These are just some very brief questions and observations whittled down and altered from my full commentary on Twelfth Night. They may prove useful for participating in class discussion. If you want to view the full questions and commentary set, just follow the relevant links in the sitewide menu bar above.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. (The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 743-97.)
Act 1, Scene 1 (743-44, Duke Orsino luxuriates in his idealistic love of Countess Olivia, or perhaps of love itself; a messenger reports that Olivia is in mourning for her departed brother and won’t be seen for an excessive period of seven years.)
Key things to discuss in the first act ….
1. Duke Orsino of Illyria and Countess Olivia are both stylizers, creatures of idealistic excess: he is in love with love, and she with mourning. We invent rituals, styles, take up attitudes, etc. We do that to stabilize life, give it some anchored meaning, some purpose. But the gesture can become a denial of life, if it’s persisted in too long.
Language focus. “If music be the food of love, play on. / Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken and so die” (743, 1.1.1-3).
Orsino also represents his love of Olivia as turning destructive inside of him, like “fell and cruel hounds” (744, 1.2.21) that pursue him as if he were Actaeon turned to a stag. A trap, a violent affair, then?
2. What’s Illyria, really? Illyria runs strangely parallel with the order of human desire (Barton). If that’s the case, who needs a “green world”?
3. But Feste complicates this claim because he doesn’t just accept it. What are we to make of him, his function in this play?
4. Neither does Viola, for that matter. Her watchword is “What else may hap, to time I will commit.” She knows that she can’t bully her way to happiness: she’s aware of being dependent on “Time,” which is something beyond her ability to control.
5. Why does everyone despise Malvolio? He’s a Puritan prig and a hypocrite. He follows his own desires but tells others not to follow theirs.
6. Sir Toby is the Pleasure Principle incarnate: he lives for pleasure. We should concentrate on how he challenges Malvolio later in the first act.
Act 1, Scene 2 (744-46, Viola is shipwrecked in Illyria, and fears that her twin brother has drowned; the ship’s Captain tells her about Orsino and Olivia, and Viola settles on dressing as a young man and serving the Duke as a page; the rest of her plan, time will bring to pass.)
Viola decides instead to disguise herself as a young man and serve Duke Orsino. She wants to delay entering into Illyria’s society until, she says, “I had made mine own occasion mellow / What my estate is” (745, 1.2.41-43). She wants her entry to unfold on her own terms. But aside from that, Viola’s willingness, even determination, to commit her hopes to the fullness of time and the buffetings of chance is a key attitude for Shakespeare’s comic heroes and heroines. Her perspective comes from, and calls for, wisdom and generosity of spirit, for openness to what life brings. Selfish characters lack these qualities. See Ecclesiastes 9:11.
Act 1, Scene 3 (746-49, Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby, has brought the very silly Sir Andrew Aguecheek to his niece’s estate and means to promote him as her suitor; Sir Andrew doubts his chances, but Toby encourages him to give it a try.)
Sir Toby says, “What a plague means my niece to take the death of / her brother thus? I am sure care’s an enemy to life” (746, 1.3.1-2). But a further point is that as far as Toby is concerned, one love object is as good as another; he doesn’t share the exclusivity we find in Orsino or in Viola. Just being part of a pleasure-yielding system is what matters to him. It’s okay to round off and level discrimination and judgment in choosing the objects of one’s desires. Penn & Teller once did an episode of Bullshit on “The Best.” They ridicule snooty people’s discriminatory pursuit of the best stuff. Toby would like that episode, I think.
But he’s not all peace and love, either—in fact, he’s sort of a grifter or a confidence man. Look how he treats Sir Andrew Aguecheek! Even Toby will be compelled to recognize that there are limits to one’s pursuit of pleasure, that it will be “paid for,” as Feste says. That’s true even if Toby resembles the Lord of Misrule at the Feast of Fools, part of the Christmas season’s twelve days of celebration.
Act 1, Scene 4 (749-50, Duke Orsino commissions Viola as “Cesario” to woo Olivia for him; Viola accepts, but at once realizes that this is a trap, for she already loves Orsino.)
