TWELFTH NIGHT,
The alternate title, "What You Will," translates fairly well into
the modern idiom as "Whatever." This is fortunate because, lord knows,
the notion of Twelfth Night seems to have little if anything to do with
the play. Speculation has pointed to January 6th (the twelfth day of
Christmas) indicating a "topsy-turvydom" of indulgent festivities (Wells
177), a revelry signifying the end of the holiday season. Even the subtitle
"speaks both to this customary season of topsy-turvy revelry and to the
space of fantasy and wish-fulfillment that was the early modern
playhouse" (Garber 506). The play seems to designate an end
of comedy or a farewell to wit of this sort in the artistic development
of the playwright -- his efforts will focus on tragedies next (Goddard,
I 295, 306). Or perhaps the play was designed for a particular
occasion coinciding with Twelfth Night (Stratfordians say in 1601).
Twelfth Night is also called the Epiphany -- and we may need one to
grasp the underlying meaning in this play.
Although orthodoxy wants to insist that a key source for the play is
Barnaby Riche's tale of "Apollonius and Silla" in Farewell to a
Militarie Profession (Wells 182), they've got this backwards.
I've seen an attempt to translate the subtitle "What You Will" into the
French "Comme Tu Veux" -- sounding a bit like Comte (Count = Earl) de
Ver. But I don't know about this one. The Winter's Tale is more
convincing.
Perhaps Shakespeare pilfered from himself and his successes in the
previous comedies for the combination of elements here (Goddard, I
294). But some other question (about identity? human interaction? the "will"
of "What You Will"?) seems to be explored too in a new way. What would you
say the world of Illyria represents? What is peculiar about the way
everyone behaves, or runs their lives, in Illyria?
For a surprisingly insightful film-related web site on the 1996
Renaissance Films production of Twelfth Night, check out this.
ACT I
SCENE i
Taking advantage of the hackneyed "hart"-hunting trope (I.i.16ff) and
alluding obliquely to the Actaeon and Diana myth (I.i.21-22), Orsino
claims to be pining for wealthy countess Olivia, who, we hear from a
gentleman named Valentine, is too busy posing as a distraught mourner
over her recently deceased brother. She plans to devote herself to grief
for seven years now and cannot allow for a suitor. The imagery suggests
that her teary eyes are either watering cans or pickling vats (I.i.29ff).
All the better for Orsino's pining -- her withdrawal from public life
shows how worthy she is, and his imagination is excited with her
apparently devoted and romantic nature.
Orsino is "far more in love with language, music, love, and himself
than he is with Olivia, or will be with Viola" (Bloom 229). "Orsino's
initial passion, although he claims it is for Olivia, is rather for
the spectacle of himself in love" (Garber 510). Worse than
"in love with love itself," Orsino is obviously self-absorbed; still,
this can be conveyed movingly "because his High Romanticism is so
quixotic, but also because his sentimentalism is too universal to
be rejected" (Bloom 230).
SCENE ii
Viola, and a Captain, and some sailors wash ashore; it looks as if
Viola's twin brother Sebastian has drowned. The Captain supplies basic
information about Illyria. "And what should I do in Illyria?" (I.ii.3),
ponders Viola. She has heard of Orsino (even seems to know he likes
music!) and either automatically thinks of him as a sexual target or
secretly wants to avoid him (Sutherland and Watts 126). Olivia's
situation of having recently lost her brother after her father's death
some time ago resembles Viola's own.
The seemingly drastic plan for Viola to be presented as a eunuch at
Orsino's court suggests sufficient danger in this alien land to warrant
deep cover, but is there a real threat here? (The 1996 Renaissance Films
version of this play creates it with nasty-looking posses patrolling the
coastline.) Viola naturally, having lost a twin brother, may want to
withdraw, and her disguise allows for this symbolically. Italian opera
was the new Italian fad at the turn of the seventeenth century, and
the Illyrian Ragusa developed its own opera outside of Italy (Anderson
87), so perhaps she thinks Orsino the music lover will welcome a eunuch --
typically recruited for this new art form. (So Shakespeare is probably
acquainted with if not involved in opera during its early stage of
evolution.) Her "boy's disguise operates not as a liberation but
merely as a way of going underground in a difficult situation" (Barton,
qtd. in Bloom 231). Viola is different from other cross-dressing heroines
in that "she does not meet the man she loves until she is already in her
gender disguise" (Garber 516).
