TWELFTH NIGHT, Or What You Will - William Shakespeare
TWELFTH NIGHT, Or What You Will
William Shakespeare
I was motivated to write this note following my attendance at a Twelfth Night seminar recently conducted for non-students by Professor Julia Lupton of UCI. Except for her, everyone around the table was an amateur like me. I contributed as best I could, but both she and the other attendees introduced a variety of points that were new or arresting to me. What follows, however, are the ideas that for the most part have occurred to me in the aftermath.
Anyone watching a performance of Twelfth Night should do so without any pedantic preconditioning of the sort I am about to engage in. Indeed, watching it is far more delightful than simply reading it. In this note I only offer my own unsolicited conclusions about certain implications which I submit are latent in the text, including three broader idiosyncratic inferences which I also came to reflect on, as follows.
Subtitle. First, the subtitle “Or What You Will” which Shakespeare gave to this play was what I believe Hollywood would call his “working title.” This supposition does not alter the following observations I have about other notable features of Twelfth Night, but it does suggest to me an underlying attitude which the playwright may have had about the various problems which he deals with in the course of the main story. Time and again, the main characters make foolish or ill-considered decisions with scant consideration of the future[1]. In short “what you will” means, “You’ve made your choice, but you must live with the consequences.”
Cruelty. Second, and related to the theme of impulsive decisions, Shakespeare permits the uneven contest between Feste (who is far more clever) and Malvolio actually to degenerate into a cruel malice by the former which at the end leads to the latter’s pathetic impotence, calling into question whether this play should really be called a comedy at all. Or if it is a comedy, it is the human comedy, which is frequently not so funny at all.
Backstory[2]. My third consideration, which I will discuss in further detail below, is drawn from the mysterious but untold history of Viola (Caesario) and Sebastian, both of them noticeably unwilling to reveal their background during the course of the play[3]. These two twins – likely in their mid-teens -- have been traveling together by sea when they are shipwrecked in a storm and separated from each other in a land called Illyria. Why they were on this ship or where they were going is never told. Indeed, when Antonio asks this direct question to Sebastian, he refuses to answer except to say that his destination had been a “mere extravagancy.” But he adds that his real name was actually Roderigo and that their father (also named Sebastian) “was” a potentate back in their home in Messaline.
Likewise, when Olivia later questions Viola about her family, Viola’s answer is deliberately opaque: “Above my station,” she says. This is a calculated dissimulation. With nothing to hide, Viola could have said “My father is the [Duke, a count, the rebel leader, etc.] in Messaline” -- information she has also already withheld from both the sea captain and Orsino. (At most, in the last act she reports that her father had died on her 13th birthday.)
It is best not to overthink this problem. Some sort of backstory, whatever it may be, is needed to make the main story coherent. Perhaps I have given it more significance than it requires. And yet Trevor Nunn’s movie production of the play makes it look almost as though the twins had been on a commercial pleasure cruise. Would it be presumptuous to substitute our own speculation? Were these youngsters fleeing a tumultuous political period in Messaline? And note how, now in Illyria, Viola abruptly decides, without much deliberation, to disguise herself as a eunuch at Duke Orsino’s court while she figures out what to do. She shows no desire to return to Messaline nor does she dilate on her father’s situation there.
The Main Title.
I confess that it was at the very outset of Professor Lupton’s presentation that she put an obvious question to which I had never given serious consideration. Why is the play called Twelfth Night at all? Occasionally that question had crossed my mind, but at best I had just decided that the play had first been performed near Christmastime and so I let it go at that. I note, however, that there is a point at which Olivia exclaims that Malvolio’s insane delusions were no more than “midsummer madness” and, although I also attributed this to her astonishment that Malvolio’s foolishness was out of joint with the Christmas season, there is nothing in the plot suggesting that the play is set in the Christmas season.[4]
Professor Lupton took the question more seriously. The twelfth night, she pointed out, had been when the Magi arrived in Bethlehem and found the newborn Christ. Thereafter it has been celebrated as a religious holiday, as it was in Shakespeare’s day. The play, she went on, is dotted with parallel revelations or epiphanies. I was certainly unable to dispute this conclusion, particularly in light of her having called attention to Viola’s sudden realization in II:ii, “She loves me, sure! . . . I am the man!” Indeed, with this prompt, later on I noticed that Fabian twice calls out “here he is” in III:iv and later that when Duke Orsino’s police have identified the fugitive Antonio[5], one of them says, “Here is the man,” which in the New Testament Latin would be “Ecce homo,” Pilate’s recognition of Jesus. But the twelfth night pertains to Christ’s birth, not his betrayal and death.
