TWELFTH NIGHT
ACT III
SCENE i
Viola (disguised as Cesario) has an exchange with Feste. When she
commends his music and asks, "Dost thou live by thy tabor?" he says,
"No, sir, I live by the church." "Art thou a churchman?" "No such
matter, sir. I do live by the church; for I do live at my house,
and my house doth stand by the church" (III.i.1-7). There certainly
seems to be some kind of topical quibble or identity clue here. At
least, the matter of bells connects with those of St. Benet (Anderson
246) -- a topical allusion to theaters vs. the Puritans. Feste defines
his role as clown as a "corrupter of words" (III.i.36) and Viola
indirectly alludes to her lovesickness. Feste acknowledges that
"A sentence is but a chev'ril glove to a good wit. How quickly the
wrong side may be turn'd outward!" (III.i.11-13). The elision harms
the pun: turning "cheveril" inside-out gives us the inside syllable
"ver" (Ogburn and Ogburn 283). Viola appreciates Feste's talents
and, after some more quibbling about beards and coins and Troilus
and Cressida, she privately renders a paean to the art of the
fool:
Olivia presses her case with Cesario (Viola). She wishes Orsino's
"thoughts were blanks, rather than fill'd with me" (III.i.104).
After an indignant but self-pitying bear-baiting conceit from Olivia
(III.i.117ff), Viola comes to express the fact that she does have an
authentic self and will remain master (or mistress) of it (III.i.158f).
Much of the latter part of the scene transpires in rhyming couplets.
SCENE ii
Sir Andrew is annoyed that Olivia seems to favor Cesario over him and
threatens to leave the premises. Fabian convinces him that Olivia was
just trying to make Sir Andrew jealous to awake his "dormouse valor"
(III.ii.19-20). He "should have bang'd the youth [Cesario] into
dumbness" (III.ii.23), but he missed such an opportunity to impress
Olivia. Sir Toby, starting to instigate a fight between the two, tells
the silly git to compose a challenge to Cesario: "It is no matter how
witty, so it be eloquent and full of invention. Taunt him with the
license of ink" (III.ii.43-45). Fabian and Sir Toby have a laugh at
the prospect of the lily-livered Andrew fighting the wimpy young man.
Maria announces that Malvolio is about to make an ass of himself.
The mention of being a "Brownist" (III.ii.31) refers to Robert Browne,
founder of the Congregationalist sect -- "the first Puritan-like
separatists in England" (Farina 84) -- and a relative of Burghley. "He
founded an independent church in 1580 and in 1582 went off into exile
to the Netherlands" (Asimov 587). This would have been a topical
allusion in the 1580s, but pointless later.
SCENE iii
Sebastian and Antonio have met up and now split again. Antonio
reiterates the danger he is in from the "Count" and sends Sebastian
to lodgings "In the south suburbs at the Elephant" (III.iii.39). In
an act of "manly love" (Carey 337), Antonio also gives Sebastian his
money until they meet later. The play's subtitle, "What You Will,"
may refer to any sort of gender pairing being available in this play
for any individual's predilections. Antonio's affection for Sebastian
seems fairly intense, like that other Antonio's for Bassanio in The
Merchant of Venice.
SCENE iv
Olivia is distraught over Cesario: "How shall I feast him? What bestow
of him? / For youth is bought more oft than begg'd or borrow'd"
(III.iv.2-3). Maria prepares Olivia for Malvolio's odd behavior with
references to "tainted" wits (III.iv.13), but Olivia figures, "I am
as mad as he, / If sad and merry madness equal be" (III.iv.14-15).
Malvolio in his full glory seems like a lunatic in front of Olivia, or a
victim of "midsummer madness" (III.iv.56). He smiles insanely and seems
to be rambling incoherently when quoting from the letter. He mistakes her
advice about going to bed as a come-on, quotes the letter more, and shows
off his yellow stockings and cross-gartering, worse than breaking
sumptuary laws (see Garber 529).
Malvolio's costume visibly confirms him in what he is -- obstructed,
repressed, blocked. We may recall his confident decoding of the
counterfeit letter: "Why, this is evident to any formal capacity.
