ABSTRACT
The view of Twelfth Night as the consummation of Shakespearian comedy is widely accepted. At the same time, few commentators neglect to mention the extent to which Shakespeare here draws on his preceding experiments. Barrett Wendell even went so far as to "recognize the Twelfth Night with all its perennial delights, a masterpiece not of invention, but of recapitulation". The final scene of Twelfth Night blends this technical advantage of successive entrances with the purpose the device serves in the histories and tragedies, when a series of messengers with progressively worsening news creates a feeling of calamity and imminent doom, or tests the endurance of the hero. In Viola's concluding line Shakespeare again hints at the intended stage-picture. During much of the scene, when she was the bone of contention, and again now, when the twins meet at the centre of the stage, Viola has been placed between 'this lady and this lord'.