And so without more, I am reluctant to give major significance to the play’s periodic examples of revealed (or in the case of the twins, unrevealed) identity, particularly given the virtual shrug of the play’s subtitle “Or What You Will.” Perhaps that is also sufficient to get past a latent question, viz. why is it that throughout the play, Viola never even reveals her true identity except to the ship captain? I agree that the professor’s point about revealed identity itself is certainly valid and is worth consideration, but in evaluating the play’s wider meaning, the title’s significance is left up to the reader. It’s “what you will.”[6]. There are similar background questions surrounding the other characters that also suggest themselves, but I’ll touch on them hereafter.
Comedy?
I recall one area in which Professor Lupton and I politely diverged. As I remember it, it came out twice, the first being when she concluded that the Viola/Orsino match at the end of the play was romantic perfection, entirely congruent with the Elizabethan convention that a comedy must end with a marriage.[7] (And yet two other marriages are also signaled at the end, either of which could as well serve that purpose.) By contrast, my personal evaluation of Orsino[8] is that he is something of an oaf, ostentatiously in love with love itself and deluding himself throughout the play that Olivia (whom he may not even have previously met) is the paragon of any duke’s ideal.[9]
Second, in the last act, when he is confronted by the liaison between the counterfeit Viola (i.e. Sebastián) and Olivia, Orsino’s initial reaction is hardly that of the noble betrayed lover. Rather, he makes a statement of blood revenge against Olivia by killing what he now sees as an unfaithful servant (i.e. Viola as Cesario). To Olivia he says,
“. . . this your minion, whom I know you love,
And whom, by heaven I swear, I tender dearly,
Him will I tear out of that cruel eye
Where he sits crowned in his master’s spite.
Come, boy, with me; my thoughts are ripe in mischief:
I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love
To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.”
To reverse a quotation from another play, “This were some policy, but no love.”
In any event, towards the end of a series of challenging exchanges with Professor Lupton on this topic, I postulated in our concluding session that Twelfth Night should not really be seen as a comedy (although it is certainly hilarious), but rather a “problem play.”
Status. Elsewhere I have submitted that it is always advisable to understand most of Shakespeare’s plays as revealing a fundamental problem – one which he illustrates, but studiously does not attempt to solve[10]. In the case of Twelfth Night, I submit that the serious underlying problem involves Malvolio and Feste -- Malvolio, as the gull, being the crux of the problem.
With this in mind, during one of our early discussions with the group, I commented -- though without arousing any interest – that I felt that in some respects the plot of Twelfth Night deals subtly with the social status of people in England, notwithstanding its setting in Illyria (presumably the Balkans). Glancing at King Lear, where this identical subject is more pronounced, I pointed out that Orsino – a Duke at first, though he is later given the more European designation of Count – is obviously the ranking man in Illirya which ironically suggests some limiting conventions as to whom he can marry without scandal[11].
Orsino and Olivia. In short, Orsino, a bachelor, would normally not be expected to marry below his station. And yet it seems that the Lady Olivia is the only obvious available candidate in the neighborhood and she, according to her uncle Sir Toby, will “not match above her degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit.”
Olivia, apparently an orphan (like Viola[12]) -- and neither a wife nor widow -- is the young daughter of a count from whom she has inherited her estate (but not the title) from either her late father or brother. For the audience’s purposes, however, it is enough to know that she is called a Lady and is treated as such. All we need know otherwise is that because of her bloodlines she has come into an inheritance -- always attractive in a marriage match (though Orsino insists that it is only her beauty which attracts him.)
