Dusty:

I’ll start us off with comments on the first act of Twelfth Night. As you say, it’s a play for the season, though I gather there is some doubt (expressed by Braunmuller, Orgel, and Jonathan Crewe [editors of the play] in my complete Pelican edition) about whether the first performance was indeed at court on Twelfth Night [i.e. the 12th night after Christmas, the end of the traditional Christmas season in Shakespeare’s time.] Maybe, as my editors say the subtitle suggests, it’s a play that licenses saturnalian festivity, especially in the figure of Sir Toby Belch. He indeed does “what he will” — refuses to “confine” himself. But then Viola too as Cesario is willfully determined to speak to Olivia (“he’ll speak with you, will you or not.”) And Curio in the opening scene asks Orsino “Will you go hunt, my lord?”, but Orsino seem to have no will. Even Oliva seems to act willfully, by shutting herself up and refusing to see Orsino, “all this to season/ A brother’s dead love.”

The opening scene presents a Duke who doesn’t act like a duke, moping about, wanting to feed his appetite in order to “sicken”/kill it. He’s one of several in the play who are “sick” — Orsino and Olivia in their different ways love-sick (she also pretends to be “sick”), Malvolio “sick of self-love.” When Orsino says “fancy” alone is “high fantastical,” my Pelican editor says “fancy” here means “the spirit of love” that Orsino has invoked. But I wonder if fancy is not also the imagination. (And I note that the list of dramatic personae in F Malvolio is said to be “a fantastical Steward to Olivia”). His obsession with Olivia makes the audience long to see/meet her. The “dying fall” of Orsino’s music hints at the melancholy that is especially associated with the songs of the oddly-named Feste. (The editor of my “New Variorum” edition says it’s pronounced in two syllables — presumably Fest-ay or Fest-uh.

1.2 presents another woman who has lost her brother. But where Olivia locks herself up, Viola (a kind of anagram of Olivia) is resourceful and determined to remedy her situation. (Contrast too with Orsino, who is unable to rouse himself to action when Olivia won’t see him.) Viola is quick to adjust when confronted with obstacles: if she can’t serve Olivia she will serve Orsino.

1.3 continues the introduction of the main characters. Sir Toby represents willful festivity, but also excess. His praise of Sir Andrew creates a desire in the audience to see him. When he arrives, he is both fool (doubling Feste) and suitor (doubling Orsino). It’s a good comic part for an actor. The scene has a lot of puns, slang, and proverbs that were presumably accessible to an Elizabethan audience but require a lot of body language to make clear to a modern one.

1.4 shows that Viola wastes no time in gaining “favors” from Orsino. By omitting Viola/Cesario’s introduction to Orsino, Shakespeare saves most of the sexual tension built into the disguise for the next scene, with Olivia.

1.5 is by far the longest scene in the first act, bringing Feste and Malvolio together, and establishing Malvolio as the spirit of anti-festivity. The “allowed fool” is allowed to make fun of Olivia, rather like the Fool in Lear. But otherwise I find him a little too “dry.” Is it significant that Olivia sends Malvolio out to meet Cesario but it’s Sir Toby who comes in five lines later to report. He only stays for 12 lines, and when Feste exits 10 lines later, Malvolio comes back in. Why such stage business? Viola enters at 160 and most of the rest of the scene is devoted to the biggest scene yet, when Cesario banters with Olivia.

By the time Act 1 ends we already know that Viola would marry Orsino if she could, and Viola is enchanted with “Cesario.” The two leading women are not hesitant to reveal what they “will.” By the end of the play they will both get what they want (or its equivalent).

Over to you for as much of Act 2 as you will.

Michael:

Act 2 introduces both Sebastian, who is not dead, as Viola feared, and Antonio, who though a friend and lover of Sebastian, needs explanation of the twins’ relationship. Their dialogue is entirely prose, as is the following exchange between Viola and Malvolio.When Viola speaks her soliloquy about Olivia’s ring she concludes with what will be the plot direction; she, “poor monster.” has come to love her master and suspects that Olivia dotes on her in her Cesario disguise. Striking that the comic scenes are much longer, as scene 3 with Toby, Andrew, and Feste, who is associated with music in the play. It’s generally assumed, I think, that Feste was played by Richard Armin, who succeeded Will Kempe and represented a different sort of comic actor, more ironic, cerebral, and musical. In any case the comic scenes seem much longer and seem to absorb more of the play’s interest.