Not simply just a mix of plots and subplots of the other comedies,
Twelfth Night creates the sense "more of an integrated community"
(Wells 180). But "Illyria is a counterfeit Elysium, a fool's paradise,
where nearly everybody is drowned, drowned in pleasure.... Here
there is pleasure and slavery to self" (Goddard, I 302). "And the
people who come from the sea in this play seem to differ in temperament
from the inhabitants of Illyria. They are active, while the Illyrians
are passive. They are innovative, energetic, and daring" (Garber 508).
"The theme of the main plot as well as that of the enveloping action,
we suddenly see, is rescue from drowning: drowning in the sea, drowning
in the sea of drunkenness and sentimentalism" (Goddard, I 305).
SCENE iii
Sir Toby speaks with Olivia's gentlewoman Maria on behalf of limitless
self-indulgence, that is to say, partying. Olivia is reportedly dismayed
by Toby's carousing. The wealthy Sir Andrew Aguecheek, whose foolish
generosity Sir Toby enjoys, arrives and proves to be an idiot. "The
name indicates his cheek has a habit of trembling, as though with ague
or chills, but actually out of fear" (Asimov 578), or "suggests a cheek
quiveringly inviting a slap or a challenge" (Ogburn and Ogburn 279).
Although Andrew has studied languages, when he claims he'll ride home
tomorrow and Toby asks, "Pourquoi," Sir Andrew is flustered: "What is
'pourquoi'? Do, or not do?" (I.iii.91) -- indicating that his automatic
default assumption is that he is always being told what to do. "In a
world of sheer revel, the word 'why,' the energy of motivation, has no
meaning.... All of them lack the element of 'pourquoi'" (Garber 514-515).
Andrew thinks himself a fascinating creature in the most vapid of observations:
"I am a fellow o' the strangest mind i' th' world; I delight in masques and
revels, sometimes altogether" (I.iii.112-114) -- in other words, I'm so
interesting in this peculiar trait: that I enjoy fun. What a moron! But
he hangs around due to Toby's promises that he would make a welcome
suitor for his niece; "there is an uncomfortable economic basis to their
relationship" (Wells 180). Toby commands Andrew to dance.
Sir Andrew also remarks, "I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that
does harm to my wit" (I.iii.85-86). It's difficult to know what to make
of this, but see Troilus and Cressida (II.i.13) and As You Like
It (II.i.21ff and especially IV.ii).
It has been suggested that Andrew is a caricature of Sir Philip Sidney
(Ogburn and Ogburn 275f; Anderson xxxii, 149; et al.) -- and Andrew is
another version of Slender from Merry Wives (Ogburn and Ogburn 275;
Bloom 237) -- and that Maria and Toby are Oxford's sister Mary de Vere
and her husband Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby -- the same two who
inspired the characters Katherine and Petruchio in The Taming of the
Shrew (Ogburn and Ogburn 199, 273-274; Anderson 131). Unfortunately,
Toby is almost always cast as a Falstaff type instead.
The character Malvolio will prove the finest satire levelled at the
pretentiousness of Sir Christopher Hatton, but a barb is included near
the end of this scene too. About his dancing, Sir Andrew brags, "Faith,
I can cut a caper" (I.iii.121). Sir Toby offers a culinary pun: "And I
can cut the mutton to 't" (I.iii.122). Andrew quickly mentions his skill
at "the back-trick" almost before we can detect an allusion to Hatton:
her "Mutton" was Elizabeth's main nickname for him, along with "sheep"
and "lyddes" (Clark 365). Then Sir Toby pontificates in mock-heroic
tones: "Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a
curtain before 'em? ... Why dost thou not go to church in a galliard,
and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig. I would not
so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace?" (I.iii.125-131). Hatton,
ten years older than de Vere, gained Elizabeth's favor from his dancing
and was sneeringly called at court "the dancing Chancellor" (Clark 364),
so what a good way to mock any hyperbolic praise for him, the git!
