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Sacramento Theatre Company

Study Guide

Twelfth Night

by William Shakespeare

Study Guide Organized: January^25 ,^2016 by William Myers

Sacramento Theatre Company

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Summary

Viola and Sebastian, twins, are separated during a shipwreck. Viola, thinking her brother

dead, finds herself stranded in Ilyria. She disguises herself as a man, Cesario, and enters the service of

Duke Orsino, who is in love with Olivia and who sends Viola/Cesario to woo Lady Olivia on his

behalf. Orsino does not know that Viola has fallen in love with him. Olivia is indulging in a

seven-year season of mourning for a dead brother and is refusing to accept the advances of

any man. Her sorrow is not so profound, however, as to keep her from falling in love with the

disguised Viola. She is so in love, in fact, that she later sends Cesario/Viola a ring and invitation to

return and then admits her love for “him.”

In Olivia’s household, only her steward, the melancholy Malvolio, finds a morbid pleasure in

the atmosphere of mourning which Olivia has decreed. Her uncle, Sir Toby Belch, doesn’t

believe in grief; he spends his time drinking with Olivia’s clown, Feste, and his dupe, Sir Andrew

Aguecheek, a wealthy but foolish knight.

Because Malvolio is so arrogant, Maria, Olivia’s chamber woman, plots with Sir Toby, Aguecheek, and

Feste to get even. They do so by forging a letter from Olivia and duping Malvolio into wearing

yellow stockings, which she detests. Malvolio’s unaccountable antics cause Olivia to think him

mad, and Sir Toby and Maria have him committed to a dark room.

Meanwhile, Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, unaware that Viola is still alive, arrives in Ilyria with a

sea captain, Antonio, who is an outlawed man in Ilyria. Antonio lends his purse to Sebastian and

parts.

Seeking more “sport,” Sir Toby presses Aguecheek and Cesario/Viola into a duel. Antonio

rushes to rescue the youth, whom he believes is his friend, Sebastian, and is arrested by the duke’s

men and met by Cesario/Viola with a denial that he/she ever saw his purse.

Now Aguecheek rushes to complete the duel with Cesario/Viola but encounters Viola’s twin brother

instead who quickly wounds the knight. Olivia interferes and leads Sebastian to a priest and (thinking

he is Cesario) marries the surprised young man.

Antonio is brought before the duke and creates some confusion by relating his adventures with

Cesario/Viola, who he still thinks is Sebastian. Olivia adds to the confusion by entering and claiming

Cesario/Viola as her husband.

In the meantime, Sir Andrew and Sir Toby have had another encounter with Sebastian and they

both blame Cesario/Viola for their wounds. Everything is finally made clear when Sebastian himself

appears and the company sees Viola and Sebastian, twins, side by side. Viola promises to assume

her maiden attire to prove her identity as Sebastian’s sister. Orsino, remembering Viola’s many

expressions of affection, is content to abandon his hopeless love for Olivia and marry Viola. Sir Toby

marries Maria for her wit, and only Malvolio remains single and seems dissatisfied with the

happiness of the others.

The Characters

Orsino : The duke of Ilyria, Orsino is usually melancholy and in love with being in love. At first, his in love with Olivia, but, upon seeing the hopelessness of that situation and the honesty and beauty of Viola, falls in love with and marries her.

Sebastian : The twin brother of Viola, he is a noble young man who is shipwrecked along with his sister and ends up in Ilyria. At the end of the play, he marries Olivia.

Antonio : A sea captain and true friend of Sebastian, he is a wanted man in Ilyria and at first remains in hiding. However, when he surfaces to save who he believes is Sebastian he is arrested, but is later pardoned and released when all the confused identities are sorted out.

A Sea Captain : A friend of Viola

Valentine : A gentleman attending Orsino.

Curio : Another gentleman attending Orsino.

Sir Toby Belch : The uncle of Olivia, he lives in her household and uses her generosity to him as a way to support his life of drink and song. He also takes advantage of Sir Andrew and his money. In the end, he marries Maria, his equal in wit and fun.

Sir Andrew Aguecheek : A rich and foolish knight and “friend” of Sir Toby Belch, he is duped into staying in the household and providing money and drink to Sir Toby.

Malvolio : A steward and foolish suitor of Olivia, Malvolio is the opposite of Sir Toby and Maria. His arrogance with them eventually leads to their tricking him and cruelly locking him in a dark room. In the end, he is the only one unhappy and swears his revenge on the rest.

Fabian : A servant of Olivia.

Feste : A clown and servant of Olivia, he usually participates in Sir Toby’s and Maria’s partying and trickery.