Intimacy strikes up immediately between Duke Orsino and Viola (disguised as “Cesario”). Orsino comments on Viola/Cesario’s feminine appearance: “Diana’s lip / Is not more smooth and rubious. Thy small pipe / Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound, / And all is semblative a woman’s part” (749-50 1.4.30-33). Viola realizes she’s trapped: “I’ll do my best / To woo your lady” she says to the Duke, but to herself she admits, “Yet a barful strife; / Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife” (749-50, 1.4.30-33, 40-42).
Act 1, Scene 5 (750-56, Feste “proves” that Olivia is a fool; the steward Malvolio insults Feste; Sir Toby announces that “Cesario” has just arrived at Olivia’s estate, and she grants him a private audience; even as “Cesario” pleads Orsino’s case, Olivia falls in love—with Cesario; Olivia sends Malvolio after this supposed young man with a ring, on the deceptive premise that he left it with her for Orsino’s sake; Olivia tells Malvolio to invite Viola/Cesario back.)
We are introduced to Olivia, Maria her maid, and Feste. Feste’s initial words show us yet another perspective on the sway of the passions and the imperfections to which human beings are liable: “God give them wisdom that have it; and those / that are fools, let them use their talents” (750, 1.5.13-14).
Feste’s foolery turns out be a species of wisdom, and wisdom sets a person apart, though it does not necessarily result in hostility against one’s fellows, or society. Other characters are more immediately subject to the vicissitudes of “time and chance,” and they must shift as they can, but Feste himself remains as constant as one can be. In the end, all of us are “fools of time.”
Key Language:
“Anything that’s mended is but patched. Virtue that trans- / gresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but / patched with virtue” (751, 1.5.41-43).
What does Feste mean by this, so far as we can reason it out? The Fool seems to understand that in this saucy world there is no permanent strategy; there is only mending of virtues with vices and vice versa. One should neither be a denier of life nor altogether heedless.
Enter Malvolio: “I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a bar- / ren rascal. I saw him put down the other day with an ordi- / nary fool that has no more brain than a stone” (752, 1.5.75-77). But Olivia disagrees.
Why does Olivia fall in love with “Cesario” so quickly, and forget her vow of mourning for her brother? Viola/Cesario is a fair youth, one “in standing water / between boy and man” (753, 1.5.148-49). This liminality is probably in part what makes Viola/Cesario attractive to Olivia. “He” is all potential, not a fully grown man like Duke Orsino.
Olivia unveils her face at the request of Viola/Cesario: “we will / draw the curtain and show you the picture,” says the Countess, and she goes on to describe her face as an accurate portrait that will “endure wind and weather” (755, 1.5.214-15, 219). But she isn’t being arrogant. In truth, Olivia both sets herself forth as a work of art and then sends up such sentiment, offering to give out “div- / ers schedules of my beauty,” replete with all the relevant “items” (755, 1.5.225-27).
Viola/Cesario’s rhetorical boldness shows Olivia the way to give in to her own passions: “If I did love you in my master’s flame, / With such a suffering, such a deadly life, / In your denial I would find no sense. / I would not understand it” (755, 1.5.246-49).
By the end of the scene, Olivia will be madly in love, and facing Viola/Cesario’s reluctance, she will turn to the stratagem of the ring (756, 1.5.282-86). Olivia knows that a great transformation is working inside of her, but like Viola accepting time’s dispensation, she welcomes the change.
One theme of interest in Twelfth Night is its exploration of how we choose our love objects, or how they choose us. Discrimination and rejection are two main ways of eventually finding one’s favored object of desire. Both produce some chaos.
Act 2, Scene 1 (756-57, Viola’s brother Sebastian has also survived the shipwreck off the Illyrian coast, and makes his way towards Duke Orsino’s court; Antonio, a sailor who saved Sebastian from drowning, takes a liking to him and follows him at considerable risk to himself since he has enemies in Illyria’s court.)
Antonio, who had rescued Sebastian from the ocean earlier, instantly forms an unbreakable bond with him. Antonio insists he will follow Sebastian to the Duke’s Court, no matter what the danger to himself: “But come what may, I do adore thee so / That danger shall seem sport, and I will go” (757, 2.1.41-42).