Next, we are not given Olivia’s age. A consensus vaguely developed in the discussion group was that she was about 21, just the age for marriage, which would suit Orsino well enough. And yet we also learn that she has sworn to maintain her maidenhood for seven years while she mourns her recently dead brother. This is the kind of rash, unthinking declaration which would be made by an earnest but naïve young person and is also consistent with my evaluation that Twelfth Night, whatever else it may be, is a play about people making ill-advised decisions.
Viola and Sebastian. Viola and Sebastian are probably a few years younger than Olivia, although, like Olivia’s age, this is not made explicit. But in her first scene, there is more to learn about Viola. For instance, almost immediately when the captain comforts her that Sebastian may also have survived the wreck, Viola instinctively betrays, without ceremony, an aristocratic gesture by instantly giving him a monetary reward just for the consoling thought.[13]
In this same first scene Viola also demonstrates a rather sophisticated curiosity for one of her years. As soon as the captain tells her that they are in Illyria, she never asks where that is (it seems she knows that already) but instead she immediately wonders what she “should do” there and promptly asks, “Who governs here?” On hearing Orsino’s name, she also reveals that she knows that he is a bachelor. This is a girl who, in the first moments of her distress, is already calculating not only her survival but also perhaps her future. Her pseudonym “Cesario” suggests as much.
Sir Toby and Sir Andrew. Both of these two comic characters are assigned the title “sir.” In English terms, that signals that they have some aristocratic pretensions, but certainly inferior to Duke Orsino and Lady Olivia. But for the fact that they are obviously “knights” in the English sense -- meaning a modest status among the gentry but one which is not normally passed to one’s male heirs – it does not appear that they are particularly well-acquainted with each other. And yet in Sir Andrew’s case, we learn that he also has some inheritance -- unlike Sir Toby, who is a drunk sponging off his niece. Olivia has surely sized this up. On the other hand, Sir Andrew’s parentage is never given.[14] Toby’s unspoken daft calculation is that if he can arrange a marriage between Sir Andrew and Olivia, his position in the household will be secure. This is later compounded by his disastrous setting up of a duel between Viola and Sir Andrew, supposedly to demonstrate the latter’s valor as an attraction to Olivia.
The Staff. Four of the characters in Twelfth Night – Maria, Feste, Fabian, and Malvolio -- have obviously served in Olivia’s household for years, possibly even before she was born. Vis-a-vis each other, their relative stations differ, but their history with Olivia is nothing compared to their history with each other over the years. As for their intramural ranking, Malvolio, something like a butler, is major domo. He is followed by Maria who was probably Olivia’s nurse at one time, and who now seems to be Malvolio’s vicar in managing the kitchen and household staff. Fabian, who has little to do in the play, is the groundskeeper.
Maria. Whatever Maria’s official position in Olivia’s household, she, like Malvolio and Feste, has presumably been there for years, surely predating her lady’s having come into her inheritance. In domestic terms she is necessarily subordinate to Malvolio, but her intellect is superior to his and her relationship with Olivia is far more simpatico than Malvolio’s will ever be.
I submit that Maria is at least Feste’s equal in cleverness. In their first exchange (I:v), without flinching she rates him for being absent without leave, scoring him with her own badinage (i.e. “falling gaskins”), then leaving it to him to deal directly with Olivia. Most important, Maria is the initiator and author of the forged letter later used to trick Malvolio into disgracing himself.
Maria’s Letter.[15] The household’s dislike for Malvolio is obvious. Only in the later comic scene in the garden, where Malvolio is ridiculously transported by Maria’s forged letter, do we recognize what Maria and Olivia have both realized much earlier about Malvolio: he is subject to his own “infirmities” of self-regard.