Olivia : A countess, she is in mourning (for seven years!) for her deceased brother. She falls in love with Viola, whom she thinks is a boy, and, in the end, marries her twin, Sebastian, thinking he is the other twin

Viola : Twin sister of Sebastian, she is a strong and capable young woman who dresses like a boy, Cesario. She quickly falls in love with Orsino and later, after he realizes she is a beautiful and intelligent young woman, marries him.

Maria : An attendant of Olivia, she is part of the partying and antics of Sir Toby and the others. She later marries Sir Toby.

Let The Punishment Fit the Crime

by Diana Major Spencer || for the Utah Shakespeare Festival || www.bard.org

Twelfth Night: Another “twin” comedy, another pants role, another course-of-true-love-never-did- run-smooth mix-up, another sub-plot of less-than-noble rowdies, disguise, mistaken identity, and love tokens—in short, another Shakespearean romantic comedy. With “identical” male/female twins to add confusion and gender innuendo to the action, this delightful confection romps along through exaggerated love begetting exaggerated melancholy, exaggerated mourning fostering aggressive female wooing, and exaggerated priggishness leading to—a suitable come-uppance? Ay, there’s the rub in this favorite comedy: The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

Its superior subplot features Malvolio (whose name parses as “Ill Will”), Steward of Olivia’s household. A priggish Puritan, he deigns to squelch the partying of at least two of his social superiors, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek—both of whom also sport character-defining surnames (Belch, self-explanatory for an imbiber; Ague-, a fit of chills and shivering; cheek, with no particular textual suggestion, my mind always conjures “nether cheek,” for a moniker of “quivering ass”). Granted, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew need reminders about disturbing the peace, yet Malvolio’s manner of reproof provokes Sir Toby’s best line in the play: “Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?” (2.3.114–16; all line references are to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974]).

Sir Toby, a Falstaffian type, loving food, drink and roguishness, funds his extravagances by extorting largesse from Sir Andrew, through his promise to facilitate Sir Andrew’s wooing of Olivia, whose hospitality, respectability, and mourning mode Uncle Toby has rudely abused. Sir Andrew’s primary functions in the play are to finance Sir Toby’s amusement and say, “Me, too” and “Me, neither” in every conversation. He can also be manipulated for Sir Toby’s amusement, as in the phony duel with Cesario (Viola).

Maria, Olivia’s devoted servant and the final member of Sir Toby’s clique, seems level-headed and good-natured, seconding Malvolio’s cautions, but condemning his supercilious, sour-puss manner. She calms the over-rowdy Sirs by creating a delicious, rollicking revenge against Malvolio: a seductive riddle of a letter-from-pseudo-Olivia to be dropped in his path. The prideful, ambitious, social-climbing Puritan will surely follow Maria’s instructions to his own well-deserved humiliation.

Unfortunately, however, Toby’s back-talk in act 1, Maria’s bogus letter in act 2, and Malvolio’s preening in act 3, lead to an objectionable scene in act 4, scene 2, the so-called “torture scene,” where Malvolio is confined in some kind of dark space, rather poorly enduring Feste’s demeaning proofs that he’s insane. No matter how convincingly the actor portrays extremes of pain, frustration, and desperation, watching the begrimed Malvolio, wearing a distressed costume and writhing in anguish, just isn’t funny. He may be excruciatingly insufferable and fully deserving of unspeakable come- uppances, but seeing him onstage shifts our attention—and thus our empathy—to the prig we so recently scorned, and away from the genial pranksters we were cheering for against the hypocrite Puritan. The practical joking of that good-natured coterie of flamboyant carousers descends to very cruel and most unusual punishment, even though nothing about their prior behavior suggests meanness. Even the prank setting up a duel for two thoroughly reluctant and inept duelers aimed only for some good belly laughs, never for physical harm.

Still, isn’t that the scene as Shakespeare wrote it? Not necessarily, argues Becky Kemper, presenter at the 2007 Wooden O Symposium here at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. After citing several onstage examples of horrendous cages and dungeons designed for Malvolio, she states, “These images of torture seem out of place in Illyria” and “rob the audience of a satisfying conclusion” (“A Clown in the Dark House: Reclaiming the Humor in Malvolio’s Downfall,” Journal of the Wooden O Symposium 7 [2007], 42). Prior to the Romantic age, says Kemper, critics and diarists applauded Malvolio as “truly comic” and the “tricks” played on him justifiable. In time, however, “great tragedians specialized in playing the emerging star turn of Malvolio” (43)—great tragedians who might demand additional onstage time not afforded earlier Malvolios because of adherence to the original stage directions.