Act 2, Scene 2 (757-58, Malvolio tracks Viola/Cesario down and hands “him” the ring; Viola, upon reflection, realizes that Olivia loves “Cesario”; now the three of them—Olivia, Orsino, and Viola/Cesario, are caught in a love triangle from which Viola sees no way to escape.)
By this time, Viola is in a state almost as extreme as that of Olivia and Duke Orsino. But some advantage may stem from her gender-disguise and the perspective it lends.
Twelfth Night is not a comedy of the humors, but it is a comedy of our inevitable frailty in the presence of strong passions. First, Viola sees that her adoption of a gender disguise is a trap: “I am the man…. / Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness / Wherein the pregnant enemy does much” (758, 2.2.24, 26-27).
Secondly, Viola is able to generalize from her own experience: “How easy is it for the proper false / In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms. / Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we, / For such as we are made of, such we be” (758, 2.2.28-31). The “we” here might as well be everyone.
Viola’s abilities do not help her extricate herself. Her plan amounts to a prayer: “O Time, thou must untangle this, not I. / It is too hard a knot for me t’untie” (2.2.39-40).
Act 2, Scene 3 (758-62, Sir Toby, Andrew, and Feste are drinking, singing, and playing music in a room at Olivia’s estate; Maria tries to quiet them down, and then in marches Malvolio, who threatens to throw them out of the house; an offended Sir Toby calls Malvolio out for being a puritan; Maria hatches a plot involving a forged letter designed to convince Malvolio that Olivia is romantically interested in him.)
This is another comic scene between Toby, Andrew, and Feste. There’s a call for music. Feste’s song suggests that love sees only the joy of the present, that deferral and indeed any attempt to banish time are of no account: “In delay there lies no plenty, / Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. / Youth’s a stuff will not endure” (759, 2.3.48-50). But we should note that he’s unlikely to take this advice as infallible—carpe diem is an old saw.
Malvolio demands that these revelers stop making so much merriment: “Do ye make an alehouse of my lady’s / house, that ye squeak out your coziers’ catches without any / mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, / persons, nor time in you?” (760, 2.3.83-86) Malvolio goes after these noisy celebrants with just short of the ire that Jesus showed towards the moneychangers in the Temple in Matthew 12:21ff.
In return, Toby’s put-down of Malvolio is a classic: “Art any more / than a steward? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, / there shall be no more cakes and ale?” (761, 2.3.105-07)
Why does Maria think her plan will work so well—how does it suit Malvolio’s temperament and attitude toward life?
Act 2, Scene 4 (762-65, Orsino asks for a song as a curative for his love-sick soul; he and Viola/Cesario debate whether men or women are more capable of love; Feste sings of love and death; during their renewed discussion, Viola-as-Cesario tells Orsino a tale about his supposed sister that hints at Viola’s love for him; the Duke doesn’t quite follow this story, and sends Viola/Cesario off on another embassy to Olivia.)
Viola/Cesario and the Duke discuss love matters. Orsino admits that men’s love is less constant than women’s love, but what claim does he make in men’s favor? How does “Cesario” counter this claim?
In between this argument’s halves, Feste’s song connects love with death, the ultimate in consequences: “Come away, come away, death, / And in sad cypress let me be laid. / Fly away, fly away, breath, / I am slain by a fair cruel maid” (763, 2.4.49-52), and afterwards he warns the Duke, “pleasure will be paid one time or / another” (764, 2.4.68-69).
Act 2, Scene 5 (765-69, Malvolio finds Maria’s scarcely concealed letter in Olivia’s garden and takes the bait: the hidden Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian watch Malvolio kindle with pride and hope for advancement when he finds the letter, which tells him to smile broadly, wear yellow stockings “cross-gartered” because Olivia likes that look, and treat Sir Toby with gruff condescension; Maria and the other conspirators are beside themselves with joy at how well things are going thus far.)
The conspirators turn Malvolio into a fool in a reverie. Maria is certain that the puritan will become “a con- / templative idiot” once he gets wind of the letter (766, 2.5.16-17), and she isn’t disappointed. What is Malvolio supposed to do to get Olivia’s love?