What is a Fool? The next of the four staff members is Feste, always identified in my text as a “clown” -- not a “fool.” In fact, the copy of Twelfth Night which I have in hand only once identifies him by his actual name “Feste” (II:iv). But the subject of what constitutes a “fool” and how it sorts with wit[16] – which he himself first raises -- recurs within the text.[17]
The first occurrence is in I:v when Feste, in an aside, claims to lack wit, but expressly seeks it now, to arm him in his imminent confrontation with Olivia because he calculates that Wit may help him pass for a wise man. After all, “better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”[18] Olivia then enters and describes Feste as a “dry fool” who has grown dishonest.[19] Feste’s immediate response is to set up his joke that it is really Olivia who is the fool[20] and then going on to dilate about how to “mend” such faults as she has charged him with (particularly dishonesty). When Olivia eventually gets the joke, she politely asks Malvolio whether he agrees that Feste’s “amendment” explanation is actually more clever than insulting to her. Malvolio’s snide response, however, is that Feste has only “mended” his “infirmity,”[21] which “decays the wise [and] doth ever make the better fool.”
And yet, Olivia again calls Feste a fool and reproves him because people dislike his antics. But Feste will not let it go, remarking that a wellborn fool is simply one who is “cramm’d with brains.” Then in a still later scene Viola picks up on Feste’s joke about living “by the church,” prompting his “chev’ril glove” remark that there can be more than one way to understand a witty remark. She responds that “they that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton.” After he leaves, she reflects that it is true that even to play a fool requires wit. A genuine fool
“must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time;
. . . . This is a practice
As full of labor as a wise man’s art.”
But then she concludes prophetically,
“For folly that he [Feste] wisely shows is fit;
But wise men, folly-fall’n[22], quite taint their wit.”
I agree, but in a different sense. Feste, who is certainly a critical character in the play, does indeed become “folly-fall’n” in his later treatment of Malvolio and in my view is even ultimately a failure as an “allowed fool.” There is nothing particularly “festive” about him and his songs actually suggest his recurring uneasy melancholy. Unlike the fools in Lear and As You Like It, Feste is not bound by love and duty to a master[23], nor is he himself particularly loveable. His former master, Olivia’s father, has been dead a year, and he has obviously begun free-lancing at Orsino’s court. This dual perch may have given a deeper perspective to his wry commentaries, but he lacks the affection and respect of a sanctioned fool. Furthermore he plays a more active role in the Twelfth Night plot than do either Lear’s fool or Touchstone in their respective plays, his most troubling part being cruelty and deception.
This leads me to consider Shakespeare’s decision not to place Feste in the garden scene where Malvolio makes himself ridiculous upon discovering Maria’s letter.[24] Step by step Malvolio has been gulled into becoming more and more absurd to the three hiding observers. The scene is wondrously funny – but it would not be if Feste had been there.
Sir Toby Belch. Several times during the play Olivia betrays that Sir Toby is not an entirely welcome guest in her house. As for the audience, given his surname, drunkenness, and lack of means, Sir Toby also cannot be regarded as much of a man. He is privately contemptuous of Sir Andrew whom he is cynically manipulating only to secure his own place in Olivia’s house. But as Olivia’s uncle, he is also possibly the brother of Olivia’s father and may have some snatch of decency. If so, it is revealed in three places: first, he bravely (drunkenly?) draws his own sword against Antonio who has stepped in to defend Sebastian (actually Viola/Cesario) in the abortive comic duel with Sir Andrew; second, he draws again against the real Sebastian when challenged by him; and third, he expresses an eventual remorse at the unnecessary torture which Malvolio has been put to by Feste[25].
Malvolio. Malvolio fancies himself a man of exemplary rectitude, but he has clearly earned the general contempt of the household staff, though he is oblivious of that. He may not have overtly mistreated any of them, but he is arrogant and condescending, quite sufficient to generate enmity. Whether he is actually a Puritan is never made explicit[26], but he certainly betrays some of the Puritans’ most conspicuous traits. He is humorless[27], personally vain, officious to his lady, demeaning to his subordinates, and has little imagination. As noted, when Olivia asks him to recognize Feste’s wit, his response is snide and bitter. But we never see him overstepping his authority and there is no indication that he ever did so.[28]
The Imprisonment. Not only is Maria the sole source of the fatal letter used to trick Malvolio in II;v, but Malvolio’s later confinement in Act IV for supposed insanity also appears to be the work of Maria alone (though she soon enlists Feste who offers no demur).