The first known printing of Twelfth Night is the First Folio of 1623, in which the scene of Malvolio’s

“torture” places the stage direction “Malvolio within” on a separate line before Malvolio’s first

speech. Nowhere does “Enter Malvolio” appear in the scene. In other words, he’s off-stage

throughout the entire scene. The 1987 Complete Oxford Shakespeare follows the First Folio, but my

1974 Riverside Edition includes “within” as part of Malvolio’s first speech: “Mal. (Within.) Who calls

there?” My 1952 G.B. Harrison and 1961 Hardin Craig Complete Works place “[Within]” inside the

speech block, but with brackets and no period. In none of these three editions does within appear

anywhere else in the scene, possibly suggesting that Malvolio remains off-stage for just that one line

before his confinement device is dragged onstage or lifted through the trapdoor.

As further indication of Malvolio’s absence from the stage, Kemper notes in her provocative paper

that Feste’s performance in the scene falls into two parts. First, Sir Topas questions Malvolio’s

sanity and perception of darkness, using pseudo-religious arguments to dismiss Malvolio’s

protestations. At this point, Maria says, “Thou mightst have done this without thy beard and gown.

He sees thee not” (4.2.64–65, emphasis mine), suggesting either that Malvolio’s dark room is

somewhere other than onstage or that he’s blindfolded. Toby then speaks to Feste: “To him in thine

own voice, and bring me word how thou find’st him,” indicating that Malvolio in not within view.

Toby continues, “I would we were well rid of this knavery. If he may be conveniently deliver’d, I

would he were, for I am now so far in offense with my niece that I cannot pursue with any safety

this sport” (4.2.66–71).

The “knavery” Sir Toby intended is described in act 3, scene 4, shortly after Malvolio, smiling and

cross-gartered over yellow stockings, has presented his “Be not afraid of greatness” speech to Olivia.

She leaves when her servant announces “the young gentleman of the Count Orsino” (3.4.57–58), and

Malvolio remains to be mocked for his “lunacy” by Toby and Maria. He storms out, calling them “idle

shallow things, I am not of your element” (3.4.123–24). Sir Toby recommends putting “him in a dark

room and bound. My niece is already in the belief that he’s mad. We may carry it thus, for our

pleasure and his penance, till our very pastime, tir’d out of breath, prompt us to have mercy on

him” (3.4.135–39). “Knavery,” “sport,” “pleasure,” and “pastime” fall far short of torture.

The second part of the “torture” scene, according to Kemper, recalls act 1, scene 5, where, after an

exchange with Feste, Olivia asks, “What think you of this fool, Malvolio?” (1.5.73). Malvolio sneers, “I

marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal.... Unless you laugh and minister

occasion to him, he is gagg’d. I protest I take these wise men that crow so at these set kind of fools

no better than the fools’ zanies” (1.5.82–89). In act 4, scene 2, after returning to Malvolio as himself,

Feste badgers Malvolio on his pitiful state of lunacy until Malvolio becomes a “wise m[a]n that

crow[s]... at these... fools,” who is thus, “no better than the fools’ zanies”: “Fool, there was never

man so notoriously abus’d. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art” (4.2.87–88, emphasis mine).

Touché, Feste!

• Line references to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).
• Becky Kemper, “A Clown in the Dark House: Reclaiming the Humor in Malvolio’s Downfall,” Journal of the Wooden O Symposium 7 (2007): 42-50.

Mathurine particularly “hated the morally strict and stern Protestants” (96). Yet another parallel between Maria and Mathurine is that both of them are associated with the Amazons. Sir Toby names Maria “Penthesilea,” queen of the Amazons (2.3.177), and Mathurine “often wore... the outfit of an Amazon” (96). Another characteristic of the fool which Maria exhibits is her smallness. Viola mockingly says, “Some mollification for your giant, sweet lady” (1.5.203-4) after Maria, with a sailing metaphor, has urged Viola to get on with her business. According to Zijderveld, “midgets and dwarfs occupied a very special position” among fools, and they were valued by their owners (97).

Viola is another type of female fool and also has much in common with the French fool Mathurine. Feste commends her for her skill at word-play, exclaiming, “A sentence is but a chev’ril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!” (3.1.11-13). Mathurine, one of the few fools who “were obviously of good wit” (96), was a “smart fool” who “certainly knew her allies and foes” (97). Viola’s cross-dressing also fits in with the behavior of Mathurine, who was sometimes dressed as “a military officer with a huge sabre” (96). Indeed, this sort of sexual ambiguity was not uncommon among medieval fools: “They are never clearly male or female, but engage happily in transvestism” (4).

Maria calls Sir Andrew a “natural” throughout the play, a title which he thoroughly deserves. In Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly, the personified Folly characterizes the natural fool as “that class of men whom we generally call morons, fools, halfwits, and zanies” (trans. Hoyt Hopewell Hudson, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970, 47). Even Andrew recognizes that people think him a fool at 2.5.82 after Malvolio refers to “a foolish knight.” According to Sir Toby, Andrew “speaks three or four languages... and hath all the good gifts of nature” (1.3.26-8), yet Andrew does not know the meaning of the word “accost” (1.3.58) nor of “pourquoi” (1.3.90). Andrew says, “I would I had bestowed that time in tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and bearbaiting” (1.3.90-92), yet we find later on that, as Maria predicts, he is a coward and cannot fence well at all. In short, “many do call” (2.5.82) Sir Andrew fool, and they are right; he is all folly and no wit, unlike Feste, Toby, and Maria, who are deliberate in their foolery, beneath which exists a layer of wisdom.

