CHAPTER II. GENRE AND METHOD OF TWELFTH NIGHT AND MAIN EVENTS AND HAPPENINGS IN IT

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CHAPTER II. GENRE AND METHOD OF TWELFTH NIGHT AND MAIN EVENTS AND HAPPENINGS IN IT 2.1 Twelfth Night : genre, method, theme of the play Twelfth Night can be considered a model Shakespearean comedy in that it employs nearly every feature of the genre: a wedding, mistaken identities, misunderstandings, physical comedy, and a happy ending. Like all of Shakespeare’s comedies, the play ends with a wedding – in this case, the joint wedding of two sets of lovers: Olivia and Sebastian, and Viola and Orsino. Also as in many other comedies, the lovers are initially kept apart through misunderstandings, which lead to plot complications. Olivia falls in love with Cesario, (who is really Viola in drag,) but Viola can’t return Olivia’s love. Similarly, Viola falls in love with Orsino, who, believing Viola is Cesario, refuses to return her love. "Only once true identities are revealed can the lovers unite with their appropriate partners. In addition to the preposterous plot, cross-dressing, and misunderstandings, the play abounds in silliness. While the main characters are pursuing the wrong partners, the Fool, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew provide plenty of comic relief in the form of ridiculous rhymes, songs, double entendre, and antics."[10, 160] Within all the silliness, however, Twelfth Night offers an exploration of desire as a fickle, overriding force of nature strong enough to overturn the social order. Shakespearean comedies often take place in societies where the social order is out of whack. In Twelfth Night, erotic desire wreaks havoc on the flimsy structures society has put in place. Under normal circumstances, the noble-born Olivia should not fall in love with a servant like Cesario, who (in disguise at least) occupies a lower social position. "Likewise, Duke Orsino, who is pining for Olivia, should not feel an erotic pull toward Viola while she is masquerading as a boy servant. The speed and ease with which lovers shift from one object of desire to another (Orsino loves Olivia but then switches to Viola; Olivia has sworn off love to mourn her brother’s death but then quickly decides she loves Cesario; later she switches to Sebastian) underscores the erratic and all-consuming character of erotic yearning. In the play, desire hops about from person to person with little regard for social status, gender, or other limits that civil society has deemed important." [11, 296] At the same time, while the play concludes in a happy tone for its noble-born, heterosexual characters, palpable notes of discord remain for others. Malvolio and Antonio are two such unfortunates, left unpaired by the play’s conclusion. Malvolio has failed to win Olivia’s heart because of his lower social status and his humorless Puritanism, while Antonio’s feelings for Sebastian, which can be read as possibly homoerotic in nature, remain unsatisfied. Feste the Fool’s final song adds another dash of bitterness to what should be a cheerful end. While we are asked to rejoice at the imminent marriages of the central characters, Feste’s song reminds us that marriage is difficult, long, and sometimes fails to bring about happiness: By swaggering could I never thrive” . These departures from a more conventional finale are like a gentle wake-up call, rousing us from pleasant dreams and sending us back into the real world, where love (and the foolishness it engenders) is not always so harmless." [12, 296] The style of Twelfth Night is festive, mischievous, and witty. The title of the play refers to the twelfth night after Christmas, which is the night before Epiphany. Epiphany is a religious celebration marking the time the three Magi brought gifts to the infant Jesus. Traditionally, Twelfth Night is a day of celebrations, frivolity, song and music, and an overall topsy-turvy spirit. The style of the play Twelfth Night taps into the holiday’s playful irreverence. The play’s festive elements find clearest expression through the characters of Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, who stay up late drinking, dancing, and instigating mischief. “I delight in masques and revels sometimes altogether” says Sir Andrew . Sir Toby frequently echoes this party sentiment: “…Let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say! A stoup of wine!”. Similarly, the ample use of music in the play further channels the celebratory mood of Epiphany, such as Sir Toby and Andrew’s fun and improvised “catches,” and the songs that Feste performs throughout."[13, 46] Meanwhile, the frequent use of puns and double entendre (deployed mostly by Feste) give the play its distinctly witty feel. “A sentence is but a chev’ril glove to a good wit,” Feste says to Viola , meaning that a clever imagination can twist language inside-out like a glove, manipulating sense at will. Feste often skillfully uses verbal puns to reveal the hidden traits of other characters. When he brazenly calls Lady Olivia a “fool,” and insists that she (not him) be taken away, he reasons that since her brother is now in a better place, as she herself believes, then she is foolish to grieve as intensely as she does: “The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul in heaven” Feste’s pun questions the true meaning of a word like “fool.” Is Feste a fool simply because of his profession as a jester and clown, or is Olivia a fool for her indulgent attachment to an irrational melancholy? In general, the use of puns serves to cut through characters’ delusions about themselves and reveal their true motivations."