TWELFTH NIGHT, it has been said, is a masterpiece of recapitulation.1 Shakespeare had already used the device of the mistaken identity of twins in The Comedy of Errors; in Twelfth Night, as in many Italian plays, the twins are of different sexes. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona a girl, disguised as a page, had acted as emissary from the man she loves to the woman he loves. In Love’s Labour’s Lost we hear the story of a woman who died of unrequited love (v. ii. 13–15) and her fate may have suggested the ‘Patience on a monument’ speech. In The Merchant of Venice we have Antonio’s love for Bassanio, which is paralleled by the love of the later Antonio for Sebastian. In As You Like It we have a Fool and a singer; in Twelfth Night we have a singing Fool. In Much Ado About Nothing Beatrice and Benedick are tricked into loving each other, or into admitting their love; Malvolio is tricked into believing that Olivia is in love with him. Sir Toby is a reduced version of Falstaff, though without his wit or cowardice; and Sir Andrew was perhaps developed from Slender.
There were, of course, sources apart from Shakespeare’s previous plays. John Manningham in his diary2 mentions that he saw a performance of the play at the Middle Temple and says that it was ‘much like the Comedy of Errores, or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni’. There are three plays of that title, one of them later than Twelfth Night. Gl’Inganni of Curzio Gonzaga (1592) has some links with Shakespeare’s play. The disguised woman takes the name of Cesare and the author’s name reminds us of ‘The Murder of Gonzago’, the play ‘written in very choice Italian’ performed before Claudius. Secchi’s play3 (published 1562) has a woman, Ginevra, disguised as a man, Ruberto, in love with Gostanzo. To cure him of his infatuation with a courtezan, Ruberto tells him that a woman is in love with him:4
| Gost. | Where is she? |
| Rub. | Near you… |
| Gost. | How do you know that she loves me? |
| Rub. | Because she often discusses her love with me. |
| Gost. | Do I know her? |
| Rub. | As well as you know me. |
| Gost. | Is she young? |
| Rub. | Of my age. |
(I. 9)
In a later scene, as Helen A. Kaufman points out,5 Gostanzo asks Ruberto why he is so upset by the girl’s suffering, and she replies that she loves the girl as much as she does herself. Given the situation of a girl disguised as a man in love with her master, repeated in other plays and stories, the resemblance in actual dialogue is not particularly striking.
Another of Secchi’s plays, L’Interesse, also has some resemblances to Twelfth Night, although the plot is totally different. Years before the opening of the play, Pandolfo wagered that his pregnant wife would bear a son. When the baby is born, although a girl, he brings her up as a boy and calls her Lelio. Lelio in due course falls in love with one of her sister’s suitors, named Fabio; disguises herself as her sister and becomes pregnant by Fabio. As Miss Kaufman shows,6 we have here the central situation of Twelfth Night where a girl, disguised as a man, is in love with one who loves another woman. Fabio is told that Lelio is challenging him to a duel. Secchi may therefore have suggested to Shakespeare the comic possibilities of involving Cesario in a duel. A scrap of dialogue, in which Fabio asks Lelio about her love, is close to the one quoted from Secchi’s other play, and also to the Cesario-Orsino exchange:
| Fabio. | Is she young? |
| Lelio. | About your age. |
| Fabio. | Is she beautiful? |
| Lelio. | A sweet face, and comely as yours. |
There is also in the same scene an account by Lelio of a girl who is pining away from unrequited love.
Another play, the anonymous Gl’Ingannati (1538), resembles Twelfth Night so closely that it is likely that Manningham was really referring to this when he spoke of Inganni. The comedy is in prose. Lelia, the heroine, with the help of the nuns of the convent where she has been living, disguises herself as a man and takes the name of Fabio; she does this for love of Flaminio, whose mistress she had been, and in whose household she takes service as a page. Flaminio sends her on love-embassies to Isabella, who forthwith falls in love with her. Lelia, less scrupulous than Viola, kisses Isabella and allows her to hope. Then Fabrizio, Lelia’s lost brother, comes to Modena with his tutor, who shows him the chief sights of the town.7 Lelia’s father learns of her disguise and he and Isabella’s father meet Fabrizio and take him for Lelia. Thinking him mad, they lock him up in Isabella’s room, where he becomes her lover. The play ends with the marriages of Fabrizio to Isabella and of Flaminio to Lelia. There is no shipwreck in the play, Fabrizio having been separated from his family at the sack of Rome. Some have thought8 that the farcical element in the play had some influence on Twelfth Night: but I see no resemblance between Stragualcia’s dealings with Piero and those of Sir Toby with Malvolio, or between the tricking of Giglio by Pasquelia and the gulling of Malvolio by Maria; nor is it easy to see Malvolio as a combination of Gherardo, Giglio, and Piero.9 On the other hand, a phrase in the prologue, ‘La notte di Beffana [Epiphany]’, presumably gave Shakespeare his title, even if (as is often assumed) the play was first performed on Twelfth Night.