Olivia and Orsino are also unintentionally foolish, though less obtuse than Sir Andrew. Both are melancholic, and from this disorder arises folly; Zijderveld includes in his detailing of the spectrum of folly a kind of fool called “melancholicus” (35). It is easy to identify the types of melancholy from which the countess and duke suffer. Olivia’s is clearly derived from her excessive grief over her brother’s death; she tells Valentine that she will mourn for seven years. Orsino’s melancholy finds its origin in his obsessive, unrequited love for Olivia; he enacts the role of the despised courtly lover, surfeiting himself with music, bowers of flowers, and self-pity indeed he seems more in love with love itself than with Olivia.

Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, calls grief “the mother and daughter of melancholy, her epitome, and chief cause.... Sorrow, saith Plutarch to Apollonius, is a cause of madness, a cause of many other incurable diseases” (ed. Floyd Dell, New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1927, 225). Burton likewise says of love-melancholy that “if it rage, it is no more Love, but burning Lust, a Disease, Phrensy, Madness, Hell” (651).

Feste recognizes Olivia’s folly, “dexteriously” proving her a fool for mourning for her brother’s soul, which is in heaven (1.5.57-71), and Olivia herself later compares herself to Malvolio, lamenting, “I am as mad as he, / If sad and merry madness equal be” (3.4.13-14). Feste also pinpoints Orsino’s ailment, proclaiming, “Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal” (2.4.73-5). Erasmus writes, “A man who is deceived not only in his senses but in the judgement of his mind... is bound to be considered close to madness” (52). Olivia and Orsino, whose reactions are out of proportion with their troubles and who lack temperance in sorrow and love, certainly fit this description.

Malvolio’s melancholic folly originates in his self-love. In In Praise of Folly, Folly asks, “what is so foolish as to be satisfied with yourself? Or to admire yourself?” (29). Burton calls self-love a “delectable frenzy, most irrefragable passion, this delightful illusion, this acceptable disease” (253). Malvolio certainly thinks highly of himself, fantasizing about marrying Olivia at 2.5.23-81 and grouping himself with the truly wise men who despise all kinds of folly at 1.5.82-89. Erasmus’s Folly, however, has this to say about these supposedly wise men: “even those who arrogate to themselves the part and name of wise men cannot conceal me, though they walk about ‘like apes in scarlet or asses in lion-skins.’... Although they are wholly of my party, in public they are so ashamed of my name that they toss it up at others as a great reproach” (10).

Malvolio is also the only modern man in an essentially medieval society. He is the prototypical Puritan who threatens to wipe out folly altogether, in himself and in everyone else. He is, as a result, the opposite of Feste, the traditional medieval fool who strives to bring out the foolishness in all his acquaintances. That they despise one another is evidenced in Malvolio’s insult, “I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone” (1.5.83-5). Feste’s enjoyment of his revenge on Malvolio demonstrates that he returns a full measure of antipathy.

Twelfth Night becomes, in effect, a looking-glass for Shakespeare’s society and our own. The play takes us from the routine of ordinary life to the realm of folly. As Zijderveld speculates, “If one follows the fool into the reality of his looking-glass, if one adapts to his ‘language,’ his ‘logic,’ his kind of ‘reason,’ the routine and ‘normal’ reality of everyday life, with its structures and hierarchies, begins to look genuinely foolish” (27). Shakespeare shows us the reflection of ourselves and our society in the distorted mirror of Twelfth Night , and as a result, we reach a heightened awareness of our own shortcomings and absurdities. Paradoxically, we learn by laughing, passing beyond seriousness to wisdom.

Ghosts of A Dozen Different Characters

by Patricia Truxler Aikins || for the Utah Shakespeare Festival || www.bard.org

Twelfth Night or, What You Will , is one of Shakespeare's most successful plays. In what Harold Goddard calls "an almost unbroken succession of telling scenes," the play is a kind of recapitulation of what has come before especially in the other six romantic comedies composedbetween l and l600 and an anticipation of what is to come in the later, great achievement of the romances. It is as if Shakespeare, for his last unadulterated comedy, summoned, as Goddard suggests, "the ghosts of a dozen different characters and situations with which he had previously graced the stage" and, once again, showed us through a woman the best way to love.