[14, 393] The use of prose and verse reflects the mischievous upturning of social identities and hierarchies in Twelfth Night. For most of the play, prose and verse signal differences of privilege among the characters. Aristocratic characters tend to speak in verse when either addressing one another or when engaged in introspection, while servants tend to speak in prose. The first two scenes of Act I are perfect examples of this rule. The noble-born Orsino and Viola speak in verse (which end in rhyming couplets) while Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew speak in prose. However, once Viola has disguised herself as Cesario, she speaks both verse and prose. For example, when she goes to see Lady Olivia in Act I scene v, she speaks prose while Olivia’s servant, Maria, is in the room." Once Maria exits, Cesario switches to verse to praise Olivia’s beauty. Lady Olivia is initially reluctant to reciprocate with verse, still seeing Cesario as a lowly servant, but she eventually capitulates, effectively expressing romantic interest. Anomalies in the interchange of prose and verse complement the mischievous style of Twelfth Night." [15, 14] The overall point of view of Twelfth Night is dramatic, but it follows certain characters more than others, encouraging the audience to sympathize with their particular perspective and sensibility. In Twelfth Night, the most privileged characters are Viola and Feste. Viola and Feste possess the greatest insight into themselves and other characters. The play is partial to these two perspectives because they form the sensible and sober anchors of an otherwise raucous free-for-all. We get the least insight into Malvolio’s point of view, so we enjoy the jokes and pranks the other characters play on him. Malvolio is separated from the others both by his Puritanism and his disapproval of the songs, drinking, and frivolity the others value. If Malvolio is the play’s outsider, Viola and Feste are the insiders of the play, providing a consistent point of reference while also instilling a dose of sanity into the madness of Twelfth Night’s uuniverse. In many ways, Viola is uniquely placed within the play. Until the final act, she is the only character who shares the dramatic irony of Cesario’s double identity with the audience. At several points Viola speaks directly to the audience, such as when she reveals her secret desire to marry the Duke: “Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife”. Furthermore, Viola has the advantage of witnessing the inner workings of both Orsino’s and Olivia’s courts. Because of her cunning, she comes across as one of the more intelligent figures in the play. And the consistency of her motivations makes her one of the most stable and willful; unlike Olivia and Orsino, Viola knows what she wants and doesn’t deviate from her goal. The fact that she begins the play believing she just lost her beloved twin brother makes her sympathetic to the audience, and makes us want to see her joined with another character. Accordingly, the audience is biased toward Viola’s point of view. She serves as a reliable touchstone, and is closely aligned with what we, as audience members, already know and see. Feste is also specially situated within Twelfth Night. Much like Viola, Feste is privy to the workings of both courts, and is also portrayed as shrewd and discreetly knowing. As Viola admits to herself: “This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool, and to do that well craves a kind of wit” . Although he might not be aware of Viola’s disguise, Feste has cutting insight into other characters. He calls Olivia a fool for her self-indulgent melancholy; suggests that Orsino’s moody and erratic mind resembles an opal changing colors; and is not afraid to point out Sir Toby’s excessive drinking. He also has the last say: his pensive song at the end functions as a kind of ultimate judgment, shaping the way the audience will interpret and remember the events of the play. Feste both participates in Twelfth Night and also offers commentary with an objective distance. Feste serves as a stand-in for the consciousness of the audience: he is essentially thinking what we are thinking, and through his witty commentary gives us a vicarious representation within the play itself. The tone of Twelfth Night is irreverent and bemused, mocking the self-seriousness and pretensions of the most self-deluded characters in the play. The play’s antic energy, bolstered by songs, jokes, drinking, and dancing, incorporates the topsy-turvy, irreverent spirit of the Epiphany celebration. During Epiphany, the social order is temporarily suspended. Accordingly, in the play, those who transparently aspire to gain power are the most viciously mocked. Malvolio is the chief example. Once he finds Maria’s note, and believes that Lady Olivia loves him, he instantly abandons his