Because of the letter, Malvolio had appeared before Olivia cross-gartered, in yellow, and oddly smiling. To make things worse he then quoted liberally from the letter with lascivious enthusiasm. Olivia, naturally astonished, fears him ill, exclaims, “This is very midsummer madness, “and orders him to bed[29]. In fact, suddenly distracted by Cesario’s arrival, Olivia tells Maria to have Malvolio “look’d to” with “special care” by her “people” and she thereupon exits. In my view, her preoccupied instructions are simply to care for him. She gives no order of imprisonment.
In the garden, and thinking himself alone, Malvolio had discovered the letter, read it aloud, and convinced himself that it had been written for him by Olivia. The scene is funny because Maria, Sir Toby, and Fabian all witness the entire farce from a hiding place. If insanity means to have fallen into the devil’s clutches, these three purport to convince themselves that this has been Malvolio’s fate[30]. Sir Toby admits as much when he says, “We may carry it thus, for our pleasure and his penance.” And so it is.
With no more introduction than that, in Act IV:ii Malvolio is now on stage in a darkened prison. Maria thereupon directs Feste to disguise himself as the fanatic curate Sir Tobas[31] to torment the wretched man. He does so eagerly, alternately in disguise as Sir Topas, then in his own voice, then again as Sir Topas, always insisting that Malvolio admit that he is not merely mad but possessed. I cannot imagine any director or even actor with a beating heart regarding this scene as comic. It is unforgiveable torment of a helpless man. At most, Feste does permit Mavolio to write a plea for pardon to Olivia (the second letter)[32].
The “Reveal.” In Act V Olivia thinks she has married Cesario. (What she and Sebastian did offstage following their hurried love scene is not mentioned.) But the game is up when Orsino roars that he will therefore kill Cesario (actually Viola) and Viola surprisingly says that she will go willingly because “him I love.” The audience understands this, of course, but everyone on stage thinks that they have just witnessed a public declaration of homosexuality. Indeed Viola takes one further step, saying that she loves Orsino “[m]ore, by all mores, than e’re I shall love wife.”[33] And even now she doesn’t reveal her sex but instead dares the community to “[p]unish my life for tainting of my love.” Scandal! But then Olivia recovers and tells her (perhaps ambiguously), “Be that thou knowest thou art, and then thou art/As great as thou fearest.”
The Consequences. I conclude by reiterating my earlier remarks about the unforeseen consequences of the characters’ various decisions. Hearing Malvolio’s story, Olivia vows that when she learns who engineered the trick played on Malvolio she will make him “both the plaintiff and the judge of [his] own cause.”
How will this play out? When she makes this declaration, Maria and Toby are not present on stage, having married each other, each possibly calculating that they have thus armed themselves against serious repercussions. (But marriage is its own reckoning.) Fabian then acknowledges his role, but is happy to put the blame on the absent Mr. and Mrs. Belch; otherwise he points out that any malice toward Malvolio was only “sportful” and should be treated as no more than a joke. Feste’s remark is not in that vein. What happened, he says, was just an “interlude”[34] and then he justifies his role by recalling a disparaging remark (“a barren rascal”) which Malvolio once made about him to Olivia, explaining that the “whirligig of time brings in his revenges.”
And so it might, because Malvolio then delivers his last line: “I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you.” Thus ends the comedy, Twelfth Night.
Coda. Feste’s melancholy song at the end of the play is not part of the story. It may even have been drawn from a contemporary motto or song. (Lear’s fool also recites some of its lines.) It is more of a resigned lament, not delivered to the players on stage, but to the audience. In my view it has been included to signal the playwright’s notation that what the audience has just seen is more than a simple comedy.
[1] I submit the following examples. First is Viola’s immediate and apparent interest in landing Orsino sight unseen – at least if I am right about his negative qualities. (Pace Professor Lupton, I include among his demerits the homoerotic undertones of Orlando’s early scenes with Cesario -- the disguised Viola -- which seem to go over her head.) There is also, of course, Malvolio’s absurd conclusion that he is Olivia’s beloved. Olivia herself is also too eager to capture what she supposes is a younger teenaged boy (again the disguised Viola) as a mate, particularly given her earlier innocent announcement that she will wait seven years before considering marriage. Even the real Sebastian’s sudden adolescent craving for Olivia (apparently not even motivated by avarice), is at best understandable but immature. For other dubious decisions by the characters, I submit that Sir Toby’s mad idea of enlisting Andrew Aguecheek as a suitor for Olivia needs no further elaboration. Maria’s brilliant letter leads to hilarious comedy, but then also to Malvolio’s unjust imprisonment and humiliation. Feste’s ardent embrace of his disguise and performance as the fictitious cleric Sir Topas (with Maria’s willing participation) is unforgivable.
