedick and Beatrice, whose wit-combats are also, from Shakespeare's point of view, Much Ado about Nothing. With all their wit, they are as far removed from the real duties of life as the unreasoning deliverances of Dogberry and Verges, and they also make Much Ado about Nothing. In one of his earliest plays, "Love's Labour's Lost," Shakespeare had represented a king of Navarre and many kindly lords of his court putting aside the work of life for banquet of the mind. Biron is the wittiest of them; but, when it comes to choosing of wives, his Rosaline says to him "Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron, Before I saw you and the world's large tongue Which you on all estates will execute To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, In "Much Ado about Nothing" the young idleness of mockery in Benedick and Beatrice is changed to noble earnest by contact with the real sorrows of life. The soul of the whole play speaks clearly in the scene between Benedick and Beatrice after the great wrong that has been done to Hero. Benedick is no mere jester, though he has a buoyant spirit and a ready wit that finds delight in kindly mockery. He is a man of noble temper and proved courage in the field. In Beatrice, too, there is a high, noble spirit, full of strength and tenderness, but she also is gifted with a ready wit that finds delight in kindly mockery. Many a love between man and woman, ending in life-long alliance for the noblest work, may have begun with wit-combats like those of Benedick and Beatrice. But such love could not rest on the Much Ado about Nothing of the pleasant raillery. Its foundation was a common interest in the realities of life. Unloving mockery Shakespeare gives only to the men who are like devils in mood, Richard III. and Iago. Here we have loving mockery expressed in form of the most genial comedy. It is evident from the first that Benedick has spacious lcdging in the mind of Beatrice. In the first scene, when the messenger brings news of victory and the return of Don Pedro and his soldiers to Messina, Beatrice, with merry gibe, asks only whether Benedick is coming back. When he returns with his companions, she takes possession of him. Neither yet knows the deeper interest that underlies their readiness to pelt each other with small flowers of rhetoric, and keep up a lively strain of banter that has not a note of malice in it. The summer sport with its garden scenes is dated at the outset in July. 44 Claudio. from my house-if I had it. Benedick. The sixth of July: your loving friend, Benedick." The base trick against Hero, Shakespeare did not allow to be, as in the original tale, the act of a gentleman who loves her. He transfers this infamy to a man whose whole mind jars against the right music of life, and who, as brother to Don Pedro, against whom also he had plotted, is linked naturally to the story. By this change the poet also lightens the serious part of the tale of a load that would have dragged heavily at the robes of comedy. The tricks upon Benedick and Beatrice, by which they are brought together, do not cause them to love, but open to their generous minds a knowledge of themselves, which had lain buried under a too-persistent playfulness that was at odds with serious speech, and gave no matter for earnest thought. The suggestion to each that there was love in the other had more truth in it than the suggesters knew. Through belief of that suggestion, the bar of idle talk-the Much Ado about Nothing-broke down. Observe how the high spirit of Beatrice answers to the words she hears when hidden in the arbour : "What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much? There is delightful escape from that part of the old tale which would have been most unfit for a comedy, by transferring the discovery of the plot against Hero from a repentant lover or confession by Don John, to the worthy watchmen under Dogberry and Verges, who transform what would have been tearful dole into the brightest comedy. It is comedy also in perfect accord with what may be considered as the point of view from which the play has been constructed. Dogberry and Verges exercise wonderfully the little wit they have, but in the scene of the hearing of Conrade and Borachio it may be observed that, while Dogberry is the man of empty words, the Sexton, who says little, does all the real business of the examination. In the opening scene of the Fourth Act-within a public church, if we are so to interpret some suggestions in preceding scenes, although the scene itself rather suggests a chapel in the house of Leonato-the loving care of Beatrice for Hero, her unbroken faith, "Oh, on my soul, my cousin is belied," her womanly resentment of the cruel insult that has struck her cousin down, bring her when all others have left, face to face with Benedick in an hour of human suffering and trial. The direct speech between them is now heart to heart; frank admission of the love between them, with a very little touch of the old playful attitude towards each other, from which all mocking is gone; but out of it flashes her noble, passionate resentment of the wrong done to her cousin. Their dialogue is of few words, every word to the point; and its climax with the cry of Beatrice, "Kill Claudio!" It is a noble scene; and if ever the part of Benedick be here so acted as to produce laughter, let the actor wear sackcloth and ashes, and restudy his part. In the first scene of the Fifth Act, when Benedick comes to challenge Claudio, Shakespeare represents him firm and of few words, which are contrasted with a pelting of small jests at him by Claudio and Don Pedro. The play of wit about him is used now as foil to his own manly simplicity, and when Benedick has left them Don "He is in earnest. Pedro says, "Claudio. In most profound earnest; and, I'll warrant you, for love of Beatrice. D. Pedro. And hath challenged thee? Claudio. Most sincerely. D. Pedro. What a pretty thing man is, when he goes in doublet and hose, and leaves off his wit. Claudio. He is then a giant to an ape; but then is an ape a doctor to such a man." What Thomas Carlyle called the "apes of the Dead Sea " undertake to cure him. They dwell by the living waters, they are our giants, who can speak plain words of truth and join them to true deeds. "Twelfth Night" is not included in Francis Meres's list of comedies assigned in his Palladis Tamia of 1598 to Shakespeare. In the second scene of the Third Act of "Twelfth Night." "Twelfth Night" Maria says of Malvolio, that "he does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies." This has been regarded as an allusion to some of many maps contained in the folio volume of the translation by William Philip of "J. Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages into the Easte and West Indies, in foure Bookes," published in 1598. The reference is really to a map of the world"the new map"-published in 1600. This was the first map of the world engraved in England on Mercator's projection. It was given in that year by Hakluyt in his "Voyages." The latest geographical discovery recorded. * The map was engraved in 1880 for publication by the Hakluyt Society as "The Map of the World, A.D. 1600. Called by Shakespeare the New Map with the Augmentation of the Indies.' To illustrate the voyages of John Davis." on it was of Northern Nova Zemlya, made by the Dutchman Barents in 1596. Earlier in the same second scene of the Third Act of "Twelfth Night" Fabian says to Sir Andrew Aguecheek, "You are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard." Shakespeare seems to have been lately reading Hakluyt. The year of the new map was also the year of the foundation of the India Company, which then began its trade by fitting out four ships, and obtained its first charter in December, 1600. Use was made, therefore, of all information that could be obtained from Linschoten or others in aid of a right mapping of the Indies, and the map excelled all that had preceded it in its delineation of the Eastern seas. Of Mercator it may be said by the way, that the name was the Latinised surname of Gerhard Kauffmann, who died in 1594. He invented his projection in 1556. Edward Wright, who died in 1615, first applied Kauffmann's idea to navigation. Wright published in 1599 "Certain Errors in Navigation Detected and Corrected," and was then occupied with Hakluyt, Molyneux, and others in the production, upon Mercator's plan, of "a true hydrographical description of so much of the world as hath been hitherto discovered." In this map, besides a full supply of lines of latitude and longitude, there are lines radiating in all directions from a dozen or more centres on different parts of the map. These lines, intersecting one another, form to profane eyes such a web as might be spun by a mad spider. Shakespeare's allusion to this new map fixes the date of "Twelfth Night "as not earlier than the year 1600. The next piece of evidence as to the date of the play is in the autograph diary of John Manningham preserved in the British Museum (Harleian MSS. 5353). Of the Readers' Feast at the Middle Temple on the 2nd |