Sir Toby predicts that Malvolio, when he is finally disabused of his delusions of grandeur, will run mad (769, 2.5.168-69). This hyper-critical moralist has become just another foolish lover. He’s a minor comic version of Euripides’ Pentheus in The Bacchantes, to be destroyed by the Dionysian revelers whose fun he tried to tamp down. The text’s allusion to the Roman “Lucretia” tale is another classical nod that we might want to discuss.
Like so many deniers of life, Malvolio means to set up a rival order of perfection against the imperfect world around us all; what else is that but pride, a self-deluded desire for autonomy to cover one’s fear and emptiness?
Act 3, Scene 1 (769-73, Viola/Cesario judges Feste’s wit while on the way to another audience with Olivia, and then meets Sir Toby and Sir Andrew; Olivia sends everyone but Viola-as-Cesario away and confesses her love to him; the answer Olivia receives takes the form of a gender-riddle.)
Feste declares himself not the Countess Olivia’s fool but her “corrupter of words” (770, 3.1.31), and Viola points out that playing the role of fool requires perceptiveness: “to do that well craves a kind of wit. / He must observe their mood on whom he jests, / The quality of persons, and the time …” (771, 3.1.54-56).
Folly is Feste’s way of maintaining perspective in a confusing and dishonest world, Like a courtier, he must engage with various people in ways suit them. Both are well versed in the discipline of responding to social status and decorum.
Olivia admits to Viola/Cesario that the ring business was a device and asks, “Have you not set mine honor at the stake … ?” (772, 3.1.110) Cesario has put Olivia’s honor (chastity) at risk from her own passions, and is obligated to respond.
To Olivia’s confession of love (773, 3.1.143), Viola/Cesario can only speak in riddles: “I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth, / And that no woman has, nor never none / Shall mistress be of it, save I alone” (773, 3.1.149-51).
Anne Barton is right to suggest that Viola’s disguise doesn’t liberate her in the way that, say, Rosalind’s disguise does in As You Like It. It buys her time and affords perspective, but it isn’t freedom to experiment at will.
Act 3, Scene 2 (773-75, Sir Toby bucks up Sir Andrew, who is becoming frustrated about Olivia: the thing to do, advises Sir Toby, is to challenge “Cesario” to a duel; Sir Andrew leaves to write a challenge to give Cesario; Maria reports that Malvolio is carrying out the letter’s instructions precisely.)
Fabian stirs up Sir Andrew (773, 3.2.15-16, 22-25), and Sir Toby shows his contempt for Andrew’s lack of valor and his gullibility: “I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand” (774, 3.2.47).
The following is advice Toby gives his quarry: “Taunt him with the license of ink. If thou thou’st him / some thrice, it shall not be amiss, and as many lies as will / lie in thy sheet of paper … / set ’em down, go about it” (774, 3.2.38-41).
We can find genuine exemples of male heroism in Shakespeare (Hotspur, Macduff, etc.), but Shakespeare knows male posturing is perennial: the semblance of valor often substitutes for the thing itself. Rosalind in As You Like It refers to “mannish cowards” who stare down the world and “outface it with their semblances.”
Act 3, Scene 3 (775-76, Antonio arrives in town to watch over Sebastian, and explains why he is in danger in Illyria; he lends Sebastian his purse and makes his way to the inn where they are staying, while Sebastian goes on a city tour.)
Antonio follows Sebastian to town save him from danger in spite of the peril to himself since, as he explains, “Once in a sea-fight ’gainst the Count his galleys / I did some service” (775, 3.3.26-27). Antonio also lends his new friend his purse, and says he “adores” Sebastian.
Act 3, Scene 4 (776-784, Malvolio, smiling and yellow-cross-gartered, makes his pitch; Olivia thinks he has run mad and entrusts him to Toby, who ties him up and confines him to a dark cell; Toby intends to deliver Sir Andrew’s letter to Cesario personally; Antonio believes “Cesario” is Sebastian, and comes to take his part; the Duke’s officers seize him; Antonio asks for his money as bail, and gets infuriated when Viola/Cesario, whom he believes to be Sebastian, refuses it; Viola takes heart at Antonio’s reference to Sebastian.)