Hatton was "affected, self-righteous, deficient in the qualities of
honor, generosity, finesse" (Ogburn and Ogburn 268). His rivalry with
Oxford was intricate and ongoing, involving A Hundreth Sundrie
Flowres (Clark 366f) and The English Ape, the Italian Imitation,
the Footesteppes of France. He used the Latin poesy Fortunatus
infoelix: the Fortunate Unhappy (Clark 367) -- significant in Act
II here. The Italian source character Agnol Malevolti -- "near enough
to a lamb, agneau, agnus, agnello" (Ogburn and
Ogburn 268) -- makes even more sense of the Hatton identification,
again given the "sheep" nickname. And the name Malvolio can also be
construed from "Mal-vol-E.O.: evil-willer to E.O." (Ogburn and Ogburn
268).
SCENE iv
The whole eunuch plan mysteriously disappears and Viola has been
presented as a page named Cesario in Orsino's court. "Viola as a
eunuch would not be fitted for the romantic role she is to have in
the play, and the device of eunuch and mute is dropped at once and
there is no mention of either at any later point in the play"
(Asimov 577-578). Within only three days, the Duke has been much
taken with this new young apparently male subordinate, and now
enlists his help in tendering protestations of love to Olivia.
Viola is doubtful about the likelihood of admission into Olivia's
company, but Orsino is confident this will work. In discussing
"Cesario's" voice for this enterprise, he notes, "thy small pipe /
Is as the maiden's organ" (I.iv.32-33). Waa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Get it?
When he says, "for myself am best / When least in company"
(I.iv.37-38), Orsino "is speaking in Oxford's person" (Ogburn
and Ogburn 284) -- a realization expressed elsewhere (by Benvolio)
and in a poem by de Vere: "That never am less idle, lo! than when
I am alone" (qtd. in Ogburn and Ogburn 284).
SCENE v
Feste, whose name is close to the Italian word for "holiday" (Asimov 578),
is Olivia's household "clown" or jester and has been truant from his job
for a while. Maria warns him that Olivia may be angry at him for his
absence. We don't know why Feste has been gone, but we come to perceive
him as rather world-weary and disillusioned, or perhaps just burnt out as
he has been in the employ of the household for more than a generation.
"He carries his exhaustion with verve and wit, and always with the air
of knowing all there is to know, not in a superior way but with a sweet
melancholy" (Bloom 244). "Feste has the sadness that comes, we are told,
of perfect knowledge" (Wells 184). Experience perhaps has damaged his capacity
for joy. Feste is melancholy but without Orsino's self-indulgent sentimentalism.
He is concerned with the moral welfare of those around him, as is shown
here when he deftly proves Olivia a fool in an insightful and kindly
interchange involving the folly of Olivia's mourning her brother when
his soul is in Paradise (I.v.66-71). Feste sees through the artifice of
Olivia's grief and would do his best to cure it. He may be the one character
who is not a victim of his own imagination or misdirected passions. "He
loves to sing, and his songs are all plaintive and in a minor key" (Goddard,
I 301). Also though, "He is the artist at the heart of the play, the
creator and entertainer who has constantly to strive to make contact with
his audience, and who relies on his ability to do so for his very living"
(Wells 184).
Feste is "deft" in addressing the issue of Olivia's grief (Garber 507).
But here Malvolio, Olivia's steward, when asked by Olivia what he thinks
of Feste, levels professional insults at Feste: "I marvel your ladyship
takes delight in such a barren rascal. I saw him put down the other day
with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone. Look you now,
he's out of his guard already. Unless you laugh and minister occasion to
him, he is gagg'd" (I.v.83-88). Malvolio will pay dearly for this, later.
It's easy to miss the importance of this moment, but Feste is touchy on
this matter of his craft.
