A few years ago I read a review of some film that had come out and I was sure I would never see – read the review almost carelessly while flicking through the arts section of the paper on a Saturday morning, no, I must have been clicking over The Age Home Page. The woman who wrote the review commented that whatever the film was had been based on Twelfth Night – which she considered that most ridiculous of Shakespeare’s plays – she really could not see how anyone could be bothered to reproduce this nonsense of Shakespeare’s based on the all too unfunny humour of cross-dressing and confused sexuality. I emailed Fiona the link with some comment to the effect, “Look at what this stupid bitch has written.”Did I mention that this review was in The Age – that once great newspaper? If anything symbolises the tragic fall that newspaper has suffered…Anyway, I’ve been trying to remember when I first saw Twelfth Night on telly. My ex-wife and I were away for a dirty weekend and it must have been before I had started university the first time around – the Physics me. I think it was raining outside (we hadn’t gone for the scenery, so the rain was immaterial) and the hotel room had a television. I lay the wrong way on the bed and flicked to channel two and Felicity Kendal appeared, hooded, on a beach – remarkably dry, all things considered – and I instantly feel madly and helplessly in love, first with her but then much more in love with the play.I love everything about this play. I love all of the obvious things, the boys falling in love with girls who are dressed as boys but are really girls. I love the girls falling in love with ‘youths’ (even before that word became pejorative and male as my daughter, Fiona is now fond of telling me) who are really girls, but end up married to girls who actually aren’t girls, but also not who they think they are but really the girl’s brother… I love the perfectly controlled and perfectly understandable complexity and messiness of it all.But most I love that it isn’t just a ‘romantic comedy’ – or perhaps I should lay the stress on ‘just’ in that sentence. There are dark themes operating here that are anything but funny. Sir Toby may be Falstaff and may be the life of the party – but he is also a bastard who uses and abuses those around him without mercy or favour. He is a selfish, self-centred prick – pure and simple. And yet we love him and cheer him on and are putty in his hands. He may be the sort of uncle that we all too often are forced to ask – O, how came you so early by this ‘lethargy’? – when we mean – how the hell can you possibly be so pissed this early in the morning? But still, none of us hope Malvolio will find him hiding out of sight when the letter is carefully left to be found – none of us hope Malvolio will not be fooled by the letter.All the same at the end when Malvolio is released how is it possible to not feel dreadful for him when he says, “Madam, you had done me wrong, notorious wrong.” When we realise that we have spent the play decidedly not standing in his shoes and now Shakespeare is going to make sure we are aware of just what that has meant for this fellow human being. Yes, still not a loveable character – but a fellow human nonetheless.I took Fiona to see this when she was about 8 – she is now about 18. It was a week night and a school night and we both rushed up to the theatre at the Arts Centre and both sat transfixed. I’m sure both of us must have worried that this play would prove far beyond what she would be able to understand. I had built it up so much that when it started I thought ‘oh god, I’ll ruin Shakespeare for her for life’. But at the end, when the actors had caught sight of her as the youngest in the audience and clearly made a point of catching her eye and were making a fuss of her from the stage and it was also clear she had understood all of the complications that make the last moments of this play so hilariously funny as she was bursting in gales of uncontrollably laughter, I knew that this would be a moment we would both remember and treasure always. Quality time normally comes from quantity time – but sometimes it can be planned.Years later – I think on my fortieth birthday – we went again to see a production of the play, this time with Fi, her sister, my parents and my intellectually disabled older sister, and again it proved to be a magical night.That night, as we were coming out at interval, a woman in front of me turned to the young man she had brought with her to see the play and said, “Of course Malvolio is Italian for Bad Will” – I was studying Italian at the time and thought – “Shit, of course it is, why hadn’t I realised that myself?”. Such are the things directly under my nose that I so rarely see. I’ve never been terribly good at the obvious.And I love the songs – particularly O Mistress Mine (‘Youth’s the stuff will not endure’, and how true that has proven) – and I love the little jokes and Feste, yes, particularly Feste, who I still think has some of the best lines in the play.And how could anyone not fall in love with someone who says that their preferred method of wooing you would be to, Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house, Write loyal canton and contemned love, And sing them loud even in the dead of night; Holla your name to the reverberate hills, And make the babbling gossip of the air Cry out ‘Olivia!’ O, you should not rest Between the elements of the air and earth, But you should pity me”?And understatement of the century (17th of course)Olivia: You might do muchToo bloody right she/he might do much.Two more things and then I’m done. The one is where the gardener, Fabian to his friends, waits until we are completely taken in and then slaps us awake with, “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” Now, what about that? How much balls would that take to write? If you ever needed proof that great writers are totally unconcerned about whether or not they have allowed you to ‘suspended disbelief’ I think you could hardly look further than this. Shakespeare is so certain we are at the edge of our seats he knows he can laugh at us for being so completely sucked in and we will still barely come up for air.The other thing is this:Malvolio: By my life, this is my lady’s hand: these be her very c’s, her u’s and her t’s, and thus makes she her great P’s. It is, in contempt of question, her hand.Sir Andrew: Her c’s, her u’s and her t’s, why that?For years, like Sir Andrew, I wondered why that as well. One day I even went to the local library and found a reference book that told me that although this was clearly a joke at the time, the mists that separate us from Will mean we will never know.In a word: Bollocks. It is hardly remarkable that we find the same things funny now as they did then – and sexual humour is sexual humour and like a well told fart joke will always be funny. There was a film recently called Into The Cut, that also used the word ‘cut’ as slang for female genitalia and pee is still slang for ‘to urinate’ – none of this is obscure at all. Fortunately, I was able to find a second book in the same library that had not been written in the 1950s and was not nearly so prudish or so reticent to explain what ‘a cut’ was. I’m a bit embarrassed I needed it explained, but I cover it well.When people ask me what is my favourite play by Shakespeare I always hesitate – I mean, how could I possibly say this one when compared to the utter majesty of Lear or Hamlet? I must review Lear one of these days – no play is as likely to bring tears, no play so horrible and distressing or remarkable or devastatingly good. But the truth is that this play simply isn’t the same thing as Lear – it seems strange to give them the same name ‘play’ and really they can’t be compared. I love them both and possibly even equally – but for entirely different reasons. But it is love. Even the thought of this play makes me smile – it is a pure delight and all the confirmation one needs of the genius that is Shakespeare.