.
[2] Over the years I have read or heard actors who dwell on this phrase, “the backstory,” mainly to force themselves to consider how their specific character had arrived psychologically at the point when the story opens and how it influences his or her performance. This approach is associated with so-called “method” acting attributed to the Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski. And yet sometimes I have heard some actors get carried away with the concept — Olivier once supposedly said that Hamlet was a “mother loving faggot”; but without getting transported, I would say that an actor who needs a “backstory” is simply searching for clues in the text to create a factitious history useful to his creative efforts.
As a theatrical exercise, this is not offensive to me, though I suppose that actors and actor coaches can get at swords’ points about it. In any event, one can certainly apply the drill to Shakespeare’s characters, chiefly using ample background information supplied by the playwright himself. Of course Shakespeare will normally introduce sufficient clues without requiring ludicrous Freudian gymnastics, but Twelfth Night is a bit light on such matters, particularly as touching the young twins, Viola and Sebastián.
[3] Eventually Feste, however, seems to have speculated that something else is going on. In III:I he says to Viola, “who you are and what you would are out of my welkin.”
[4] The internal action of the play, though alluding to both the murky backstory and Viola’s three months offstage in disguise at Orsino’s court, unfolds mostly in a single day, obviously not Christmas or twelfth night. There does seems to be a consensus that the play was performed at court on or about the celebration of the epiphany. And yet the writing of it would surely have occupied several months before then.
[5] There is no suggestion that Antonio had been aboard the ship that was lost in the storm, but there is a hint that he was from some city in the region which appears to have plundered Illyrian trade. Perhaps on this occasion he was in Illyria as a result of the same storm, but that is pure speculation.
Although I believe I have always seen them “doubled” on stage in the cast of characters, the ship captain who interviews Viola in her first scene is a different person from Antonio who first appears in II:i as Sebastian’s rescuer from the wreck and is later identified by Orsino in V:I as a “pirate.” If they were the same character, Antonio’s first remark to Sebastian on the sea coast in II:I would have been, “By the way, I saw your sister the other day when we both crawled off the beach after the storm. She thinks you drowned.”
[6] Olivia herself actually uses this phrase in I;v. In her mind it refers to an insignificant falsehood for avoiding Orsino’s messenger. Other phrases to the same effect can be found at the end of II;iii (twice) and, perhaps more tellingly, in the penultimate line of Feste’s last song ending the play: “but that’s all one.”
[7] Consistent with the professor’s view, in an early scene, the sea captain (who only appears once in the play) describes Orsino to Viola as “a noble duke, in nature as in name”; and Professor Lupton also pointed out that Orsino’s language which opens the play is all enchanting poetic imagery. But Olivia herself -- who later reflects on what she “supposes” Orsino to be like -- remarks that poetry “is the more like to be feigned.” So I am not entirely comfortable with the professor’s assurance that Orsino was ultimately the perfect love match for Viola. My sense is that Shakespeare may have actually intended Orsino’s opening lines as, first, no more than the overdone languorous self-dramatizing of a vainglorious autocrat (cf. Richard II) and, second, as the playwright’s own melancholy caution, viz. that the vital “spirit of love” is always destined to “fall[] into abatement and low price even in a minute.” Indeed, Orsino concludes his opening reflections with somewhat baser thoughts, acknowledging that when he first saw the innocent Olivia, “my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, e’re since pursue me.”
[8] Cf. “ursine.”
[9] In II:iv he also acknowledges that men – even married men --will always be attracted to younger women. Feste agrees: Orsino’s mind is as changeable as an “opal.”
