Saturday, March 21:
Sent our revered dean some cigars, wrote letters, at the house with the children, R. works.
In the evening read Twelfth Night; much, much enjoyment from it, long discussion about it. R. says Malvolio is like E. Devrient, who equates dignity with pedantry and has curious ideas besides (that he is an actor and Mendelssohn’s poet). Of Olivia he says, “In her one sees those melancholy, glowing Southern eyes, those faces which are all eyes.”
But a veritable school has now arisen against Shakespeare, and who is defending him? Bodenstedt, Dingelstedt, and consorts. We find what Tieck has to say about men playing the women’s roles very illuminating and full of the right feeling.