The same story of Lelia was told by Bandello10 and in the translation by Belleforest: Shakespeare doubtless knew one of these. The closest parallel is with Orsino’s confession that men’s fancies are more giddy and unfirm than women’s, and Viola’s confession that she knows
Too well what love women to men may owe.
(II. iv. 104)
So Nicuola speaks to Lattanzio of the girl he once loved, that is herself. The following is Belleforest’s version:11
Et que scavez vous si ceste fille languist encor pour l’amour de vous, et vist en destresse? Car i’ay ouy dire que les filles en leurs premieres apprehensions aiment d’vne vehemence tout autre, et plus grande qui ne font les hommes, et que malaisement on estaint ceste flamme ainsi viuement esprise, ayant trouue suiet non occupe en autre chose.
Bandello’s phrase, ‘l’amoroso verme voracemente con grandissimo cordoglio le rodeva il cuore’, may have suggested Viola’s lines:
She never told her love
But let concealment, like a worm i’th’bud,
Feed on her damask cheek.
(II. iv. 109)
The story of Lelia is to be found also in Cinthio’s Hecatommithi (v. 8), the source of Othello and a possible source of Measure for Measure. This version contains a shipwreck; but there is a shipwreck too in the version of the story given in Riche his Farewell to Militaire Profession (1581) which is properly regarded as the main source of Shakespeare’s play. It may be mentioned that Riche, in other parts of the book, uses three words not previously used by Shakespeare, and three not used by him after Twelfth Night. In Riche’s fifth story a man tries to reform his shrewish wife by treating her as a lunatic:
he tied her in a darke house that was on his backside, and then callyng his neibours about her, he would seeme with greate sorrowe to lament his wiues distresse, telling them that she was sodainly become Lunatique.
This incident bears some slight resemblance to the treatment of Malvolio; but Shakespeare seems also to have remembered John Darrell’s exorcisms of Nicholas Starkey’s children, as described in his True Narration (1600):
Theis .4. especially .3. of them vsed much light behauiour and vayn gestures, sundry also filthy scurrilous speaches, but whispering them for the most part among themselues, so as they were no let to that holy exercise we then had in hand. Sometimes also they spake blasphemy calling the word preached, bible bable, he will neuer haue done prating, prittle prattle.
(p. 10)
Feste, as Sir Topas, urges Malvolio to leave his vain bibble-babble. Samuel Harsnett, whose later pamphlet directed against the catholic exorcists Shakespeare perused, exposed the puritan exorcisms in his Discouery of the Fraudulent Practises of John Darrel (1599). It may be worth noting that Shakespeare borrows the words of the alleged demoniacs for his bogus priest.
Riche in his epistle dedicatory to gentlewomen confesses that he is not a good dancer:
As firste for Dauncyng, although I like the Measures verie well, yet I could neuer treade them a right, nor to vse measure in any thyng that I went aboute, although I desired to performe all thynges by line and by leauell, what so euer I tooke in hande.
Our Galliardes are so curious, that thei are not for my daunsyng, for thei are so full of trickes and tournes, that he whiche hath no more but the plaine Sinquepace, is no better accoumpted of then a verie bongler, and for my part, thei might assone teache me to make a Capricornus, as a Capre in the right kinde that it should bee.
For a Ieigge my heeles are too heauie: And these braules are so busie, that I loue not to beate my braines about them.
A Rounde is too giddie a daunce for my diet, for let the dauncers runne about with as muche speede as thei maie: yet are thei neuer a whit the nier to the ende of their course, vnlesse with often tourning thei hap to catch a fall. And so thei ende the daunce with shame, that was begonne but in sporte.
This passage seems to have contributed to the picture we get of Sir Andrew in I. iii. Sir Andrew has ‘the back-trick simply as strong as any man in Illyria’, he can cut a caper, and Sir Toby asks him:
Why dost thou not go to church in a galliard, and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig; I would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace.
His later question, ‘Were we not born under Taurus?’ may likewise have been suggested by Riche’s reference to Capricorn.
