Shakspeare exhibits the supreme nature of his genius when he meets this exigency which antique religion did not feel. He admits the free play of life into its real closeness with all our moral and pathetic emotions; but we never find that Humor weakens the religious purpose of the play, as it would if our private anguish were unseasonably interrupted by it, because our personal fortunes are not touched by the tragedy. We are implicated in the scene only by our instinct of observation and sympathy; that needs relief, but, if the blow struck us and became a "fee-grief due to each single breast," we could endure it as we do in real life, as we prefer to do, with a temper that keeps all other strings muted but sorrow. So the Humor which we would not tolerate when the tempest breaks upon our roof-tree, and is sullen within every chamber, is no unwelcome surprise when the heart is so keenly summoned by the mimic scene.
The name of the Clown does not appear in the _dramatis personæ_, and only once in the text, Act ii. 4, where he is called Feste. All the dainty songs of the play are put into his mouth. Feste was the name of a distinguished musician and composer, probably a friend of Shakspeare. We may even surmise that he set to music one or more of his namesake's songs. There is no play which employs the element of music so frequently, or that speaks of it in the tender terms which only a lover of melody can use. It is admitted into the plot as a confidant and adviser, and allowed to sway the moods of the characters.
The Duke calls for Cesario (Viola) to repeat
"That piece of song, That old and antique song we heard last night."
The Duke has forgotten that Feste, and not Cesario, was the singer. Fleay overlooks this touch of nature, and attributes the passage to an older play or first draught, which appears uncorrected in the present play. But the Duke is mooning about in his sentimental fashion, and vaguely recollects that Cesario was presented to him as one that could sing "and speak to him in many sorts of music." He had done so, no doubt, so that the mistake was natural to the distraught mind of the Duke, who seems to allude to it when he says immediately to Cesario,--