38 Plays / 38 Days Challenge: TWELFTH NIGHT

The Play of the Day is TWELFTH NIGHT! #ASC38plays

Shakespeare probably penned Twelfth Night around 1601, though the play was not printed until 1623, in the First Folio. John Manningham, a law student studying in London, recorded his reaction to seeing the play in his diary on February 2, 1602:

At our feast wee had a play called “Twelue Night, or What you Will,” much like the Commedy of Errores, or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the Steward beleeve his Lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfeyting a letter as from his Lady in generall termes, telling him what shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparaile, &c., and then when he came to practise making him beleeue they tooke him to be mad.

During Manningham’s favorite gulling scene, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian watch through fitful laughs as Malvolio – the Puritanical steward to Olivia – transforms from a staunch scrooge to a sighing wannabe-lover after he discovers a counterfeit letter written by Maria:

FABIAN

This wins him, liver and all.

MALVOLIO
“Jove knows I love,

But who?

Lips, do not move,

No man must know.”

“No man must know.” What follows? The numbers altered. “No man must know.” If this should be thee, Malvolio!

SIR TOBY

Marry, hang thee, brock!

MALVOLIO

[Reading]
“I may command, where I adore,

But silence, like a Lucrece knife,

With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore;

M.O.A.I. doth sway my life.”

FABIAN

A fustian riddle.

SIR TOBY

Excellent wench, say I.

MALVOLIO

“M.O.A.I. doth sway my life.” Nay, but first let me see, let me see, let me see.

FABIAN

What dish o’poison has she dressed him!

Malvolio thinks he has stumbled upon a letter by Olivia that cryptically alludes to her affections for him. He makes a show of his willingness to throw away care in the name of love by later appearing in yellow hose with crossed garters, a fashion that Olivia actually detests. Malvolio’s ultimate punishment and humiliation would have been even more potent to Elizabethan audiences; Puritans not only condemned playgoing but also denounced playgoers for their idleness and attraction to the debauchery depicted in plays.

Malvolio, of course, is not the only character in Twelfth Night struck with love-sickness.  Duke Orsino pines away his days for Olivia, though she does not requite his love.  Orsino’s only comfort is to wallow in his suffering. Feste, the fool, obliges Orsino’s melancholy with a song in Act 2, scene 4:

ORSINO
Oh, fellow, come, the song we had last night.
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,
Do use to chant it. It is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.

CLOWN
Are you ready, sir?

ORSINO
Ay, prithee sing.

Music.
The Song.

CLOWN
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fie away, fie away, breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it.
My part of death no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strewn.
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.
A thousand, thousand sighs to save,
Lay me O where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there.

“Come Away Death” might be the anthem for all the lonely hearts in this play, but Feste recognizes the foolishness of Orsino’s self-imposed anguish. Feste criticizes Orsino for being changeable, casting doubt on the sincerity of his feelings:

CLOWN
Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.

The tragedy for Orsino and Malvolio is not that they suffer, but that they fail to recognize their own foolishness. Thus is the making of a comedy.