NIETZSCHE AND SOCRATES IN M'ESSINA
707
In
Twelfth Night
we tolerate the follies of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, as
we cannot tolerate the ambitions of Malvolio; Sir Andrew is not the
legitimate prey of the comic destroyer because he is a gentleman and
consequently has his privilege of idiocy. In this particular Mere–
dithian game, one may descend but may not ascend (Meredith's
own comic prey- Sir Willoughby Patterne, the largest beast Mere–
dith ever brought down-is no Sir Andrew but instead a Malvolio
by nature
if
not by caste).
As
Meredithian imp, therefore, Maria can
be as ruthless ,as she will in her chastisement. The resonant Mere–
dithian triumph is Olivia's final judgment upon Malvolio: "Alas,
poor fool, how have they baffled thee!" (Sir Willoughby Patterne
is
as helpless.) Maria herself, malign and watchful, is unaffected by
the bafflement of Malvolio; she is exempt from pathos or-what is
unthinkable in this lyric world of Illyria-tragedy. The field of Shake–
speare's third smiling comedy,
As You Like It,
is so generous and
distant that we can hardly determine the operation of society upon
Orlando and Rosalind; the half-pastoral world of the Forest of Arden
is
an entirely theatrical illusion.
The society of Messina, as Mr. James Smith has lately argued in
Scrutiny,
is a compact of Philistines in which self-interest and senti–
mentality have somewhat the proportions of a nineteenth-century
respectability.
It
is a disagreeable society, as irresponsible and prim
as the Vienna of
Measure for Measure .
The thronging delicate de–
sires with which Claudio says he loves Hero do not have the lyrical
urgent tone of the Renaissance like the affections of Orsino and
Olivia, Orlando and Rosalind. Instead there is the atmosphere of
bourgeois propriety and contrivance about Claudio's suit:
But now I am return'd and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant, in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Say I lik'd her ere I went to wars.
Claudio simpers. It is easy for
him
to be directed which is the lady
he must seize upon, or not seize upon. The arrangements for Hero
made by old Leonato and Antonio are hardly acceptable even in per–
functory Messina-their care for appearance, their patching
grief
