A Shakespeare comedy both highly regarded and sometimes overlooked, Twelfth Night, or What You Will grabs you both with humor and insights undimmed by time. Even more famous works of more recent vintage lack its evergreen nature.
The play centers on Viola, stranded in the strange land of Illyria, chancing upon Duke Orsino, whom she loves at sight. Only he knows her as “Cesario,” his faithful manservant, whom he sends to plead his love to the Countess Olivia. When Cesario shows up at court, Olivia’s heart melts for “the invisible and subtle stealth” of the envoy’s beauty.
Telling Olivia she’s all woman would spoil Viola’s plans for winning the duke. So she tries to reject her without giving away her identity:
VIOLA
By
innocence I swear, and by my youth,
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. [Act III, scene i, lines 147-159]
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| Charles Pasternak as Orsino tells faithful "Cesario" (Marina Shay) to plea for Olivia's love on his behalf: "Be clamorous and leap all civil bounds." [I, iv, 21] Image from a 2018 Alabama Shakespeare Festival production at https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/life/2018/04/25/review-twelfth-night-one-asfs-funniest-shakespeare-productions/552013002/ |
In some ways, this is a mash-up of two other William Shakespeare plays, A Comedy Of Errors and As You Like It. It even echoes the latter play with that ambiguous subtitle. But that difference is everything. “What you will” is not an empty sentiment, but an acceptance of fate, which ties into Twelfth Night’s overarching theme and climax.
Can the players get through their parts, withstand caprice, and find their way to a happier future? Because it’s a comedy, you sense the answer will be yes, but still feel much suspense about the outcome.
COUNTESS
OLIVIA
I do I know not what, and fear to find
Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
Fate, show thy force, ourselves we do not owe.
What is decreed must be; and be this so! [I, v, 301-305]
Fate is the chief arbiter of all that happens, from an opening shipwreck that separates twin siblings Viola and Sebastian to the unrequited love Duke Orsino bears for cold Countess Olivia. Poor Sir Andrew is made an unknowing cat’s-paw by his false friend, Sir Toby, a fate he shares with Malvolio, who while quite nasty is more sinned against:
MARIA
The devil a Puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser, an
affectioned ass that cons state without book and utters it by great swarths;
the best persuaded of himself, so crammed (as he thinks) with excellencies,
that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him. And on that
vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work. [II, iii, 142-148]
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| "I will be strange, stout, in yellow stockings and cross-gartered even with the swiftness of putting on." [II, v, 166-167] Malvolio tries to woo Countess Olivia with his epically bad fashion strategy while an amused Maria looks on. 1840 painting by Daniel Maclise from https://shakespeareanstudent.com/2016/01/14/crafting-a-character-malvolio/ |
There is also
Sebastian’s situation. He also finds himself in Illyria, unaware of his
sister’s survival. Here you get Comedy Of Errors echoes, people
confusing the siblings since they are identical other than being male and
female: “An apple cleft in two is not more twin/Than these two creatures.” [V,
i, 219-220]
This is a comedy with bite, but also a riot of funny stuff that unfolds in a masterfully organic way. There are many coincidences to look past, but every scene pushes the action forward and deepens our investment in the situations the characters find themselves in.
There is a random quality to Twelfth Night. It extends to the meaning of the title as well as the sudden choice made by Viola early on to disguise herself as a man, or “present me as an eunuch to him,” [I, ii, 53] as she puts it. She gives different explanations for doing this, but the main purpose is setting into motion the chief business of the play.
The gender swap is often remarked upon; Shakespeare using his play as a rumination on just how much love extends beyond the parameters of man and woman. This is a factor in the proceedings, but the confusion extends in other directions, too.
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| "Tis but fortune, all is fortune." [II, v, 21] Malvolio (Stephen Fry) makes his move on Olivia (Mark Rylance) in a 2012 Globe [London, UK] production. Some modern productions emulate the original stagings, in which men play the female roles. Image from https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zjj3r2p |
Another transgressive element in Twelfth Night is a matter of class. No one in the play seems attracted to a person on the exact same social order as he or she. Duke Orsino loves Countess Olivia, who loves Orsino’s servant, who loves Orsino. Belowstairs, Olivia’s servant Malvolio is set to thinking by fellow servant Maria that Olivia fancies him. Maria sets her own sights on marrying Sir Toby.
It is the usual cruelty masquerading as fun, illustrative of how Elizabethan society functioned, and no less hilarious for the fact the action sometimes devolves into near-bloodsport. Two-faced busybodies trigger swordfights as a means of relieving drunken boredom.
