Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night, or What You Will

Summary:

Twins Viola and Sebastian are caught in a shipwreck, separated and nearly drowned. Thinking her brother to be dead, Viola disguises herself as a man and enters the service of the local Duke Orsino, who is attempting to woo Countess Olivia. Olivia instead falls for Viola in disguise, while Viola finds herself falling for the Duke. Things grow even more confused when Sebastian returns and is repeatedly mistaken for Viola, but in the end all is revealed, with Viola marrying the Duke and Sebastian the Countess. Meanwhile, the servants of Olivia’s household play a nasty trick on Malvolio, her prudish steward.

What It’s About:

True love is selfless

Twelfth Night, like all of Shakespeare’s comedies, concerns itself with love. The principal conflict of the play, complicated by Viola’s cross-dressing and the confusion it causes, is remarkably simple: Orsino wants to win the heart of Olivia, and Olivia has sworn off all suitors following the death of her brother. Viola stumbles into the midst of this, disguising herself as a man to enter the employ of the duke since Olivia is not currently accepting applications, and finds herself Orsino’s preferred messenger to the Countess, delivering his ornate speeches and professions of affection. She’s a great fit for the role because, in her disguise as a man, Olivia falls for her instantly, and in contrast to all the Duke’s previous messengers continually invites ‘Cesario’ (Viola’s assumed name while she’s in disguise) to come back and visit her again. Meanwhile, Viola has fallen hard for Orsino, and so is in the terrible position of needing to win her own heart’s desire the heart of another. It’s a classic love triangle, and one that should be immediately familiar to modern viewers; as with last week’s Much Ado About Nothing, this is the kind of plot that’s a staple in modern sitcoms.

The play gets a lot of mileage out of contrasting these various loves, and in doing so approaches what I think to be its central thesis, comparing the self-centered and self-aggrandizing love of Orsino, and to a lesser degree Olivia’s steward Malvolio, with the self-sacrificing love of Viola. Orsino is a wonderful character to see performed because in general his speeches lay it on thick; he clearly sees himself as the tragic romantic hero, so consumed by love and longing that he can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t do anything but think about his beloved. And yet throughout all his speeches he rarely makes mention of Olivia herself. Rather, his focus is on his own passion, his own furor, and the strength of his own feelings. Malvolio too longs for Olivia, but his fantasies all focus on the power and prestige he’d gain as the husband to a countess, elevated beyond his lowly station. Their love is selfish, and their thoughts only focused on how it affects them. In contrast, Viola’s love is all about self-sacrifice. She pines for the Duke, but loves him to such a degree that she’s willing to plead his case and court Olivia on his behalf, at the cost of her own happiness with Orsino. Repeatedly, she puts her own wishes aside in the hopes of making the Duke happy, and even when it’s clear she has Olivia’s favor and eye - something literally every other character in the play chases - she rejects it in favor of serving the Duke. This selfless love is also personified in Antonio, the pirate that rescues Viola’s brother Sebastian and serves as the only real paragon of virtue within the play beyond Viola herself. Antonio loves Sebastian deeply (and depending on the director, often romantically - this is by far Shakespeare’s most LGBTQ-friendly play), and is willing to risk arrest, injury and even death in order to protect him. Antonio’s love is ultimately unrequited and his story is not truly resolved in a satisfactory way, but in a play where so many characters make very poor decisions, he stands out as one who is kind, devoted, and unfailingly in the right.

If This Were A Movie:

As with most Shakespearean comedies this naturally hews to the line of a modern rom com, but more than that this play feels like a farce. It has an oddly zany undercurrent, and is primarily about mistaken identity and irony. Viola’s disguise and the ultimate confusion between herself and her twin brother Sebastian are central to this. Viola constantly drops hints, asides, and lines with double meanings referring to her true sex gender.

Beyond that, the play’s supporting cast adds to the farcical feel, with Feste the clown, Sir Toby & Maria, all members of Olivia’s household, getting up to what can only be described as hijinx in the background of all this courtly love. They prank Malvolio, milk the visiting knight Sir Andrew for cash, and generally sow chaos throughout the scenes, especially in the later acts of the play when the pace begins to pick up. Feste in particular should be noted - he has a number of speeches throughout the play littered with puns, wordplay, and delightfully circular logic. However, he’s also the only character that’s revealed to know Olivia’s true identity, contributing to the sense that, though perhaps not the architect of all this madness, he’s certainly its conductor - keeping a steady time and moving all the other players about in a mad little dance.

The Lines From The Play That You Know:
If music be the food of love, play on - Twelfth Night, 1.1.1

The opening line of the play, spoken by Duke Orsino in full-on pining for love mode. It’s entered into the popular lexicon as a kind of romantic sentiment, speaking to the ability of music to move the heart. That said, as mentioned above Orsino’s love is of the courtly, selfish variety - more in love with being in love than truly in love with Countess Olivia - and this speech is one of the prime examples of that. Despite professing boundless affection for Olivia, she doesn’t come up in his first lines; rather the Duke’s subject is his own rapture and passion - what a romantic figure he is, lying there listening to the music and dreaming of his lady love.