He is named Feste only once in the play, later, and calls Olivia
"madonna," a title showing Italian influence (= "my lady"). She tells
Malvolio, "O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio.... There is no slander
in an allow'd fool, though he do nothing but rail" (I.v.90-95). And this
suggests that what we've got here is: 1) Olivia as Queen Elizabeth -- she
even lapses into the royal "we" later in this scene (I.v.218) and the red
and white Tudor colors are associated with her (I.v.239); 2) Feste as
Oxford and his role as "allow'd fool" -- Elizabeth had to have liked and
even encouraged these kinds of sometimes biting allegories as court
entertainment (Anderson 57); and 3) Malvolio as Sir Christopher Hatton
(further established later) with his aspirations to power and his animosity
towards Oxford. "Oxford ... would never have dared to include the
many personal allusions in his plays had not the Queen permitted,
even encouraged, him to do it" (Clark 370; cf. Ogburn and Ogburn 503).
Feste being the singer of songs in the play may parallel de Vere
"hosting and entertaining" the French Duke of Alençon (one of
Elizabeth's suitors) and company in September of 1579 (Anderson 149).
And surely Oxford provided much more entertainment to the court than
this, as is at least obliquely acknowledged in the contemporaneous
record.
Maria announces that a young gentleman is at the gate. Olivia sends
Malvolio to say that she's "sick, or not at home -- what you will"
(I.v.108-109). "Her carefully announced, absurdly long period of
mourning, with its withdrawal from society, is evidently a pretext,
however unconscious, for singling herself out, making herself
interesting" (Goddard, I 300). Sir Toby enters drunk, belching and
blaming pickled-herring, also announcing the gentleman at the gate. When
prompted by Olivia, Feste says that a drunken man is "Like a drown'd man,
a fool, and a madman. / One draught above heat makes him a fool, the second
mads him, and a third drowns him" (I.v.131-133). We have here an interestingly
applicable scheme. Fools are funny, and appropriate for comedy. Madness
can be humorous but tends to start seeming darker, as the madness theme
in this play will prove. And drowning is mentioned in this play more than
in any other except, appropriately, The Tempest (Goddard, I
305); several characters seem to be metaphorically drowning in Illyria,
and this is much darker still in implications. We are invited to apply
the scheme, as Feste declares Toby "but mad yet" (I.v.137). Some critics
insist that madness runs rampant among the characters of the play:
"everyone, except the reluctant jester, Feste, is essentially mad
without knowing it" (Bloom 226). Others suggest that sickness is the
more prominent theme. And sometimes Illyria is seen as a land of emotion.
Certainly the characters seem mostly to be adrift.
Malvolio tells Olivia that the gentleman at the gate persistently insists
on seeing her, "will you or no" (I.v.154) -- so it's not "what you
will." She allows it, and ends up rather taken with "Cesario," the messenger
of Orsino's declarations. The critical question is why? And what is
Shakespeare saying about human attraction? Is it just that Viola
(disguised as Cesario) is disturbingly blunt with her? That [s]he will
not take no for an answer when it comes to calling on Olivia but gives
"no" as an answer in the face of Olivia's come-ons?
Cesario tells Olivia about her beautious qualities:
This rhetoric is familiar from the Sonnets. Cesario reports what
"he" would do if he loved Olivia as Orsino supposedly does, but Olivia
repeatedly reasserts that she cannot love the Duke. When Cesario leaves,
Olivia ruminates over his allusion to his social status: better than his
present fortune. "'Cesario' has a powerful existence, eloquent, erotic,
and elusive, that is not merely equivalent to the charms and power of
the female character who portrays him" (Garber 517). Olivia senses her
own attraction to the young "gentleman," and ends the scene with a ruse
-- a ring she says Cesario left behind which must be returned with the
message that he come again so she can explain her rejection of Orsino
some more. "Olivia's passion is more a farcical exposure of the
arbitrariness of sexual identity than it is a revelation that mature
female passion essentially is lesbian," we are assured (Bloom 235).
Clark perceives the earlier version of the play as depicting Elizabeth
as Olivia (cf. Anderson xxvii) and Alençon as Orsino. Viola
represents "the latter's envoy and confidant, Count Jehan de Simier,
then in England and 'making violent vicarious love to the Queen,' as
Hume says" (Clark 367; cf. Ogburn and Ogburn 298). Indeed, the Elizabeth
/ Alençon relationship primarily amounted to lots of long-distance
wooing through ambassadors in 1578 (Anderson 149). Besides various court
personages, the Puritans were vocal against the Elizabeth / Alençon
match (Clark 371). It has also been proposed that Viola functions as a
composite of La Mole, the first envoy of Alençon in 1572, and
Simier, the later one. Olivia's mourning is due to the St. Bartholomew
massacre (Clark 376; Ogburn and Ogburn 281). The elder Ogburns, suspecting
a 1587 revision of the play, suggest that Olivia partly represents Lady
Mary Pembroke, mourning her brother Philip Sidney (Ogburn and Ogburn
281). The Sidneys' father had died a few months beforehand (Ogburn and
Ogburn 282), a seemingly similar situation to Olivia's.