In scene 2 Malvolio’s unpleasantness comes in his tossing the ring down that Olivia has pretended to send back to Orsino. Viola stoops to pick it up and speaks now in verse, beginning the lovers’ plot.

Scene 3 has a combination of fooling by Sir Toby and Sir Andrew — how did they achieve their knighthoods? — and singing, first by Feste and then the catch, sort of round we assume, by Toby, Andrew, and Feste, which is jolly and loud enough to bring in Maria, then Malvolio, who seems to make a reasonable objection to the timing of the merriment. But it seems that reasonable objection is exactly what drives the revelers to more noise and singing, and Toby and Feste trade lines of a nondescript song. Malvolio is not appeased, and Maria is annoyed at him as well and suggests her plot. Maria calls him “a kind of Puritan,” though there’s no sign of his being a religious puritan, and Maria says he’s not really a serious puritan, just a self-important jerk, who must be a natural target for revelers. There was, of course, real opposition between theater people and Puritans, and Sir Andrew’s reaction (“I’d beat him like a dog”) seems to play to the audience. Toby is obviously related to Falstaff as a figure of uncontainable mirth, and Sir Andrew an amiable dolt. Together they make a comic pair.

Scene IV takes us back to Orsino and more music, this time something moody and melancholy, which Feste sings. He seems to move back and forth between the households without explanation. In instructing Viola and her return to Olivia, Orsino expresses his male chauvinist sense of male constancy, which Viola disputes in a kind of teasing way, suggesting that a presumed sister, actually herself it seems, loved constantly, without a conclusion.

The last scene in the act is the long trap for Malvolio. Toby has to contain himself against Malvolio’s imagined fantasies of his triumph over Toby and his marriage to Olivia. There may be some bawdy comedy in Malvolio’s recognition of her handwriting, but if so, it’s pretty lame and the trap is slowly sprung. This would all seem very cruel, but the context of revelry and Malvolio’s position as the antagonist of revelry make him a comic target. The yellow stockings and cross gartering are always comic on stage, and apparently they were fashion statements late in Elizabeth’s reign. Yellow may have signified a young bachelor who was sexually active, and cross gartering involved bows tied at the knee, both abhorrent to the queen, and specifically disliked by Olivia. In general they seem to be connected with the excess that Malvolio has avoided and to draw him comically into the world of Toby and Andrew.

Dusty:

Some thoughts on “Twelfth Night,” on the eleventh night after Christmas.

First some responses to yours on Act 2:

2.1. What accounts for Antonio’s “love” of Sebastian? It seems to be something stronger than homosocial bonding, especially when at the send of the scene Antonio, alone, says he “adores” Sebastian. It appears to be another case of love at first sight (as with Viola for Orsino and Olivia for “Cesario”), or maybe a case of the impulsiveness, irrationality, or madness of love, for which there is no accounting.

2.2. The complicated love triangle — A loves B who loves C who loves A — is still being treated comically, though maybe there is something sick/troubling about Orsino right from the outset of the play.

2.3 The music and song (“Youth’s a stuff will not endure”) provides a melancholy undercurrent to all the jesting and joking. We get some interesting echoes of “adore” in this scene: Maria is said to adore Toby. Sir Andrew was “adored once too.” And in the (first) letter scene Malvolio learns that Olivia “adores” him.
2.4 More melancholy music (“Come away, come away, death) for undercurrent. And in this scene the treatment of the love triangle shifts with Viola’s “She never told her love.” For the first time in the play I think we have pure, true feeling (as opposed to the lovesickness of Orsino for Olivia). Odd that Viola’s image of her “sister” “smiling at grief” is ironically echoed by Malvolio’s smiling in his big scene in the next act.

2.5 Shakespeare combines the fooling of Malvolio with the love plot. The link between the two plots is Olivia. At this stage in the play the desires/advances of lovers are being rejected/thwarted. Olivia won’t listen to love pleadings from Orsino, or Sir Andrew, or Malvolio. Cesario puts off the love gestures of Olivia, and of Antonio. Even Orsino puts off what we see are coded expressions of love from Cesario/Viola.

Michael:

It’s Twelfth Night tonight, Epiphany, and the last day of Christmas.