There is no obstruction in this." Maria's trick, a clever psychological
reading of Malvolio's character, intensifies his own characteristics,
and causes "some obstruction" in the blood. (Garber 531)
When a servant announces the arrival of Cesario, Olivia asks for Malvolio
to be looked after by Sir Toby and the others. Malvolio finds further
supportive evidence in this that Olivia does love him, and he is still
dismissive of Sir Toby and the others in his arrogance as they treat him
as if he were a madman: "You are idle shallow things, I am not of your
element" (III.iv.123-124). Toby, Maria, and Fabian love the way it's
working out so well: "If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could
condemn it as an improbable fiction" (III.iv.127-128). They will next
push the joke (or revenge) further and have Malvolio locked up as a
lunatic "for our pleasure and his penance" (III.iv.137-138).
"More matter for a May morning" (III.iv.142): Sir Andrew has composed an
unintentionally goofy letter of challenge to Cesario, which Toby reads
aloud. Textual fun! The rhetoric is too polite and backfires, making Sir
Andrew look like a moron in a whole new realm now. Toby takes the letter
but tells Fabian he won't deliver it: "this letter, being so excellently
ignorant, will breed no terror in the youth; he will find it comes from
a clodpole" (III.iv.188-190). The fight will have to be finagled by word
of mouth. Andrew, probably like Sir Philip Sidney against de Vere in the
late 1570s, was "goaded into provoking a duel" (Anderson 151). Sidney
is on record with another written challenge in 1578 to a Molyneux:
This fellow is wise enough to play the fool,
And 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;
And like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice
As full of labor as a wise man's art;
For folly that he wisely shows is fit,
But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.
(III.i.60-68).
To see the self-destruction of a personage who cannot laugh, and who
hates laughter in others, becomes an experience of joyous exuberance
for an audience that is scarcely allowed time to reflect upon its own
aroused sadism. (Bloom 240)
As Mark Anderson has determined, this fashion faux-pas is actually an
in-joke for the court and "definitely not the way to warm the cockles of
Queen Elizabeth's heart. When Henry VIII's first wife Catherine of Aragon
died, the King celebrated by parading a two year-old Elizabeth around
with him at Greenwich. The brutish Tudor monarch, as a public symbol that
he was not in mourning, wore yellow, cross-gartered stockings. And then,
only five months after Elizabeth's father used her as a set piece for his
morbid merrymaking, the King had his second wife Anne Boleyn (Elizabeth's
mother) beheaded. One can only imagine the royal opprobrium Hatton would
have faced had he ever had the bad fortune of wearing yellow,
cross-gartered stockings in Elizabeth's presence" (posted at The
Shakespeare Fellowship 1/28/2002).
You have played the very knave with me, and so I will make you know
if I have good proof of it. But that for so much as is past. For
that is to come ... I will thrust my dagger into you, for I speak
in earnest. In the meantime farewell. (qtd. in Ogburn and Ogburn
278)
Olivia and Viola (as Cesario) are at another stalemate in the wooing.
Sir Toby afterwards tells Cesario that a fight cannot be averted with
the violent Sir Andrew, which comes out of the blue to her. Although Sir
Andrew backpedals and a baffled Viola says any insult she may have made
to him was against her will, Toby and Fabian insist to the individual
reluctant duelers that the other refuses to back down. Their sword fight
begins, no doubt intended to look goofy, when Antonio happens upon the
scene. Antonio tries to take Viola's place (thinking she is really
Sebastian), and when officers arrive to break up this disturbance,
they arrest Antonio. One officer seems to recognize him and to know
of his past crimes. Antonio asks Viola for his money back, but of
course she knows nothing of this. At this perceived betrayal, Antonio
rails about falseness, cast in his mind as a beauteous outside but evil
empty inside:
In nature there's no blemish but the mind;
Antonio is hauled away. Although Viola now has every reason to believe
Sebastian alive, her musings go nowhere, and she exits. Sir Toby eggs
Sir Andrew on to go after Cesario, the coward, and continue the fight.
None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind.
Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil
Are empty trunks o'erflourish'd by the devil.
(III.iv.367-370)