Malvolio makes his pitch to Olivia, which consists of smiling bizarrely and mentioning his yellow stockings (776, 3.4.11-13, 19-22). He will be carted off to a dark cell. Olivia professes concern, but then forgets about him.
Malvolio is completely deluded: “Nothing / that can be can come between me and the full prospect of / my hopes” (777, 3.4.74-76).
Sir Toby thinks he can draw out the jest “for our pleasure and his penance till our very pastime, / tired out of breath, prompt us to have mercy …” (779, 3.4.124-25).
Sir Andrew is now spurred on to challenge Viola/Cesario as a rival suitor. Toby tells Andrew that “a terrible oath, / with a swaggering accent sharply / twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever / proof itself …” (779, 3.4.159-61).
Viola puns, “Pray God defend me. A little thing would make / me tell them how much I lack of a man” (782, 3.4.271-72). This situation can’t go on much longer.
Olivia admits her fear to Viola/Cesario that she has “said too much unto a heart of stone, / And laid mine honor too unchary on’t” (780, 3.4.179-80). She has risked her honor, but worse, to speak this way is to risk being confronted with the reverberation of one’s own unrestrained passion as madness. Viola/Cesario again tries to redirect Olivia’s love to another object, her/his master, Orsino, as if to assert the interchangeability of love-objects (780, 3.4.191).
To Sir Andrew, Sir Toby hypes the martial prowess of Viola/Cesario, just as shortly before he had done the same with Viola/Cesario about Sir Andrew. Just as the fight is starting, Antonio arrives and maintains Viola/Cesario’s part: “I for him defy you” (782, 3.4.282), whereupon Toby challenges him and guards arrest Antonio.
Drawn into Illyria’s giddiness, Antonio believes Sebastian is betraying him because Viola/Cesario won’t hand over his purse for bail money (783, 3.4.314-16). “Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame,” says Antonio in Platonist fashion.
Even so, the mention of Sebastian cheers Viola, who gains hope that her brother has survived: “Prove true, imagination, oh, prove true …” (783, 3.4.342).
Act 4, Scene 1 (784-85, Feste encounters Sebastian, and mistakes the young man for Cesario; Andrew and Toby accost Sebastian, and to stop them, Feste goes and gets Olivia, who puts an end to the fighting and rebukes Toby; Sebastian is drawn into Illyria’s topsy-turvy world when Olivia, thinking he’s “Cesario,” invites him home; Sebastian is confused, but delighted with the invitation.)
Sebastian enters and Feste is surprised to hear him deny that he is Cesario (784, 4.1.4-7). Sir Toby nearly comes to blows with Sebastian after Sir Andrew has struck the fellow, and is only stopped by Olivia, who dismisses Toby from the field (785, 4.1.40, 42-45). Olivia invites Sebastian to her house (785, 4.1.49): he is formally drawn into Illyria’s topsy-turvyness.
Sebastian says, “Or I am mad, or else this is a dream. / Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep. / If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep” (785, 3.4.56-58). He shows no interest in setting the record straight: this “unreality show” benefits him.
Act 4, Scene 2 (785-88, Taking his cue from Toby, Feste disguises himself as the priest Sir Topas and visits the “madman” Malvolio: Topas talks of Pythagoras and post-mortems, which is no help to Malvolio, but he agrees to bring him pen, paper, and candle; Toby worries that he’s carrying the jest too far.)
Maria and Feste make more sport of the confined Malvolio. Feste joins as Sir Topas.
When Malvolio refuses to believe “the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a / bird” (786, 4.2.48-49), Feste says, “Remain thou still in darkness.” (786, 4.2.53-56).
Malvolio’s pride caused him to denigrate those below him, and Pythagoras’ doctrine implies respect for all creatures. Viola commits her cause to time and reaps a reward, but Malvolio’s ill-intentioned leap nets him only isolation and mockery.
Feste taunts Malvolio: he won’t believe anyone is sane until he’s seen their exposed brains. (788, 4.2.110-11). Feste then sings “Adieu, goodman devil” (788, 4.2.123).
Sir Toby, however, is starting to worry about his niece’s good opinion. In 4.1., Toby had already angered Olivia with his irresponsible swordsmanship against Sebastian, whom he took for Cesario. He says, “I would we were well rid of this knavery” (787, 4.2.63). Toby’s term of office as unofficial lord of misrule has a limit.