Antonio is one of those enigmas that turn up in the plays. What does his love of Sebastian mean? And his apparent betrayal when Cesario doesn’t know him is the first of those dark corners of the play. He doesn’t appear necessary to the plot, or he could easily be replaced, but he’s there, a kind of emotional extra.

Dusty:

A few thoughts on Act 3:

3.1 I’m not sure why we get a scene between Feste and Viola, in which they match wits — helping to establish Viola as the most attractive of the women in the play. Maybe the purpose is to engineer Viola’s compliment of Feste’s wise fooling (or Shakespeare’s compliment of his own fooling.) The love triangle gets more “serious,” when Olivia reveals her obsessive love of “Cesario.” This is not just funny.

3.2. Sir Andrew is encouraged to “accost” first Olivia and then “Cesario.” In this case we are pretty sure that nothing serious will ensue, and nobody will get hurt.

3.3 is designed to set up the later incidents of mistaken identity, but also provides another instance of Antonio’s unaccountable service to Sebastian. Should Antonio be played in straightforward manner as a (middle-aged?) bluff sea captain who feels some responsibility for the young boy he has rescued, or as another lovesick fool?

3.4 This is the longest and biggest scene in the play so far, and a virtuoso demonstration of Shakespeare’s ability to handle stage “traffic.” He includes and juggles all the various plots — the love triangle, Sebastian and Antonio, the fooling of Malvolio, and the fooling of Sir Andrew. We have two instances of mistaken identity: Olivia still thinking Viola is “Cesario” and Antonio thinking “Cesario” is Antonio. We get a hint that Viola’s fortunes are improving, at least with respect to her brother, who she had thought was dead and now sees he is alive. But the other plots are darkening: Antonio bitterly laments what he thinks of as Sebastian’s betrayal — another instance of genuine pained feeling in the play. And Toby and Maria plan to torment Malvolio by binding him in a dark room as a madman (more cruel than being bound in cross garters.) Up until now I think the tricks played on Malvolio are good-humored, not yet cruel, and cause us to laugh without guilt. Things will change later.

Michael:

Antonio is one of those enigmas that turn up in the plays. What does his love of Sebastian mean? And his apparent betrayal when Cesario doesn’t know him is the first of those dark corners of the play. He doesn’t appear necessary to the plot, or he could easily be replaced, but he’s there, a kind of emotional extra.

Michael:

In Act 4 the Plautan [i.e., found in the comedies of Plautus, a Roman dramatist] elements of the play become operative, the mistaken identity of Sebastian especially. Sebastian is saved from a bout with Toby by Olivia, who invites him home with her and begins the solution of the Olivia/Viola plot.

The Malvolio imprisonment plot, with Feste impersonating the curate, grows rather dark, such that even Toby bows out and acknowledges that they may have gone too far. Finally Feste bows out too. It seems that the scene begins comic but shades off into pathos, as if the joke has gone too far.

The final scene has Sebastian in full Plautan puzzlement and wonder at what he’s fallen into; it’s clearly implausible that he would be betrothed to Olivia, but that’s what he seems to agree to when she brings the priest. She may give him a hint of escape when she suggests they can keep it secret until he is willing to acknowledge it.

What seems to be giving the play its effect is the way the comic dialogue, perhaps centered particularly in Feste, is set off the darker elements in the Malvolio plot and the anger that breaks out in Antonio’s seeming betrayal. The songs seem to carry a more than usual emotional weight.

Dusty:

Act 4 is surprisingly short — 3 short scenes, for a total of 228 lines. It’s dominated by plot — mistaken identity and (the centerpiece) the Sir Topas scene. As you say, the shutting up of Malvolio in a dark room goes too far. Not just pathos but cruelty. Both Sir Toby and Maria have had enough by line 71. I’m not sure why they leave Feste behind: he abandons his disguise and speaks to Malvolio “in his own voice,” joking and singing. When the scene ends Malvolio is still shut up.

4.3 is linked to 4.2 via the idea of “madness.” Sebastian thinks at first that he is mad, but then thinks maybe Olivia is mad. This is another instance of love/madness, so maybe it also links back to Orsino’s lovesickness and Viola’s instant love of Orsino. All lovers in the play seem to be mad.