The following is a summary of Riche’s tale of Apolonius and Silla: Silla, the daughter of Duke Pontus, the governor of Cyprus, falls in love with Duke Apolonius while he is her father’s guest. Apolonius, ignorant of her feelings, sails for Constantinople. Silla persuades her servant Pedro to accompany her to Constantinople, and she travels as his sister. On the voyage Silla is saved from rape at the hands of the lascivious captain by a shipwreck in which both he and Pedro are drowned. Silla gets ashore, clinging to the Captain’s sea-chest, which contains money and apparel. She dresses as a man and calls herself by the name of her twin brother, Silvio. On arriving at Constantinople she takes service with Apolonius, who employs her on a love-embassy to a wealthy widow, Julina; Julina falls in love with Silla and enjoins her not to say anything more on behalf of Apolonius: ‘from hence-forthe either speake for your self, or saie nothyng at all’. Meanwhile Silvio, returning from the wars, hears of his sister’s flight and goes in search of her. Arriving at Constantinople and ‘walkyng in an euenyng for his own recreation, on a pleasaunte greene yarde, without the walles of the Citie’, he encounters Julina who invites him to supper. Surprised at being addressed by his own name by a complete stranger, he nevertheless consents; and after supper Julina invites him to stay the night. She comes to share his bed and in the morning, ‘for feare of further euiles’, Silvio goes off to seek for his sister ‘in the partes of Grecia’. When Apolonius demands an answer to his suit, Julina says she is pledged to another. Hearing from his servants that his page is his successful rival, Apolonius casts Silla into a dungeon. Julina, finding herself with child, hastens to the Duke’s palace and confesses her love. Apolonius reproaches Silla for her breach of trust; but she urges Julina to confess that she had been faithful to her trust. Julina urges her to acknowledge the truth.
Now is the tyme to manifest the same vnto the worlde, whiche hath been done before God, and betwene ourselues.
Hearing that Julina is pregnant, Apolonius threatens to kill Silla if she does not marry her. Silla explains to Julina that she is a woman; Apolonius forthwith agrees to marry Silla; and Silvio, hearing of the marriage, and ashamed of his desertion of Julina, agrees to marry her.
The only close echo of Riche’s tale is to be found in Olivia’s words to Cesario:
I have said too much unto a heart of stone,
And laid mine honour too unchary out.
(III. iv. 191–2)
This resembles Julina’s reproach, just before Silla reveals her sex:
Ah vnhappie and aboue all other most vnhappie, that haue so charely preserued myne honour, and now am made a praie to satisfie a yong mans lust.
(Bullough, II, 360)
Yet it cannot be doubted that Shakespeare had read Riche’s story. The shipwreck, Silvio’s acceptance of Julina’s invitation, Julina’s revelation of her betrothal, her criticism of Silvio’s fearful refusal to acknowledge it, and the Duke’s anger are sufficiently close to the corresponding incidents in Twelfth Night to make it apparent that this was the main source.
Manningham refers to Olivia as a widow. It is possible that the play originally followed Riche in this respect; but it is more likely that Manningham remembered her mourning while forgetting the cause. In any case the advantages of having Olivia young and inexperienced are obvious: it would not have suited the atmosphere of the play to have had Olivia and Sebastian sharing a bed without benefit of clergy,12 nor is Olivia deserted as Julina is. Shakespeare’s sea-captain, moreover, is anything but lustful.
Riche’s story has no underplot, nor have the Bandello and Belle-forest versions. In complicating his play by the introduction of Sir Andrew’s wooing of Olivia, his reluctant challenge to Cesario, and the gulling of Malvolio, Shakespeare may have taken a very slight hint from the two absurd suitors in Gl’Ingannati; but the Malvolio plot is more likely to have been suggested by the topical story of the Comptroller of the Household, Sir William Knollys, who demonstrated against a noisy party in the small hours of the morning by walking amongst the revellers, clad only in his shirt, with a copy of Aretine in his hand.13 Like Malvolio, he complained of bear-baiting; he was connected with Banbury, a place noted for its cakes and ale, as well as for its puritans; his father is known to have defended the puritans; and Malvolio speaks of his ‘austere regard of control’. Malvolio’s name was probably suggested by the phrase ‘male voglia’ which recurs frequently in Bandello’s version of the story.14
In Emmanuel Forde’s Parismus (1598) there is a Violetta who is ship-wrecked while following her lover in disguise; and there is also an Olivia; but the viola was the flower symbolizing faithfulness and the viola de braccia was Apollo’s instrument and the symbol of passion and chastity.15 Fitzroy Pyle and others have suggested16 that Shakespeare drew on Sidney’s Arcadia for certain details; but women disguised as men and men who are tricked by forged letters are not uncommon. Nor, I think, is there much evidence that Shakespeare was influenced either by Syr Clyomon and Clamydes or by Common Conditions.
