of emotion. Love is an
active passion. Orsino is in the clutch of its dangerous passive enemy
called sentimentality. He lolls upon a couch to music when he ought to
be carrying her glove to battle. Olivia is in an unreal mood of mourning
for her brother. Grief is a destroying passion. Olivia makes it a form
of self-indulgence, or one sweet the more to attract flies to her.
Malvolio is in an unreal mood of self-importance. Long posing at the
head of ceremony has given him the faith that ceremony, of which he is
the head, is the whole of life. This faith deludes him into a life of
day-dreams, common enough among inactive clever people, but dangerous to
the indulger, as all things are that distort the mental vision. At the
point at which the play begins the day-dream has brought him to the
pitch of blindness necessary for effective impact on the wall.

The only cure for the sickly in the mind is reality. Something real has
to be felt or experienced. Life that is over-delicate and remote
through something unbalanced in the mind is not life but decay. The
knife, the bludgeon, the practical joke, and the many-weaponed figure of
Sorrow are life's remedies for those who fail to live. We are the
earth's children; we have no business in limbo. Living in limbo is like
living in the smoke from a crater: highly picturesque, but too near
death for safety.

Orsino is cured of sentiment by the sight of Sebastian making love like
a man. He rouses to do the like by Viola. Olivia is piqued out of
sentiment by coming to know some one who despises her. She falls in love
with that person. Malvolio is mocked out of sentiment by the knowledge
that other minds have seen his mind. He has not the happiness to be
rewarded with love at the end of the play; but he has the alternative of
hate, which is as active a passion and as real. All three are roused to
activity by the coming of something real into their lives; and all
three, in coming to the active state, cease to be interesting and
beautiful and pathetic.

Shakespeare's abundant power created beings who look before and after,
even while they keep vigorous a passionate present. It is difficult to
praise that power. Even those who know how difficult art is find it hard
to praise perfect art. Art is not to be praised or blamed, but
understood. This play will stand as an example of perfect art till a
greater than Shakespeare set a better example further on. It is

"All beauty and without a