Now, Malvolio's sobriety, his contempt for guzzling and roaring of catches, his measured deportment, his nice and cleanly ways are commendable results of his self-opinion, and cannot yield any advantage to low fellows for roughing him until the decent pace of his austerity becomes a strut. One of the characters in a late novel says, "When I see people strut enough to be cut up into bantam-cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, and says no more." This tendency of Nature to a peacock is discovered in the very act, at the moment of production, by this lens of a smile with which we arm our eye. Malvolio is like the fanatical England of the Commonwealth, which was flouted and dishonored by the Aguecheeks and Belches of King Charles II., those inevitable conspirers against immoderate and arrogant sobriety. They are sure to come. "Nay, I'll come," says Fabian, "if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy." Yes, the niggard fellow shall "come by some notable shame." Says Sir Toby, "To anger him, we'll have the bear again;" which England did to her heart's content; but the discredit must be shared by the epoch which strove to strut in the sad conceit that gladness was the sin against the Holy Ghost.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA (AJAX).
It is evident that large portions of this play are not by Shakspeare's hand. It was first attributed to him and published in 1608. But there is an entry in Henslowe's Diary, April 7, 1599, of a sum money lent to "Mr. Dickers and Harey Cheatell, in earneste of their boocke called Troyeles and Creassedaye." This play of Dekker and Chettle was probably the original which Shakspeare adopted in order to improve. Mr. Fleay, however, attributes to Shakspeare a first form of this play as early as 1597. The improvements are as palpable as the original defects. The play did not receive the benefit of a thorough recasting, and was published under Shakspeare's name with large portions of the crude, absurd, and indecent original matter unchanged.
When Troilus says,—
"Helen must needs be fair,
When with your blood you daily paint her thus;"
and when Ulysses replies to the complaint of Achilles that his deeds are forgotten,—
"Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion;
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honor travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path,
For emulation hath a thousand sons,
That one by one pursue. If you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost.
For time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing,"—
we need no help in recognizing the pen of Shakspeare. This is the speech that holds embedded the world's household line,
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."