Even those with less injurious designs present false fronts to one another. The clown Feste cautions against trusting meaning itself:
FESTE
But indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds disgraced them.
VIOLA
Thy reason, man?
FESTE
Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false, I
am loath to prove reason with them. [III, i, 19-24]
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| Esco Jouléy as Feste closes the show in a 2023 Old Globe (St. Louis, MO) production. Feste presents a challenging part as the actor must either sing or credibly mime several songs in one of Shakespeare's most musical plays. Photo by Lawrence E. Moten III from https://www.americantheatre.org/2023/06/26/a-tale-of-two-festes/ |
Feste is enjoyable both because he is so merry and because he is rather sly regarding the doings of others. He seems wise at times to Viola’s male guise. “Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard!” he tells her [III, i, 34], though this and other ambiguous gibes could simply be directed at the young man Viola pretends to be.
While Feste joins in the trickery against Malvolio, he is not part of any actual pre-game scheming. Late in the play, he even helps Malvolio get a message of distress to his mistress, Countess Olivia, which gets Malvolio freed from temporary imprisonment. Feste is whimsical, yet not accountable for the worst designs of his fellows.
The introduction of the 1959 Folger Library edition calls Twelfth Night “perhaps [Shakespeare’s] highest achievement in sheer comedy, the comedy of merriment and gaiety untinged by any shadow of unhappy implication.” This is very true if you didn’t go to high school like me and got sucked into false cafeteria reports of “she-loves-you.”
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| The oldest surviving text of Twelfth Night comes from the 1623 First Folio, making it a less challenging text to discern authorial intent. Most Shakespeare plays have alternate versions taken from bootleg printings and so-called "foul papers." Image from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Twelfth-Night-or-What-You-Will-15-First-Folio-1623-p-259_fig1_324036347 |
Malvolio is a bad guy, sure, with his bossiness and Puritanical hypocrisy, but it’s hard for yours truly not to sympathize with poor Sir Andrew Aguecheek, whose major flaw is chronic softheadedness:
SIR
ANDREW
I am a fellow o’ the strangest mind i’ the world; I delight in masques and
revels sometimes altogether. [I, iii, 108-110]
Sir Andrew is milked for money by Sir Toby, kept around with false reports that Toby’s niece Olivia is Andrew’s for the taking. Sir Andrew is also brought into the scheme against Malvolio, who in turn is fooled by Maria’s handwriting into thinking Olivia loves him. “Why, this is very midsummer madness,” [III, iv, 53] Olivia will later exclaim, connecting it to another topsy-turvy Shakespeare play.
Sir Toby’s duplicity is exceeded only by his laziness and his Falstaffian ability to make of life what he will, and chance the consequences:
SIR TOBY
Does not our lives consist of the four elements?
SIR ANDREW
Faith, so they say, but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.
SIR TOBY
Th’art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. [II, iii, 9-13]
Watching so many characters embrace or struggle against their fates is a pleasure, especially when delivered with such antic dispatch. The comedy is never leavened by sentiment, not even when the major characters ponder the nature of romance. There are affecting moments, but always simultaneously advancing the comedy.
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| "Am I not consanguineous?" [II, iii, 76] Sir Toby Belch (Mel Smith) with his prize rube Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Richard E. Grant) in a 1996 film adaptation set in 19th century Austria and directed by Trevor Nunn. Image from https://thedrunkenodyssey.com/2018/01/05/the-rogues-guide-to-shakespeare-on-film-69-twelfth-night-1996/ |
Twelfth Night was apparently an early favorite, so much so that there is extant testimony regarding what must have been one of its earliest performances, on February 2, 1602. There have been several notable recent film adaptations and many more stagings, as well as a few key phrases people know without ever reading or seeing it performed.
Malvolio delivers the play’s most famous line, ironically while reading a letter supposedly from Olivia but really by Maria: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.” [II, v, 141-143] In his reading, of course, this line forms part of the misdirection ploy and is drenched in sarcasm. You can be sure he’s about to get something thrust upon him.
The opening line
in the play is also famous, “If music be the food of love, play on.” There is a
great deal of music in the play, including a couple of rowdy sing-alongs and a
closing number by Feste, which seems about to offer a moral but ends instead on
a humble request for applause. Even without surviving music, they work rather
well.
As with most of Shakespeare’s work, there is much to be found on the human condition, particularly as it pertains to the absurdities of love. Yet at the same time, Twelfth Night is designed mainly to provide entertainment and laughter. That it does, magnificently.
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