Here Shakespeare, the famous "pilferer of others' plots," pilfers from himself. The situation of the clever, gentile, and disguised Viola recalls Rosalind from As You Like It. Feste, the clown of Twelfth Night , is but another variation of the fool, Touchstone, in As You Like It , who "speaks wisely what wise men do foolishly." Malvolio, who is a sort of unsophisticated and overreaching Don John from Much Ado about Nothing and who, like Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream , reminds us that we are all fools in love, anticipates even the perversion and presumption of Cloten from Cymbeline. Orsino, with a touch of the melancholic Jaques from As You Like It , is also Orlando, from the same play, saved from himself by nothing less than the influence of a good woman. And the plot itself requiting unrequited love and thereby rejuvenating a dying race both looks back on the problems of the romantic comedies and forward to the problems of the romances.

There are, of course, two women who have lost brothers in Twelfth Night , one permanently and

one temporarily. Olivia's grief for her brother's death is obvious, even ostentatious. Valentine

reports to Orsino that "to season a brother's dead love" Olivia "like a cloistress... will veiled walk"

for seven years. (All references to act, scene, and line numbers in the play are to Bruce R. Smith,

ed., Twelfth Night: Texts and Contexts [New York: Bedford/St. Martin, 2001], 1.1. 27 30). She has

removed herself from society and from male-female relationships, and her mourning clothes are

the outward sign of her withdrawal. Viola's grief is much less obvious, but she pursues the same

purposes. When she disguises herself as her brother, she is partly trying to fill the void caused by

his absence. In the process, she has removed herself from male-female relationships even more

effectively than Olivia has done. Her male disguise may not look like mourning clothes, but it

removes her from the possibilities of courtship and demonstrates a grief so great that Viola has

eliminated her own identity in order to keep a semblance of her brother alive. Viola is caught

between two worlds, two states of being, created by the great bond that she feels for her twin

brother and the confusion and consternation of his possible death. When Orsino asks, "But died

thy sister of her love, my boy?" Viola/Cesario answers, "I am all the daughters of my father's

house, / And all the brothers too—and yet I know not" (2.4.116 118). It is not entirely clear who is

alive and who is dead, almost as though both must live or both must die.

Viola and Olivia's first meeting is enormously important. When the two of them meet face to face,

they find their disguises distinctly uncomfortable. Olivia quickly realizes that a seven-year period

of mourning is no longer a reasonable goal. In fact, she is willing to abandon her grief for her

brother and replace it with love for Cesario. Viola/Cesario, who has previously announced her

desire to marry Orsino, now experiences the passions of jealousy (of a rival) and envy (of that

rival's beauty). The point of transition for both of them, the symbolic instant, is when Viola asks

Olivia to draw back her veil and Olivia does so. Olivia has at least temporarily removed the

physical barrier or mask of grief that keeps her from seeing the world and being seen by it. Olivia's

love for Cesario then forces Viola to the realization that she cannot maintain her mask of grief, her

impersonation of her brother, indefinitely.

Ironically, this confrontation between romantic rivals will ultimately free both of them to pursue

the loving relationships they really want. Olivia announces her conversion from lady in mourning

to lady in love with the words, "Even so quickly may one catch the plague?" (1.5.240). For Viola,

things are a bit more complicated, but she has also come to a realization. She says, "Disguise I see

thou art a wickedness." She then goes on to make clear just what a mess she is in, "What will

become of this? As I am man, / My state is desperate for my Master's love; / As I am woman—now

alas the day!— / What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe! / O Time, thou must untangle this,

not I; / It is too hard a knot for me t'untie!"(2.2.30 35).

For Olivia and Viola, the loss of a brother creates a void and a need for that void to be filled. For

both of them, love comes as a solace for grief and as a promise of future happiness to replace past

pain. In Twelfth Night , Time does untangle the knots. Sebastian, Viola's brother, returns, Olivia can

marry the man she loves, and Viola can marry Orsino. It is an almost fairy tale ending for the

married or about-to-be-married couples, a happily ever after conclusion that seems to banish all

sadness. However, in the play as in Shakespeare's real life, there has been a death. Olivia's brother

will not return, nor will Shakespeare's son.

Perhaps one of the most important messages of Twelfth Night is that time doesheal, grief is not

the end, and happy endings are possible.

What Will the Future Hold?

by Stephanie Chidester || for the Utah Shakespeare Festival || www.bard.org

What can be learned from a play where all is topsy-turvy, where logic and reason are abused and

rejected just as thoroughly as Malvolio is? Not much, if Harold Bloom is to be believed. In his view,

“ Twelfth Night does not come to any true resolution, in which anyone has learned anything.... No

one could or should be made better by viewing or reading it” (“Introduction,” Modern Critical

Interpretations: William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, ed. Harold Bloom [New York: Chelsea

House, 1987], 3). Restoration critic Samuel Pepys, despite being drawn back to see Twelfth Night

several times, condemned it as “a silly play,” and “one of the weakest plays that I ever saw on the

stage” [cited in Hazelton Spencer, “Mr. Pepys is not amused,” ELH: A Journal of English Literary

History 7.3 (Sept 1940): 175].