Dusty:

By contrast, Act 5 is long, one long scene of more than 400 lines. We get more of Antonio’s bitterness at being betrayed. The madness theme continues: the Duke says Antonio is “mad.” We also get more mistaken identity: “Cesario” is mistaken for Sebastian by both Olivia and Sir Andrew. In the midst of this silliness, we get another expression of genuine feeling, when Viola at line 131, on her way off stage as she follows Orsino, declares her love for him. Does Orsino hear her? Does anybody?

By line 204 Viola at last meets her brother, Sebastian, and the play’s relationships quickly begin to resolve. The initial problem was that A loved B who loved C who loved A. The resolution is that A (Orsino) is matched with C (Viola) and B (Olivia) is matched with C-prime (Sebastian). So everybody gets what he wants. And Sir Toby gets Maria. (The only ones left out are Sir Andrew, Feste, Malvolio, and Antonio.) To make this work, Orsino must suddenly decide that he loves Viola, whom he has known as Cesario. And Sebastian must agree to marry Olivia, whom he has just met. All a bit silly, but it gratifies the audience, who play along with it.

In the background is the Malvolio plot: we are now reminded that Malvolio had ridiculed Feste, so by playing Sir Topas Feste was getting his “revenge.” But what was in the background shockingly comes into the foreground when Malvolio enters at line 321, declaring, reasonably enough, that he has been done “notorious wrong.” He is not mollified by Olivia, and exits 50 lines later, announcing that “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you!” Revenge, it appears, begets revenge. Olivia admits that Malvolio has been “notoriously abused” and Orsino seems to think it can be patched up. That seems unlikely. How does a director handle this moment? It would be easy to have it cast a very dark shadow over the stage. As I recall, the recent production with Mark Rylance as Viola and Stephen Fry as Malvolio downplayed Malvolio’s exit.

Everybody troops off stage to celebrate two marriages, and Feste is left to sing of what amounts to a compressed version of the stages of man: boyhood, man’s estate, marriage, and drunken old age. And throughout each stage it rains every day. A sad song that leaves the stage diffused with melancholy, the same “dying fall” Orsino heard in the opening lines of the play.

Michael:

What dominates the last moments of the play is the unfolding of the Malvolio plot, after we’ve had the expected comedic unravelings and pairings. And his parting line and Olivia’s admission that “He hath been most nototiously abused” overshadows the ending. We might have expected to have more of Sir Toby and the spirit of revelry, but he and Andrew have departed in the middle of the scene, and only Fabian is left to reveal the truth of what happened to poor old Malvolio. Revelry comes only in Feste’s line, “With tosspots still had drunken heads,” and the song’s refrain just acknowledges the winter weather. “What you Will,” the alternate title, seems to emerge in the shrug of Feste’s song. Is comedy thinned almost to the vanishing point?

I was also struck by Orsino’s lines earlier in the scene, “Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, Like the the Egyptian thief at the point of death, Kill what I love? — a savage jealousy That sometime savors nobly.” Of course he’s not going to, since he’s not that bad a guy, but he seems to want to spirit Viola/Cesario off to spite Olivia. When the priest reveals the betrothal, to Sebastian of course, the Duke curses Cesario bitterly. And all this is momentarily suspended while Andrew comes in with his wounds just before we get the Sebastian revelation to Orsino. But Orsino isn’t much redeemed by what he says in the handful of lines he’s given.

Yes, melancholy seems to diffuse the play’s ending.

Dusty:

Good point about Orsino’s violent rhetoric in the final scene, directed first against Olivia, denouncing her as perverse and ungrateful, and considering killing her, or working some mischief against Cesario, including some kind of sacrificial killing, in order to spite Olivia; then directed against Cesario, banishing him. How do the director and actor manage to move beyond those explosive words to get us to accept that Orsino will happily marry Viola?

Good point too about Fabian explaining what Toby and Maria have done. They are apparently on the stage, but are silent: no apology, no request for forgiveness.

So maybe the ending is not just melancholic but unsettling, as eruptions of anger (from Orsino) and abuse (of Malvolio) prevent any comic restoration of order and harmony. We end with a sweet melancholic song, but it’s sung by the same Feste who played the cruelest trick on Malvolio (and doesn’t ask forgiveness or apologize for it), as we are reminded by the link between “But that’s all one” in Feste’s final speech and “But that’s all one” at the end of his song.