Act 4, Scene 3 (788-89, Sebastian is overwhelmed by his current situation, though he believes he is still in possession of his wits, as is the Countess; Olivia abruptly offers a binding betrothal, and Sebastian just as abruptly reciprocates.)
Sebastian agrees to marry Olivia: “I am ready to distrust mine eyes / And wrangle with my reason that persuades me / To any other trust but that I am mad— / Or else the lady’s mad” (788, 4.3.13-16). But if the latter is true, how is it that Olivia has charge of her estate? Madness can’t be the ground of a whole society! Or can it?
Act 5, Scene 1 (789-97, Duke Orsino sends Feste to bring Countess Olivia to him; officers arrive with Antonio, who denounces Viola/Cesario for “Sebastian’s” supposed refusal of help; Olivia enters, and Orsino vents his fury that she has fallen for “Cesario”; when Viola/Cesario says she loves Orsino, Olivia calls for a priest who can affirm their betrothal; Andrew and Toby arrive with injuries, and both accuse Cesario; Sebastian arrives and undoes the play’s comic knots: he expresses love for Olivia, greets Antonio, and beholds “Cesario”; Viola reveals herself; Orsino proposes to Viola. An embittered Malvolio arrives, declaring that he will have his revenge; the conspirators confess; Toby has married Maria; Malvolio storms out, and Olivia sends an attendant after him; Feste sings a song about “the wind and the rain.”)
Antonio is brought before Duke Orsino as a prisoner, and reproaches Viola/Cesario, whom he mistakes for Sebastian, over bail money (790, 5.1.71-73).
Next, Olivia reproaches Viola/Cesario for her alleged failure to “keep promise” with the agreement she has come to with Sebastian (791, 5.1.97).
The Duke is upset with Olivia: “Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, / Like to th’ Egyptian thief, at point of death / Kill what I love …” (791, 5.1.110-12) and more upset with Viola/Cesario, whom he suspects has stolen Olivia (792, 5.1.136, 138). Orsino’s expression of wrath is borrowed from an ancient Greek romance, so it has a literary cast. (Norton fn 8, 791.) Also, is he in love with “Cesario”?
As if things couldn’t get any more confusing, in rushes Sir Andrew calling for a surgeon to treat Sir Toby, who has been slightly injured by Sebastian (792-93, 5.1.165-70). Now the play’s misrecognition dilemmas begin to resolve since Viola/Cesario is sincerely confused at the accusations Sir Andrew levels: “Why do you speak to me? I never hurt you” (793, 5.1.178).
Sir Toby rails at Sir Andrew as “an ass-head and a coxcomb, and a / knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull!” (793, 5.1.196-97) and then in comes Sebastian, solicitous of Olivia for wounding Toby and for his lateness (793, 5.1.199-204).
Orsino is astonished at the likeness between Viola/Cesario and Sebastian: “One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons— / A natural perspective, that is and is not” (793, 5.1.206-07). Nature itself, that is, seems to have produced a miracle. (Norton footnote 5, 793.) These two recognize each other by means of recollections about their father from Messaline (794, 5.1.222-44). Now Orsino and Viola, and Olivia and Sebastian, are free to marry.
There’s still one final matter: Malvolio’s discomfiture. Feste and Fabian enter with Malvolio’s letter, and Feste reads it: “By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and the / world shall know it” (795, 5.1.290-91, see 290-97). Then Malvolio enters: “Why have you suffered me to be imprisoned, / Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest, / And made the most notorious geck and gull / That e’er invention played on? Tell me, why?” (796, 5.1.329-32)
Feste invokes “the whirligig of time” that “brings in his revenges” (797, 5.1.363), and reminds Malvolio how he had slandered him to Olivia as “a barren rascal” (797, 5.1.362) even before the insults that sparked Maria’s letter-plot in Act 2.
The Norton vocabulary gloss for “whirligig” tells us that by this word, Feste refers to a “spinning top.” This is a brilliant figure for time as both a giddy thing and yet not without meaning: the head-spinning whir of events also implies circularity, and with it the possibility of time’s ushering in recoveries and redemptions.