For a long time I preferred Shakespeare's tragedies to his comedies, and to an extent I still do; but I have found a new appreciation of his comedies, particularly in Twelfth Night. Economical yet unforced, hilarious yet humane, confined yet infinite, clever yet accessible: such is Twelfth Night or What You Will. The play follows the shipwrecked twins, Viola (disguised as the boy Cesario) and Sebastian, in Illyria, where the hilarity of mistaken identity and unwanted love and unrequited love are all turned up on the head and brought to a comedic reveal and reversal. Viola loves Orsino loves Olivia loves Viola, then marries Sebastian, mistaking him for Viola, upsetting Orsino, offending Antonio, etc. The tangled web of comedy in the final two acts is masterfully done, and the sideplot trick on the proud Malvolio is a misjustice sweetly served.What strikes me in Shakespeare is the commonalities among his plays, even down to the very tautology: "I am what I am," which I suspect is uttered in some permutation in all, or nearly all, his plays, which drives at the truth of identity and what it means to be "what you are." I was particularly struck by Viola's final assertion in this comedic exchange: OLIVIAStay:I prithee, tell me what thou thinkest of me.VIOLAThat you do think you are not what you are.OLIVIAIf I think so, I think the same of you.VIOLAThen think you right: I am not what I am."I am not what I am" - the very line which is the key to the character of Iago in Othello quoted verbatim for the ends of comedy. In saying the same line, Iago means that he is a trickster, that he deceives and betrays those who hold stock in his outward appearance of honesty. When Viola exclaims the same words, she means that she is literally not as she appears, that her outward appearance of a boy is but a disguise. Can anyone truly say "I am what I am," or conversely claim the opposite, without some irony or self-awareness that reverses the very claim? I am what I am, only insofar as I am aware of it myself, and only to myself can I be thus. To an acquaintance, I may be something utterly unfamiliar to my own perceptions of myself, which is shaped by his/her desires of me, expectations and prejudices of me, etc. So am I entirely what I am, or what I am not? The question of identity, what it means to be your true Self, is a common thread which traces its spool to the pre-Shakespearean dawn, and up through the consciousness of our own modern times. It is a question ever unresolved. And it can lead to both tragic, malicious ends, or result in comedic bemusement. Unlike in the literal masquerade of false identity in Much Ado About Nothing, the masks of Twelfth Night are true faces, disguised, but essentially true. In loving Viola and professing her love to her, Olivia reveals her masculinity and boldness, and also her Narcissism for liking what is literally closer to her self than any man. Though the play ends in a double marriage, and a conjoiner of Orsino and Olivia by the mutual relation of their spouses, one can't help but wonder of the happiness of Olivia with Sebastian, a man who she scarcely knows. Does she only love him for his appearance, which he shares with his sister's disguise? Or is there something more at the heart of it. While Viola truly loves Orsino as he is, even in his love for someone else, Olivia's love for Sebastian is never proven, only transferred. Despite the high comedy of the play, and the interplay of identities, doubles and disguises, there is a subtle question of the nature of the play which follows the play, the unwritten play, wherein the full effects of mistaken identity may play out to tragic or yet comedic ends.**********Additional thoughts on Twelfth Night:If Denmark is a prison, Illyria is a madhouse. The distinct flavor of pure comedy is a direct result of the the zaniness of all characters, save the fool! Shakespeare's "most perfect comedy" achieves such a status though Shakespeare's parodies on his own devices: turning upside-down his own ploy of mistaken identity and criss-crossed loves explored in previous romantic comedies and taking them to hilarious extremes. Illyria is a dukedom haunted by strange phantoms, men and women of such peculiar extremes as to parody themselves.Take the Duke, Orsino, who despite his surety of his infinite love for Olivia, seems more in love with himself, or rather in love with being in love. How quickly he can transfer his love for Olivia to Viola, as if it were a matter of rearranging the letters in her name. Olivia too is an oddity. Originally racked with grief, swearing off men completely, she is apparently fallen in love at first sight with the first boy she meets, and her boldness which may surpass some of Shakespeare's bolder heroines, though her bold pursuits are in favor of so ridiculous a prize.But the oddest man, or rather perhaps the least odd (besides the fool, which remains the only sure-headed man of the chaos of Illyria), is Malvolio, who feels very much at odds with his surroundings and would likely be much happier in almost any other play. In the pace of the play, we find Malvolio a fun butt to the deft prankster Maria, but at second glance, his fate is undeserved and almost cruel. Like Orsino, he is a parody unto himself, but he has an almost infinite creative imagination of himself: "Count Malvolio!" Surely his pride and egoism boarder on solipsism, but he remains one of Twelfth Night's great tragicomedic masterpieces. He at once deserves out pity and our jibes, though he is a man "greater sinn'd against than sinning" - to quote Lear's self styled betrayal by fate. He is an involuntary fool, gulled into a role which he holds beneath his station even as steward, and is locked in the dark cellar as his punishment, a fitting end for a man locked otherwise in the blinding brightness of his own imagination.
