Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/360

[ 344 ] before he died. The latter uppoition mut now be conidered as extremely doubtful; for Mr. Tyrwhitt, with great probability, conjectures, that Twelfth Night was written in 1614: grounding his opinion on an alluion, which it eems to contain, to thoe parliamentary undertakers, of whom frequent mention is made in the Journals of the Houe of Commons for that year ; who were tigmatized with this invidious name, on account of their having undertaken to manage the elections of knights and burgees in uch a manner as to ecure a majority in parliament for the court. If this alluion was intended, Twelfth Night, was probably our author’s lat production; and, we may preume, was written after he had retired to Stratford. It is obervable that Mr. Ahley, a member of the Houe of Commons, in one of the debates on this ubject, ays, “that the rumour concerning thee undertakers had pread into the country.” When Shakpeare quitted London and his profeion, for the tranquillity of a rural retirement, it is improbable that uch an excurive genius hould have been immediately reconciled to a tate of mental inactivity. It is more natural to conceive, that he hould have occaionally bent his thoughts towards the theatre, which his mue had upported, and the interet of his aociates whom he had left behind him to truggle with the capricious viciitudes of publick tate, and whom, his lat Will hews us, he had not forgotten. To the neceity, therefore, of literary amuement to every cultivated mind, or to the dictates of friendhip, or to both thee incentives, we are perhaps indebted for the comedy of Twelfth Night; which bears evident marks of having been compoed at leiure, as mot of the characters that it contains, are finihed to a higher degree of dramatick perfection, than is dicoverable in ome of our author’s earlier comick performances. In the third act of this comedy, Decker’s Wetward Hoe eems to be alluded to. Wetward Hoe was printed in 1607,