While these criticisms may be unduly harsh, the play is nonetheless perplexing. The atmosphere

of the play resembles that of A Midsummer Night’s Dream when the lovers are wandering in the

enchanted forest under the influence of fairy potions, except that the characters of Twelfth Night

cannot blame their antics on fairy mischief. And whereas in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the

lovers eventually return to a rational world and wonder if their experiences were only dreams, the

inhabitants of Illyria never definitively emerge from their irrational dream world.

While gorgeously poetic, the play’s initial scene illustrates the social disorder in Illyria. Twelfth

Night opens with Duke Orsino, the purported social and political leader of this strange country,

spouting a self-indulgent and vaguely decadent tribute to music and love. Unlike analogous figures

in other plays (Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Duke Vincentio of Measure for

Measure , for instance), Orsino has no concern for politics or maintaining order, and is apparently

unable to simultaneously manage affairs of state while conducting a courtship. He cannot even be

bothered to woo Olivia in person; rather than going himself to plead his case, he prefers to send

his minions, so that he may lounge about sighing and listening to love songs.

Sebastian is likewise passive, and instead of investigating the irrational behavior of everyone

around him (“Are all the people mad?” [4.1.27; The Signet Classic Shakespeare: Twelfth Night , or,

What You Will , ed. Herschel Baker [New York: New American Library, 1965]), he allows himself to

be courted by and become engaged to someone he suspects may be deranged, however beautiful

she may be. Sir Toby Belch is a jovial sponge, good for consuming “cakes and ale” (2.3.115),

dancing and “caterwauling” into the wee hours of the morning (2.3.72), and wreaking havoc with

practical jokes, but not much else. Sir Andrew Aguecheek is weak as well as foolish, easy prey for

parasites of the pocketbook like Sir Toby Belch.

As W.H. Auden argues, the normal social order with regard to gender roles has been overturned:

“Women have become dominant in Twelfth Night.... The women are the only people left who

have any will, which is the sign of a decadent society. Maria, in love with Sir Toby, tricks him into

marrying her. Olivia starts wooing Cesario from the first moment she sees him, and Viola is a real

man-chaser” (Lectures on Shakespeare, ed. Arthur Kirsch [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 2000], 154).

What troubles most critics about Twelfth Night is not the madness, per se, but the absence of a

return to normalcy by the play’s end. Although the puzzle of Sebastian/Viola/Cesario has been

solved with the reunion of the twins, Malvolio’s tormentors remain unpunished, and the lovers’

marriages seem doomed to failure without major changes in behavior and character. W.H.

Auden’s scathing commentary is typical of audience reactions: “The Duke, who up till the moment

of recognition had thought himself in love with Olivia, drops her like a hot potato and falls in love

with Viola on the spot, and Sebastian accepts Olivia’s proposal of marriage within two minutes of

meeting her for the first time. Both appear contemptible, and it is impossible to imagine that

either will make a good husband” (154).

However, the final scene contains hints that order and stability may soon be restored: First, Olivia

promises justice for Malvolio (“Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge / Of thine own

cause,” [5.1.356–57]), a promise which is never revoked, despite Fabian’s defensive arguments.

More importantly, Duke Orsino’s actions and words begin to agree better with his social position.

He begins to take charge, directing matters to his satisfaction, informing Viola that he will marry

her and insisting that she change into her “woman’s weeds” (5.1.273). Then he modifies Olivia’s

dictum regarding Malvolio, adjuring them all to “Pursue him and entreat him to a

peace” (5.1.382).

Whether Malvolio will actually have his revenge, or if the misdeeds of Sir Toby and friends will be

forgiven as a type of Twelfth Night revelry, we cannot know. But just as the play’s title suggests a

festival of misrule, it also implies that the mayhem is only temporary. Just as order must be

restored after a Twelfth Night or Mardi Gras carnival, the lunacy reigning in Illyria must surely

end. Natalie Zemon Davis explains that these carnivals “act both to reinforce order and suggest

alternatives to the existing order” (50). If this is so, we can hope that after such a prolonged

period of disorder in Illyria, the future will hold beneficial change as well as greater peace and

stability.