What do You think about Twelfth Night (2004)?
The book Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare was an interesting book. It was a very funny play that will show everyone that love is crazy. I enjoyed reading this play because not only was all of the characters confused in the play they were in love. Twelfth Night being the night of fun and disguses makes this book interesting. This is beacause Shakespeare made love seem hard to get. When in reality love is really hard to get. Malvolio was a great character because people tend to be like him. Even though he was rude and thought he was the boss of everyone deep down you know there is that loveable person that is really nice. Olivia was not my favorite character because she went straight for love when she said she was not. This play is one of the best plays.
—Janelle Fernandez
TWELFTH NIGHT OR WHAT YOU WILL_________________________Written round about the year 1601,Twelfth Night is the Twelfth Night Christmas, i.e., january 6th.In the romantic atmosphere of Twelfth Night, we feel as if we were transported to a world of make-believe and far away from the accepted standards of ordinary life. The time of the action of Twelfth Night is 3 days.The main-plot starts with the arrival of the shipwrecked brother and sister, Sebastian and Viola,on the shores of Illyria. Neither of them knows that the other is alive. Viola disguises herself as a man in order to get into the rervice of Duke Orsino. Orsino is languishing in love for a haughty and indifferent lady. It seems he has made love his profession. It should not be questioned why in a trice he transfers his love from Olivia to Viola. In romantic comedies, love at first sight ir the rule. Viola falls in love with the Duke at first sight. Olivia,who took a oath of mourning in memory of her dead brother for seven long years, falls in love with the Duke at first sight. Sebastian falls in love with Olivia at first sight. All these strange happenings are part and parcel of the paraphernalia of romantic comedy.Shakespeare being a skilful writer makes us suspend our disbelief in such improbable things. With his beautiful poetry he lulls our common sense to sleep. He succeeds in casting a charm over his characters, particularly women characters. Feste, the clown, makes a rich contribution to attainment of this end.The story of the sub-plot(Malvolio,Maria,Sir Andrew,Sir Toby,Fabian) is also very gripping.Shakespeare includes realism in it to give it a semblance of truth. Shakespeare achieves this harmonius blend of romantic and comic atmospheres by means of unique parallelism.The play is a beautiful blending of romance and realism too.A genial spirit pervades the whole of TN. The story suits the atmosphere,the action suits the story, the characters suit the action. All this is due to Shakespeare's superb genius!This is probably one of the finest plays ever written.Loved it!
—R.S.
Here Shakespeare borrows as so often in his comedies, from Plautus for the overarching plot--the separated siblings, the twinning (recall his Errors, and the Menaechmi), the arrival from sea. But he adds so much as to make it unrecognizable as a Roman comedy. He adds an attractive drunk, Sir Toby, who fleeces a silly aristocrat who--perhaps alone in literature-- knows himself to be silly. He adds, for instance, a parody of Renaissance psychiatry (well, more theology, but since "psyche" in Greek is both "soul" and "mind," that's fair) practiced on Shakespeare's only American. Instead of the common psyche ward question, "What does 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence' mean to you?" Feste as Reverend Psychiatrist asks, "What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning the soul?" Remember, you can't get out of the psyche ward unless you answer right. Well, Malvolio DOES get it right, he hits it out of the park, but Feste keeps him in lockdown anyway. Why? Herein lies a tale. Malvolio is portrayed as stark raving mad simply because he wants to marry the boss's daughter--or really, the boss herself. A crazy idea. An American idea, one that would take a couple centuries and a Revolution to be accepted by anybody at all. Those rejects on the other side of the Atlantic.Yes, Malvolio is Shakespeare's only American (except possibly Othello?). And he is indeed, as he himself pleads at plays end, notoriously abused. He vows revenge on the whole pack--which we, as delighted playgoers, cannot support, though justice, and America, are on his side.
—Alan