It so happens that Barnabe Riche is the last person Oxford would have
derived anything from, even if he had had need of poaching and had not
written his play at least a year earlier; for in this same book Riche
had lampooned Oxford, at a time when the Earl's fortunes were very low;
and besides, Christopher Hatton was Barnabe Riche's patron! Moreover,
Riche stated on page 1 of his "Conclusion," that some of the
stories he used had already "been applied to the purposes of the stage."
(Ogburn and Ogburn 294)
In 1732, Francis Peck in Desiderata Curiosa noted plans to
publish "a pleasant conceit of Vere, Earl of Oxford, discontented
at the rising of a mean gentleman in the English Court, circa 1580"
(qtd. in Clark 364; Ogburn and Ogburn 267; Anderson 154; Farina 82),
and this is taken by Oxfordians to be a reference to an early now
lost version of Twelfth Night and part of Oxford's
rivalry with Sir Christopher Hatton. The actual main source is
Piccolomini's 16th-century commedia erudite from Siena,
Gl'Ingannati (The Deceived), involving brother/sister
twins (Anderson 102-103) and its prefatory story, Il Sacrificio,
featuring the character Agnol Malevolti (Ogburn and Ogburn 268), which
Oxford may have seen performed in Siena during Twelfth Night in 1576
with the "mock sacrificial homage to the spear-shaker goddess Minerva
that was an integral part of this entertainment" (Farina 83). Clear
evidence of later revision -- the elder Ogburns think in 1587 and
a bit again very late (Ogburn and Ogburn 266) -- includes the
shifting function of Viola at Orsino's estate, assignment of the
music, and the superfluous Fabian who seems largely eclipsed by Feste
but not eradicated entirely. A sketch of The Swan theater in 1596 by
DeWitt may be depicting a scene from Twelfth Night, obviously
earlier than orthodoxy assumes the play was written (Clark 377-378).
The two ships named in the play -- the Tiger and the Phoenix
-- were "particularly active" about 1580 (Clark 379). King Sebastian of
Portugal died in 1578 and Antonio, natural son of John II of Portugal,
claimed the throne. Antonio received aid from England against Spain
(Clark 381). Spanish and Italian prisoners brought to England in
1579 included a Sebastian, an Antonio, and a couple Fabians (Clark
381).
If music be the food of love, play on,
Out of context, the first line sounds like a burst of romantic enthusiasm,
but that's wrong. Orsino -- perhaps named for Don Virginio Orsino, Duke of
Bracciano (northwest of Rome) who was a court visitor to Queen Elizabeth
in 1600 (Asimov 576) -- claims to want to be so stuffed with music that
he turns sick, so as to end desire by overdoing. (That's exactly why to
this day I can't drink white wine.) He is "a willing prey to the
fashionable Elizabethan affliction of melancholy" (Garber 509). Orsino
is Duke (or Count) of Illyria -- formerly Yugoslavia (Asimov 575),
now modern-day Dalmatia or Bosnia, but really just geographically vague
for the purposes of the play. Still part of the Ottoman Empire in
Shakespeare's day, parts of its coast "were controlled by Venice,
and Italian in culture (Asimov 576). Orsino pouts and languishes,
luxuriating in languid music and self-indulgently posing as a
melancholic Petrarchan lover, ruled by his immediate sensory impressions;
"he induces in audiences a sort of indulgent avuncularity" (Wells 178).
But if his appetite for these indulgences were indeed to die, then what?
Would he have any identity without this persona?
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again . . .
. . .
. . . Enough, no more,
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
(I.i.1-8)
Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive
If you would lead these graces to the grave,
And leave the world no copy.
(I.v.241-243)