Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/206

 believe a madman till he can see his brains. Feste keeps his own head on a level keel as the sparkling ripples of his drolleries go by. Shakspeare's intention is conspicuous in him to make all the clowns the critics of all the other personages, and kept in the pay of their creator.

When the play is over, the Duke plighted to his page, Olivia rightly married to the wrong man, and the whole romantic ravel of sentiment begins to be attached to the serious conditions of life, Feste is left alone upon the stage. Then he sings a song which conveys to us his feeling of the world's impartiality: all things proceed according to law; nobody is humored; people must abide the consequences of their actions, "for the rain it raineth every day." A "little tiny boy" may have his toy; but a man must guard against knavery and thieving: marriage itself cannot be sweetened by swaggering; whoso drinks with "toss-pots" will get a "drunken head:" it is a very old world, and began so long ago that no change in its habits can be looked for. The grave insinuation of this song is touched with the vague, soft bloom of the play. As the noises of the land come over sea well-tempered to the ears of islanders, so the world's fierce, implacable roar reaches us in the song, sifted through an air that hangs full of the Duke's dreams, of Viola's pensive love, of the hours which music flattered. The note is hardly more presageful than the cricket's stir in the late silence of a summer. How gracious has Shakspeare been to mankind in this play! He could not do otherwise than leave Feste all alone to pronounce its benediction; for his heart was a nest of songs whence