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em. - Twelfth Night, 2.5.126-128

The other truly notable quote from the play comes from the Malvolio subplot, and like the above loses something in context. While the quote is often used as an aspirational message, the kind of thing for motivational posters and inspiring speeches, within the play it’s part of a rouse to trick the prudish Malvolio into putting on airs and acting above his station - behavior that ultimately gets him locked up for insanity. It’s a solid quote to throw out every once in a while, but just make sure you’re actually reaching for greatness, and not being tricked into overstepping your bounds.

The Lines You Should Know:
Orsino: Still so cruel?

Olivia: Still so constant, lord. - Twelfth Night, 5.1.103-104

Two lines that summarize the entirety of Orsino and Olivia’s storyline throughout the play. Despite their ‘courtship’ being the central action of the play, the two don’t meet until the fifth act. Orsino asks if she is still cruelly rejecting his advances, and Olivia’s response? I don’t owe you anything. Though this is obviously a very modern reading of the play and one not supported by the original text, there is a lot to be mined in portraying Orsino’s anguished love as the modern ‘nice guy,’ who pines after a girl and feels that, because he’s so invested in her, she owes him reciprocation. Nothing could be further from the truth, and Olivia’s reply makes that clear here - she has been constant in her response to Orisno’s advances. She’s not interested, and he needs to move along.

Notable Adaptation:

So far in this series, we’ve been working with pretty faithful adaptations, and specifically ones that remain true to the original text. This week we’re talking about She’s The Man, so that’s out the window. The 2006 film, which is quite loosely based on Twelfth Night, updates the setting to a modern high school, ups the comedy by a lot, and most notably was one of Channing Tatum’s first big starring roles. Is it the best way to learn the text of the play? No, of course not. But as I said above this play feels like a farce, and nothing captures the essence of that like an early 2000s teen comedy.

It’s also an excellent example of just how flexible these plays can be when it comes to adaptation, in terms of setting, style, character, and even textual fidelity. To steal a football metaphor, Shakespeare bends but it doesn’t break; you can twist the words, rewrite the characters, add or remove whole subplots, but the themes and stories are so classic, so universal, that despite these transformations the work shines through. And because of that, they are a great anchor to set your story to - a grounding mechanism for whatever point you are trying to make, even if that point is ‘Channing Tatum should do more comedies.

General Notes:

Let’s talk briefly about how, despite the fact that this is clearly a comedy (it ends with three weddings), the ending can be distinctly melancholy depending on the adaptation. First and foremost, with the exception of Viola, no one ends up with the person that they loved. Olivia ends up marrying Sebastian, Viola’s twin; yes, they look the same, but he is distinctly not the person she fell in love with over the course of the lay. Moreover, they rush to the altar the first time Sebastian and Olivia meet due to the case of mistaken identity - he has literally no idea who she is, but suddenly finds himself betrothed to this strange woman who’s fawning all over him. And Orsino clearly does not win the hand of Olivia, the woman he spends five acts pining over; instead he quickly agrees to marry one of his pages that he believed to be a man for the length of the play. Now, there’s a lot that can be done with this in terms of showing the chemistry of Orsino and Viola when she’s in disguise - and many plays chose to amp this up and have a great deal of fun with this increasingly physical attraction. Nonetheless, it’s possible - and many adaptations choose - to play this ending as more than a little unsatisfying.

This whole problem is amplified by the Malvolio subplot. Malvolio is Olivia’s puritanical steward, and as mentioned above the various members of her household, including Feste the clown, play a series of pranks on him, tricking him into believing that Olivia is in love with him (something he fantasizes about), and in general spurring him on to a variety of lunatic behaviors. They trick him into dressing oddly, belittling the staff around him, and generally making inappropriate advances towards Olivia, all of which land him in solitary confinement in prison, where Feste and the others proceed to TORTURE HIM. It escalates quickly.

Eventually the deception is revealed, but Malvolio is less than forgiving, promising that he’ll “be revenged on the whole pack of you” (Twelfth Night 5.1.364). As a character he’s much abused, and there’s been some thought as to whether he should be portrayed more sympathetically. Textually, though I think he’s supposed to be an object of scorn: the puritans, in Shakespeare’s time, were strong opponents of the theater, thinking that it was ungodly and encouraged idleness. As such, I’m of the opinion that this is Shakespeare having a bit of a go at some of his critics. This is supported by the fact that Feste the clown (the entertainer within the play, not unlike an actor or a playwright), is revealed to have taken part in Malvolio’s torture because Malvolio shunned him at the beginning of the play, deriding fooling as a profession and claiming it was useless, ungodly and idle. Sound familiar?

A Monologue For the Road:

This fellow is wise enough to play the fools
And to do that well craves a kind of wit.
He must observe the 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. - Twelfth Night 3.1.53-61