What Feste invokes may be what today we call “karma,” or in a Christian context, the thriftiness of the economy of sin: ill thoughts and deeds, as Saint Augustine taught, establish their own patterns; we reap a bitter harvest from the bad seed we have sown. Malvolio swears to be revenged on them all (797, 5.1.364), prompting the Duke to send after him (797, 5.1.366).
It’s not unusual in Shakespearian comedy to leave some character out in the cold. In As You Like It, melancholy Jaques stays behind in the Forest of Arden. In The Merchant of Venice, Antonio gives away his beloved Bassanio to the woman he loves. Here in Twelfth Night, Feste maintains his aloof perspective when others are marrying. Antonio watches as “Cesario” reverts to Viola and marries the Duke.
In sum, Twelfth Night is not a “problem comedy” just because of Malvolio: the providence that seems to guide this play is hardly as rough-hewn as the one that we may see at work in Hamlet. Toby has married Maria (797, 5.1.350-52). Viola will wed the Duke, and Olivia has married Sebastian. Will Malvolio accept an apology?
Feste’s song ends the play (797, 5.1.375-94), and it would be worthwhile to consider the role his songs play in advancing or reflecting upon the action and characters in Twelfth Night. For now, let’s discuss the final song: “For the rain it raineth every day,” sings Feste, and his lyrics invoke the increasing consequentiality even of “trifles” as a person grows to maturity: the rain gets real. The “knaves and thieves” will find themselves left out in the wind and the rain.
Feste’s role is perhaps the only stable one in a world turned upside down; oftentimes, the fool alone is able to maintain and provide perspective. Others risk more, and gain more—especially Olivia and Viola, who have some depth, unlike, say, Sir Andrew, whose venture comes to nothing but loss of money.
Feste, however, remains the observant, wise man he already was: he is inside the play looking around, but also inside the play looking outward at us, the audience, and he seems almost to be one of us at times. The conclusion of Feste’s song brings in a note of metadrama: “we’ll strive to please you every day” (797, 5.1.394), he says. We can come back again to the theater, where the play-realm will mediate between its own freedom and the world of time and consequence.
Theater is probably among the “patches” Feste mentioned (751, 1.5.41-46): what it offers by way of insight and refuge may be temporary and partial rather than permanent and absolute, but that doesn’t mean it’s of no value. The foolery in Shakespeare is seldom, to borrow from King Lear, “altogether fool.” Fools are excellent embodiments of the suppleness and playfulness that mark drama.
The key concern of this play, one set during a time of merrymaking and reversal, may be how we “fools of time” (Sonnet 29) may gain perspective. There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance,” as in Ecclesiastes 3:4. Everything has its allotted time and purpose under heaven.
We have encountered a number of forms of stylized or excessive passion in Twelfth Night: Sir Toby’s irresponsible mirth, the Duke’s romantic grandiosity, Countess Olivia’s vow of extended mourning, Malvolio’s narrow-souled, extreme ambition and self-regard. Perhaps these approaches are attempts to deny or even annul time and consequentiality. Aside from Malvolio’s selfishness, there’s no need to condemn any of these attempts, other than to suggest that some styles seem more likely to “endure wind and weather.”
Feste’s music and witty observations invoke both the inevitability of time and the sway of our passions, and they’re probably as close to “another way” as we find in Shakespeare: they offer us a way to gain a permanent right-side-up perspective that is at least fitfully not obscured by time and passion.
Theater, as noted in Feste’s epilogue, may be another way of attaining such perspective, and just as Feste reminds us of the coming and going of nature’s vast seasonal cycles (the wind and the rain keep up their activity through the ages, though men shut their doors against it), we are told that while we must pass from the theater, we can always return so long as we live.
Shakespeare seems to grant theater such regenerative power, though of course whether or not the result of our many returns is wisdom is another question. The play leaves the characters in the fantasy-bubble of Illyria, a political order that has largely made good on our opening suspicion that it exists to serve its citizens’ fondest desires, or they exist to serve its fondest imperatives, which happen to be very friendly to such desires. There’s no talk of their leaving.
Last Updated on February 26, 2025 by ajd_shxpr