[10] Shaw uses a similar approach, less subtle but highly entertaining, and usually in respect to more transitory problems.
[11] Indeed, presently Olivia also casually reveals –- just as a similarly-situated English lady would -- her own innate recognition of her genuine status in Illyria. Once she has come to consider Cesario (the disguised Viola) as a potential love object, she asks (futilely) about his/her family position.
[12] We also immediately learn that, also like Olivia, Viola is grieving for her supposedly dead brother. Their names are also near anagrams of each other.
[13] Likewise she later disdains a gratuity which Olivia offered her following their first unsuccessful interview.
[14] It is difficult to derive very much at all about Sir Andrew beyond his physical description, his wealth, his cowardice, and his argumentative disposition. Is he perhaps a camouflaged Spaniard? Toby once refers to him as “Castiliano vuglo” and later says that they will meet at Sir Andrew’s “cubiculo.” Insofar as he refers to himself, Sir Andrew says, “Sometimes I think I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has; but I am a great eater of beef.” A “beefeater’ could be a reference to Englishmen in general. See also his remark in III:ii disparaging the proto-Puritan Brownist religious movement in England.
[15] The play also involves a second letter of importance, one written by Malvolio to Olvia, read in the last act. A third letter, Sir Andrew’s challenge to Sebastian, is inspired farse.
[16] Ultimately, Olivia gets in the last word, eventually telling both Feste and Malvolio that “There is no slander in an allow’d fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove.” In this play I only recall one use of the word “fool” as an affectionate reference.
[17] The subject of madness also comes up often enough in the text to suggest that for Shakespeare it too is an element to be found both in fools and clever men. Cf. Midsummer Night’s Dream, I:i.
[18] Viola later comes to the same conclusion: “This fellow [Feste] is wise enough to play the fool;/And to do that well craves a kind of wit.” III:i.
[19] I take the reference to dishonesty as being her rebuke to Feste doing double service at Orsino’s court.
[20] This is a specific example of his later “chev’riled glove” remark to Viola when they are “by the church.”
[21] A reference to Feste’s age and an indication of a smoldering dislike between two old men.
[22] Here I think she means “in love,” as she does a moment later after Olivia, confessing her passion for Viola, Viola says contemptuously “now I am your fool.” But many of Twelfth Night’s characters are “folly-fall’n.”
[23] Shakespeare’s fools are no more interchangeable than any other of Shakespeare’s characters (except Rosencranz and Guildenstern). Touchstone has a strain of concupiscence not perceptible in the others.
Lear’s fool dies for him. Dogberry is pure comic relief. Feste, by contrast, unashamedly always has his hand out and seems more of a cousin to the porter in Macbeth. Autolycus, neither a clown nor a fool, is an imp.
[24] We would have expected Feste to be there. Instead, without any pre-introduction, we meet Fabian, the groundskeeper, whose reason for being there is that Malvolio had supposedly once criticized about a bear-baiting.
[25] IV:ii: “I would we were well rid of this knavery.”
[26] Maria introduces that possibility at Sir Toby’s drunken early-morning carouse during which Sir Toby even tries a riotous song celebrating the twelfth night. But Maria’s point is that the English Puritans were abstemious, dogmatic, inflexible and outspoken about Anglican laxity in the routine retention of many Roman Catholic conventions. Even decades later in America, Puritans rejected Christmas celebrations.
[27] See Sir Toby’s famous “cakes and ale” remark.
[28] Compare Feste’s moonlighting.
[29] She gives the same order for Sir Toby in the last act. It means no more than what she says.
[30] This is my reading of Fabian’s remark, “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” And then he says, “Why we shall make him mad indeed.”
[31] Viola (II:ii): “Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness.” And specifically reflecting on Feste in III:i, see also her couplet quoted in the margin, supra.
[32] In Act V Feste, when pressed, is obviously reluctant to read the letter’s contents to Olivia; after all, it reveals his own cruelty. So he reads it aloud as though it were gibberish.
[33] Unintentional, but surely taken as a cruel slap by Olivia who is still in the dark.
[34] In King Lear, Goneril uses the same word to excuse the discovery of her illegitimate connection with Edgar.