Elizabeth's England

written for the Utah Shakespeare Festival || www.bard.org

In his entire career, William Shakespeare never once set a play in Elizabethan England. His characters lived in medieval England ( Richard II ), France ( As You Like It ), Vienna ( Measure for Measure ), fifteenth-century Italy ( Romeo and Juliet ), the England ruled by Elizabeth’s father ( Henry VIII ) and elsewhere—anywhere and everywhere, in fact, except Shakespeare’s own time and place. But all Shakespeare’s plays—even when they were set in ancient Rome—reflected the life of Elizabeth’s England (and, after her death in 1603, that of her successor, James I). Thus, certain things about these extraordinary plays will be easier to understand if we know a little more about Elizabethan England.

Elizabeth’s reign was an age of exploration—exploration of the world, exploration of man’s nature, and exploration of the far reaches of the English language. This renaissance of the arts and sudden flowering of the spoken and written word gave us two great monuments—the King James Bible and the plays of Shakespeare—and many other treasures as well.

Shakespeare made full use of the adventurous Elizabethan attitude toward language. He employed more words than any other writer in history—more than 21,000 different words appear in the plays—and he never hesitated to try a new word, revive an old one, or make one up. Among the words which first appeared in print in his works are such everyday terms as “critic,” “assassinate,” “bump,” “gloomy,” “suspicious,” “and hurry;” and he invented literally dozens of phrases which we use today: such un-Shakespearean expressions as “catching a cold,” “the mind’s eye,” “elbow room,” and even “pomp and circumstance.”

Elizabethan England was a time for heroes. The ideal man was a courtier, an adventurer, a fencer with the skill of Tybalt, a poet no doubt better than Orlando, a conversationalist with the wit of Rosalind and the eloquence of Richard II, and a gentleman. In addition to all this, he was expected to take the time, like Brutus, to examine his own nature and the cause of his actions and (perhaps unlike Brutus) to make the right choices. The real heroes of the age did all these things and more.

Despite the greatness of some Elizabethan ideals, others seem small and undignified, to us; marriage, for example, was often arranged to bring wealth or prestige to the family, with little regard for the feelings of the bride. In fact, women were still relatively powerless under the law.

The idea that women were “lower” than men was one small part of a vast concern with order which was extremely important to many Elizabethans. Most people believed that everything, from the lowest grain of sand to the highest angel, had its proper position in the scheme of things. This concept was called “the great chain of being.” When things were in their proper place, harmony was the result; when order was violated, the entire structure was shaken.

This idea turns up again and again in Shakespeare. The rebellion against Richard II brings bloodshed to England for generations; Romeo and Juliet’s rebellion against their parents contributes to their tragedy; and the assassination in Julius Caesar throws Rome into civil war.

Many Elizabethans also perceived duplications in the chain of order. They believed, for example, that what the sun is to the heaves, the king is to the state. When something went wrong in the heavens, rulers worried: before Julius Caesar and Richard II were overthrown, comets and meteors appeared, the moon turned the color of blood, and other bizarre astronomical phenomena were reported. Richard himself compares his fall to a premature setting of the sun; when he descends from the top of Flint Castle to meet the conquering Bolingbroke, he likens himself to the driver of the sun’s chariot in Greek mythology: “Down, down I come, like glist’ring Phaeton” (3.3.178).

An interesting speculation is that while he was young, Shakespeare might have participated in one of the cycles of Mystery plays in Stratford: “On one occasion the Stratford corporation laid out money for an entertainment at Pentecost. In 1583 they paid 13s 4d ‘to Davi Jones and his company for his pastime at Whitsuntide.’ Davi Jones had been married to Elizabeth, the daughter of Adrian Quiney, and after her death in 1579 he took as his wife a Hathaway, Frances. Was Shakespeare one of the youths who trimmed themselves for the Whitsun pastime?” (S. Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life [New York: New American Library, 1977], 111).

But however he got into the theatre and to London, he had made a very definite impression on his competitors by 1592, when playwright Robert Greene attacked Shakespeare as both actor and author: “‘There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and... is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country’” (G. B. Harrison, Introducing Shakespeare [New York: Penguin Books, Inc., 1947], 1).

We don’t often think of Shakespeare as primarily an actor, perhaps because most of what we know of him comes from the plays he wrote rather than the parts he played. Nevertheless, he made much of his money as an actor and sharer in his company: “At least to start with, his status, his security derived more from his acting skill and his eye for business than from his pen” (Kay, 95). Had he been only a playwright, he would likely have died a poor man, as did Robert Greene: “In the autumn of 1592, Robert Greene, the most popular author of his generation, lay penniless and dying.... The players had grown rich on the products of his brain, and now he was deserted and alone” (Harrison, 1).

While Shakespeare made a career of acting, there are critics who might dispute his acting talent. For instance, almost a century after Shakespeare’s death, “an anonymous enthusiast of the stage... remarked... that ‘Shakespear... was a much better poet, than player’” (Schoenbaum, 201). However, Shakespeare could have been quite a good actor, and this statement would still be true. One sign of his skill as an actor is that he is mentioned in the same breath with Burbage and Kemp: “The accounts of the royal household for Mar 15 [1595] record payments to ‘William Kempe William Shakespeare & Richarde Burbage seruantes to the Lord Chamberlain’” (Kay, 174).