Such were the materials on which Shakespeare set to work. It is difficult to accept Hotson’s theory17 that the play was written, rehearsed, and acted within a fortnight, though it would have been possible for the poet to have adapted a play already written to suit the topical occasion of Virginio Orsino’s visit. Shakespeare was not as prolific as the Spanish dramatists with whom Hotson compares him. If he could have written a masterpiece in ten days his company would have expected more than two plays a year from him. In any case it seems unlikely that Orsino, Elizabeth’s guest, would have felt flattered by the portrait of his namesake. Whether Twelfth Night was first performed on this occasion remains doubtful and perhaps the following year, after Orsino’s visit, is more likely. At least we can be sure that it was performed on 6 January: there are various references to the Epiphany in the course of the play.18
Shakespeare adopts a new setting for his play, abandoning Modena (the scene of Gl’Ingannati) and Constantinople (Riche’s choice), and choosing Illyria, a geographical compromise, and a conveniently obscure location. The social milieu of his characters is closest to that of Riche’s novel, although Olivia’s household is essentially Elizabethan. From Riche, too, Shakespeare borrowed the shipwreck as a convenient way of separating the twins and starting Viola on her career. She is not, like Silla, pursuing the man she loves at the time of the shipwreck, nor has she been jilted as Lelia had been. Indeed, Shakespeare makes her decide to take service with Orsino only when she has no chance of serving Olivia. Viola dresses as her brother, and this makes it more plausible that each should be mistaken for the other. It is dramatically important that Sebastian should think that Viola is drowned, as he would otherwise jump to the conclusion that he had been mistaken for her. Silvio, although he is searching for a sister he believes is alive, never puts two and two together.
Shakespeare wisely dispenses with the parents of both Lelia and Isabella whose father Gherado is Lelia’s unwelcome suitor. Sebastian and Viola are orphans and Olivia is alone in the world. The courage and self-reliance of Viola are thus increased; and the isolation of Olivia allows both Sir Andrew and Malvolio to aspire to her hand.
In the first act of Gl’Ingannati we have the situation presented to us of Isabella falling in love with Lelia, who is in love with Flaminio, who loves Isabella; and Gherado wants to marry Lelia. By cutting out Gherado, Shakespeare is able, by the end of his first act, to reach the same point in his plot, with Olivia in love with Viola, Viola in love with Orsino, and Orsino in love with Olivia – ‘too hard a knot’ for Viola to untie. But in Act I we have also been introduced to the characters of the underplot; Sir Andrew’s pretensions to Olivia’s hand prepare the way for his duel with Cesario and Malvolio’s scorn for Feste makes him determine on revenge.
Lelia’s brother does not appear until the third act of Gl’Ingannati; Shakespeare introduces Sebastian much earlier, at the beginning of Act II; and, in the same act, we have the interruption of the revellers, the hatching of the plot against Malvolio, and a scene in which Viola is able indirectly to express her love for Orsino. In the second act of Gl’Ingannati Flaminio hears of the favours granted to his page, and wishes to kill both Isabella and Lelia; in Riche’s version Apolonius does not become jealous until after Silvio has been seduced by Julina: Shakespeare does not let Orsino be aware of Olivia’s love for Cesario until the last scene of the play and he then proposes to sacrifice the lamb he loves to spite Olivia. It is obvious that unconsciously he loves Cesario more than he has ever loved Olivia; and this, together with Cesario’s theatrical willingness to die for love, prepares the way for the sudden transfer of Orsino’s affections. To make possible the postponement of Orsino’s knowledge of Olivia’s love, it was necessary to postpone her declaration of love until the third act, and Sebastian’s meeting with her until the fourth. The intervening scenes are full of matter for a May morning – Malvolio’s appearance in yellow stockings and his treatment as a madman, Sir Andrew’s challenge, the intervention and arrest of Antonio, and Viola’s realization that her brother is alive. In the second half of the play Shakespeare owes nothing to the complicated intrigue of Gl’Ingannati, which, indeed, more resembles the farce of The Comedy of Errors’; but by having Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Fool, as well as Olivia, all mistake Sebastian for Cesario, he makes a similar use of mistaken identity. In Gl’Ingannati Lelia and Fabrizio are never on the stage together and they could be played by a single actor or actress. In ‘Apolonius and Silla’ Silvio does not discover his lost sister until after her marriage. Shakespeare has the more exciting and moving confrontation of brother and sister and the revelation of Cesario’s sex in the last act of the play.
T. W. Baldwin has shown with what skill Twelfth Night is constructed ‘on the Andria variety of the Terentian formula’;19 and he pointed out that the interest of Gl’Ingannati falls off after the second act when we reach the epitasis of the more interesting story and have to wait for the catastrophe for more than two acts. Shakespeare, on the other hand, delays the epitasis both of the Viola-Olivia situation, and of Malvolio’s hope of marrying Olivia until Act III. But although we may well admire the art with which Shakespeare has constructed his play, its superiority to all its sources is displayed more obviously in the subtler characterization, in the humour of the prose scenes, and above all in the poetic texture of the play as a whole. Gl’Ingannati is not merely written in prose: it is, comparatively, prosaic.20