sober, straight-laced demeanor and becomes unexpectedly giddy at the prospect of elevating his social status through marriage: “Daylight and champion discovers not more,” he says after reading Maria’s forged letter, “This is open. I will be proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-devise the very man”. This fevered list of “I wills” makes Malvolio’s thirst for power glaringly obvious, while the exaggerated, pompous tone of his declaration suggests his plan is worthy of derision, and we should root for him to fail. The tone of the play becomes more serious to punctuate specific scenes and provide contrast to the apparently boundless good cheer and mischief of the plot. The songs performed by Feste are romantic and mournful, representing a departure from the lighthearted tone found throughout most of the play. The lyrics of “Come away, Come away death” are distinctly grim, relating a fatal case of unrequited love: “And in sad cypress let me be laid; Fly away, fly away breath;I am slain by a fair cruel maid”. The forlorn tone here reveals the internal weather of Duke Orsino, whose unrequited love for Olivia mirrors the lovesick, tragic narrator of the song. The song Feste sings to close the play, which may have been written by Shakespeare himself, is similarly melancholy. The lyrics tell the story of the fool’s life, from when he a “little tiny boy” up until the present; throughout, “the rain, it raineth every day.” The more elegiac tone of these songs suggests that under the mischievous fun of the play lies the bittersweet reality of the brevity and hardships of life. "[16, 168] Twelfth Night does not use foreshadowing in the conventional sense. Important events are not overtly foretold in the early parts of the play. Rather, Shakespeare uses wordplay and imagery in order to punctuate or amplify later scenes, allowing them to reverberate in retrospect. Similar devices are used to prepare the audience for the advent of certain characters or the use of plot devices. Here are examples of themes and plot points foreshadowed in Twelfth Night. Perhaps the most important force at work in Twelfth Night is erotic desire and the many forms it assumes. This theme is often expressed literally through the outward disguises of characters. Shakespeare immediately introduces the mechanics of this theme with the first lines spoken by Duke Orsino in Act I, scene i: “Oh spirit of love! How quick and fresh art thou,So full of shapes is fancy, that it alone is high fantastical.” This quote introduces the outsized role of love in the play. The mention of ‘fancy,’ which here means love, as full of shapes sets up the prospect of love and Eros assuming unrecognizable forms. The soliloquy prepares the audience for the entrance of Viola, whose disguise as Cesario introduces an unexpected love triangle. Orsino’s soliloquy portrays love as one of the primary movers of the play. We understand that some characters will function less as autonomous, free-willed agents and more as participants, buffeted by a power outside of their control. Sure enough, Orsino and Olivia shift easily from one love to another, and Malvolio falls for Olivia quite suddenly. The main characters’ drastic swings in affection are also foreshadowed throughout the first acts. In Act II scene iv, Orsino first declares that men are fickle and unreliable: “Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, than women’s are.” Later in the same scene contradicts himself, saying the love of women is less intense than men’s because their hearts “lack retention.” As Feste observes, Orsino himself is “a very Opal,” changing constantly. Later we will see Orsino easily transfer his love for Olivia to Viola. The scene foreshadows the two kinds of desire present in Twelfth Night: a constant, “patient” love (much like Viola’s) and a fickle one that darts about from place to place, like Orsino’s. Orsino’s conflicting observations about desire across genders foregrounds the play’s finale (where Orsino quickly forsakes his love for Olivia in order to marry Viola), making the sudden switch all the more poignant, biting, and comical. Another important motif that enhances conflict in the play is mistaken identity. After Sebastian arrives in Illyria, he and his twin sister Viola (disguised as Cesario) are often mistaken for one another, creating many complications and tricky scenarios. This mechanism is craftily set up in the early sections of the play. When Viola is first introduced in Act I, scene ii, the Captain shares his belief that Sebastian might still be alive, because he saw him swimming away, “holding acquaintance with the waves.” This note of doubt regarding Sebastian’s death foreshadows his later arrival. Sure enough, once Sebastian appears in Act II, scene i, he too fears that his sister has drowned. Since the audience now knows that both Viola and Sebastian are alive and well, and since both are presently on the Illyrian mainland, chances are the two will reunite later in the story. Their reunion functions as the climax of the play, and triggers the resolution. Once Sebastian admits that Viola “much resembles” him , the audience is prepared for the antics that result from mistaken identities. Download 44.77 Kb.

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