Another significant indication of his talent is the very fact that he played in London rather than touring other less lucrative towns. If players were to be legally retained by noblemen, they had to prove they could act, and one means of demonstrating their legitimacy was playing at court for Queen Elizabeth. The more skilled companies obtained the queen’s favor and were granted permission to remain in London.

Not all companies, however, were so fortunate: “Sussex’s men may not have been quite up to the transition from rural inn-yards to the more demanding circumstances of court performance. Just before the Christmas season of 1574, for example, they were inspected (‘perused’) by officials of the Revels Office, with a view to being permitted to perform before the queen; but they did not perform” (Kay, 90).

Shakespeare and his company, on the other hand, performed successfully in London from the early 1590s until 1611.

It would be a mistake to classify William Shakespeare as only a playwright, even the greatest playwright of the English-speaking world; he was also “an actor, a sharer, a member of a company” (Kay, 95), obligations that were extremely relevant to his plays. As a man of the theatre writing for a company, he knew what would work on stage and what would not and was able to make his plays practical as well as brilliant. And perhaps more importantly, his theatrical experience must have taught him much about the human experience, about everyday lives and roles, just as his plays show us that “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players” ( As You Like It , 2.7.149-50).

Audience: A Very Motley Crowd

written for the Utah Shakespeare Festival || www.bard.org

When Shakespeare peeped through the curtain at the audience gathered to hear his first play, he looked upon a very motley crowd. The pit was filled with men and boys. The galleries contained a fair proportion of women, some not too respectable. In the boxes were a few gentlemen from the royal courts, and in the lords' box or perhaps sitting on the stage was a group of extravagantly dressed gentlemen of fashion. Vendors of nuts and fruits moved about through the crowd. The gallants were smoking; the apprentices in the pit were exchanging rude witticisms with the painted ladies.

When Shakespeare addressed his audience directly, he did so in terms of gentle courtesy or pleasant raillery. In Hamlet , however, he does let fall the opinion that the groundlings (those on the ground, the cheapest seats) were “for the most part capable of nothing but dumb shows and noise.” His recollections of the pit of the Globe may have added vigor to his ridicule of the Roman mob in Julius Caesar.

On the other hand, the theatre was a popular institution, and the audience was representative of all classes of London life. Admission to standing room in the pit was a penny, and an additional penny or two secured a seat in the galleries. For seats in the boxes or for stools on the stage, still more was charged, up to sixpence or half a crown.

Attendance at the theatres was astonishingly large. There were often five or six theatres giving daily performances, which would mean that out of a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants, thirty thousand or more spectators each week attended the theatre. When we remember that a large class of the population disapproved of the theatre, and that women of respectability were not frequent patrons of the public playhouses, this attendance is remarkable.

Arrangements for the comfort of the spectators were meager, and spectators were often disorderly. Playbills seem to have been posted all about town and in the theatre, and the title of the piece was announced on the stage. These bills contained no lists of actors, and there were no programs, ushers, or tickets. There was usually one door for the audience, where the admission fee was deposited in a box carefully watched by the money taker, and additional sums were required at entrance to the galleries or boxes. When the three o'clock trumpets announced the beginning of a performance, the assembled audience had been amusing itself by eating, drinking, smoking, and playing cards, and they sometimes continued these occupations during a performance. Pickpockets were frequent, and, if caught, were tied to a post on the stage. Disturbances were not infrequent, sometimes resulting in general rioting.

The Elizabethan audience was fond of unusual spectacle and brutal physical suffering. They liked battles and murders, processions and fireworks, ghosts and insanity. They expected comedy to abound in beatings, and tragedy in deaths. While the audience at the Globe expected some of these sensations and physical horrors, they did not come primarily for these. (Real blood and torture were available nearby at the bear baitings, and public executions were not uncommon.) Actually, there were very few public entertainments offering as little brutality as did the theatre.

Elizabethans attended the public playhouses for learning. They attended for romance, imagination, idealism, and art; the audience was not without refinement, and those looking for food for the imagination had nowhere to go but to the playhouse. There were no newspapers, no magazines, almost no novels, and only a few cheap books; theatre filled the desire for story discussion among people lacking other educational and cultural opportunities.

The most remarkable case of Shakespeare's theatre filling an educational need is probably that of English history. The growth of national patriotism culminating in the English victory over the Spanish Armada gave dramatists a chance to use the historical material, and for the fifteen years from the Armada to the death of Elizabeth, the stage was deluged with plays based on the events of English chronicles, and familiarity with English history became a cultural asset of the London crowd,