and poetry.  And the forecited notice ascertains that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was performed before the members of the Middle Temple on the old Church festival of the Purification, formerly called Candlemas;—­an important link in the course of festivities that used to continue from Christmas to Shrovetide.  We thus learn that one of the Poet’s sweetest plays was enjoyed by a gathering of his learned and studious contemporaries, at a time when this annual jubilee had rendered their minds congenial and apt, and when Christians have so much cause to be happy and gentle and kind, and therefore to cherish the convivial delectations whence kindness and happiness naturally grow.

As to the date of the composition, we have little difficulty in fixing this somewhere between the time when the play was acted at the Temple, and the year 1598.  In Act iii., scene 2, when Malvolio is at the height of his ludicrous beatitude, Maria says of him, “He does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map, with the augmentation of the Indies.”  In 1598 was published an English version of Linschoten’s Discourse of Voyages, with a map exactly answering to Maria’s description.  Nor is any such multilineal map known to have appeared in England before that time.  Besides, that was the first map of the world, in which the Eastern Islands were included.  So that the allusion can hardly be to any thing else; and the words new map would seem to infer that the passage was written not long after the appearance of the map in question.

Again:  In Act iii., scene 1, the Clown says to Viola, “But, indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds disgraced them.”  This may be fairly understood as referring to an order issued by the Privy Council in June, 1600, and laying very severe restrictions upon stage performances.  This order prescribes that “there shall be about the city two houses and no more, allowed to serve for the use of common stage plays”; that “the two several companies of players, assigned unto the two houses allowed, may play each of them in their several houses twice a-week, and no oftener”; and that “they shall forbear altogether in the time of Lent, and likewise at such time and times as any extraordinary sickness or infection of disease shall appear to be in or about the city.”  The order was directed to the principal magistrates of the city and suburbs, “strictly charging them to see to the execution of the same”; and it is plain, that if rigidly enforced it would have amounted almost to a total suppression of play-houses, as the expenses of such establishments could hardly have been met, in the face of so great drawbacks.