Customer Reviews

Twelfth Night (Folger Shakespeare Library)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this in preparation for going to see an upcoming production of this play put on by "Shakespeare in the Park" that's going to be playing June 1st through the 4th of this year in the Botanical Gardens. Considering the myriad summaries and expositions of this play, I won't recapitulate those here. What I will do, both for my personal use and for the remote possibility that someone else might find some use in them, is post my own thoughts and notes I took as I read it. Hopefully they'll serve as an aide memoire if I ever need one.

ACT I: Overall themes: identity (masque?), rejection, and desire. It asks whether or not love is something real, or just another human artifice, much like the music that Count Orsino "feeds" on. Orsino's switch of affection from Olivia to Viola is a hint that he loves the idea of love more than one of the women themselves. He's a parody of the hopeless romantic. Viola's wish to be transformed into a eunuch is indicative of gender liminality - or at least this seems to be a common argument, even though it's readily known that men played all roles in Elizabethan and Jacobean theater (so I'm a little confused by the single-minded focus that much modern scholarship has put on gender in this play). Perhaps this gender ambiguity is a sort of defense mechanism to deal with the uncertainty inherent with being tossed on an unknown island. There has also been some focus on Orsino's shift of affection toward Viola (Cesario) from a platonic friendship to a more romantic one. (Could our more modern emotional coldness associated with masculinity be coloring this reading, too?) Feste is obviously one of the cleverest people in the play. "Cucullus non facit monachum" indeed! As a critique of courtly love, this act accomplishes a lot, and Feste comes out being one of the least foolish people on the stage.

ACT II: Malvolio (literally, from the Latin, "ill will"), the only character who takes himself much too seriously, is tricked into the tomfoolery that he himself so deplores, ultimately proving Feste right: it's not just the role of the fool to entertain folly.

ACT III: Even though, considering Malvolio's transformation from joy-hating blowhard into romantic lover is a drastic one, that Olivia thinks him mad might be telling. Is there any room here for a sort of Foucauldian discussion of what constitutes "madness and civilization" in Elizabethan England? From the little that I've seen of the scholarly literature, I haven't yet seen any discussions that run along these lines.

This is a larger version of the typical Folger's Shakespeare book in both length and width. Also the paper is different than the other versions. No big deal, just not as expected, hence the four stars rather than five.

The item is a college text book. It is fifty percent (50%!!) what the college bookstore is asking for purchase!

It doesn't seem like "Twins Separated by a Shipwreck" could be an ongoing plot device, but Shakespeare used it in The Comedy of Errors and he's using it again here, but with more finesse. Viola and her brother Sebastian are each picked up by separate ships after their ship wrecks, and they both think that their missing twin is dead. Viola lands in Illyria, the realm of Duke Orsino, and decides to dress like a teenage boy and become his servant--it's not completely clear why. Orsino loves the lady Olivia and sends Viola, now called "Cesario" to woo Olivia for him. Trouble is, Olivia likes Cesario, which makes Viola doubly uncomfortable because she herself is now in love with Orsino. The only thing that could untangle this knot of mistaken identity is for her brother Sebastian to be alive and in Illyria. Guess who's alive and in Illyria?


Meanwhile, off in the subplot, Olivia's household is a boisterous place. Her drunkard uncle Toby is partying at all hours, her witty maid Maria is exchanging quips with Feste the fool (jester), and her serious steward Malvolio chides everybody. Maria, as the brains of the servant world, decides to play a trick on Malvolio--she knows Malvolio has dreams of rising above his station and being a wealthy man, and also that he's sweet on his employer, Olivia. So she plants a forged letter from Olivia to trick Malvolio into thinking Olivia wants to marry him and make him a great lord.


How you feel about this servant subplot depends a lot on how you see Malvolio. Without doubt, he's a stuck-up and unpleasant guy, but depending on how an actor chooses to portray him, he can have a certain dignity. When he opens the letter, it's clear that Malvolio's biggest sin isn't pride or prudery--it's ambition. He wants to be a master, and he'd certainly be a bad one, but it is really all right for Maria to prey on his innermost hopes in the way she does? And then to lock him up and make him believe he's crazy? It's all done for comedy's sake, but but there's something distasteful about the whole shaming plot. Sir Toby didn't come up with the idea, but his encouragement is the reason it goes forward. At first glance, despite his drinking and good-timing ways, Toby is clearly no Falstaff--there's no real possibility of harm in him. Or is there? He has no sense of when to stop tormenting Malvolio, and he thinks nothing of using up all the money his idiot friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek has. Even broadly comic characters can have some ambiguity to them, and Sir Toby definitely does, if you look for it.


As far as the heroine goes, Viola's great but she's not as forceful as some other heroines. Until she's talking to Olivia as Cesario, we don't know much about her personality. Olivia gets about as much stage time as Viola, and the two are more like a complimentary acting pair than a lead actress and supporting role. One of the difficulties about sweet, smart Viola is that she's in love with Orsino who is kind of a loon.


I tend to dislike Shakespeare's comedic heroes because they don't do anything. Orsino listens to sad music and talks about Olivia all day long. His unrequited, passive passion for Olivia is so well-known, even Viola's sea captain gossips about it. Orsino is also a bundle of contradictions--he protests that his love is pure and lasting, but notes that women really do lose their appeal after they start to get old and wrinkled. He also says that men are capable of real love and women are not. Sheesh. And he has no sympathy for others. When "Cesario" tells Orsino about his lost sister, Orsino essentially replies, "That was a nice story about your tragic dead sister. Now go tell Olivia I think she's pretty." Viola, girl, what are you thinking?


One cool thing this play contains are those famous lines, "Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. And some have greatness thrust upon 'em." The lines are in the fake letter Maria plants for Malvolio, so it's funny that I've heard these lines used in an inspirational way, when in the play they're designed to further puff up a guy who already has an overly high opinion of himself.


The play ends with one wedding accomplished (Maria and Sir Toby), and two weddings set for the near future (Sebastian and Olivia, Orsino and Viola), but it also ends on Malvolio's declaration: "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you!". Not your standard comic conclusion.

All through out Shakespeare's novel, I have never read any books that are about love, Hate, Betrayal, Stolen Identity and Dishonesty. However, this book was very interesting. Reading the Twelfth Night in my senior year in High School was very interesting. But, it fit my with my personal life because I was going through a similar life with the moral of the book. The forbidden love and the love triangle were very interesting but yet confusing. It went on for a good time all because of a mistaken identity. A sister was pretending to be her brother, so the lady her brother worked for fell in love him who was really she but she didn't know. And the man the sister was in love with was in love with the princess her brother worked for. But in the end, like most fairy tale stories some ended happily ever after. I recommend this to whom ever like mystery and confusing. The over all moral of the book was very interesting and entertaining.