Twelfth Night: Stuff to Chew On

In this episode, we will go over the major themes of Twelfth Night and touch on topics we will cover in depth in future episodes as well as any fun facts.

Kourtney Smith (KS):  All right. Happy Monday, Elyse.

Elyse Sharp (ES):  Yeah. Well, I mean, it'll be Wednesday, Korey.

KS:  Oh, that's right. It's Wednesday when everyone hears this episode.

ES:  Actually listens to us.

KS:  Yes, yes. Happy Wednesday to everyone. It's been a while.

ES: For us. 

KS: For us. 

ES: Not for you.

KS: Not for you. You have every two weeks, but we've had a little bit of a break, and we're jumping on into Twelfth Night.

ES:  We're very excited. So just like with our series on Macbeth, we are going to start off our series on Twelfth Night by going over what we've decided to call Stuff to Chew On, major themes, fun facts about this play that maybe can't take up a whole episode. General things that, when looking at this play, are good to know.

KS: And also dipping our toes into some ideas that we're going to talk about in depth. Think of this as your high school or your college required Shakespeare course for Twelfth Night.

ES:  Our Spark Notes.

KS:  Our Spark Notes. Yes. The Shakespeare Anyone.

ES:  Shakespeare Anyone.

KS:  Spark Notes.

ES:  Notes.

KS:  Oh, Shakespeare Anyone Notes.

ES:  Yeah. So. All right. Diving straight on in. Yes. This is our first play with a subtitle. Twelfth Night's full title is Twelfth Night or What You Will. What does What You Will mean?

KS:  Some say it could mean find your own title or make of this play as you wish. A lot of the characters in this play are finding their own and they're, you know, making of this play as you wish. Olivia even says to Orsino in Act 5 at the end, “even what it please my lord that shall become him,” which basically when you translate it into colloquial languages, whatever suits you or what you will. And that's how the play kind of ends.

ES:  Yeah. In this play, we also have the element of spectatorship. For one, the audience plays a part of a co-protagonist with several characters. We're included in the conspiracy on Viola's disguise and the trick on Malvolio. And spectatorship is referenced frequently throughout the play. Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Feste  talk about going to see blood sports such as woodcock trapped, trout tickling, badger hunting, and most famously bear baiting.

KS:  And Olivia herself compares her situation with Cesario as if she is being bear baited when Cesario is refuting her advances. She compares herself to the bear in the arena that the hounds would be attacking, right? I don't, I'm actually not, I'm not a very big scholar on bear baiting, but that's my- 

ES: Well, you've come to the right lady.

KS: Go on, Elyse. 

ES: Um, so in case you didn't know, the theater district in London during Shakespeare's time, especially once that theater was moved over the Thames, not the most savory high class of neighborhoods, lots of other entertainment was also going on.

KS:  Correct.

ES:  And one of those other things, there would be cockfighting, which would be let's let some roosters loose and make them fight. As well as bear baiting, literally a bear is chained up in the center of arena and is forced to fight some dogs.

KS:  Some very hungry dogs, right? Probably.

ES:  Some very hungry dogs. Yes. So that's what your choices were for entertainment. If you were a person living in London during Shakespeare's time, and when you were choosing where to spend your money, that's what the theater was up against as well.

KS:  And some theaters, I do know some theaters would be playhouses and then when they weren't performing plays would double as arenas for some of these blood sports.

ES:  Yes. So it's like you've got Broadway next to your monster truck rallies. Same location. That's what's happening.

KS:  Yep.

ES:  Nothing against monster truck rallies, but that's sort of like- 

KS: A good comparison for us today. 

ES: Good comparison for us today. Just in like the pure, like, let's watch things get destroyed versus let's sit and watch a play.

KS:  And in a lot of cases with Elizabethan theater, let's go hear a play.

ES:  Let's go hear a play. Theater, again, like we've talked about earlier, was not let's go sit in silence and just watch these professional actors. It was interactive. They were more like a major league baseball with, you know, people walking around selling concessions.

KS:  Drinking beer.

ES:  Drinking beer, having a good time, you know. Would you choose to do that or choose to go watch some animal violence?

KS:  Yep. The choice is yours.

ES:  Speaking of spectators, this play, however, not originally performed in the theater.

KS:  What do you mean, Elyse?

ES: This play was first performed at court. There is a whole sub-genre of Shakespeare plays that were originally written to be performed at court, which didn't necessarily mean also in a palace. It could be just in a great hall that would have been attended by courtiers. This one specifically was performed at Middle Temple, which was sort of like a club for members of the English bar. Basically, if you belonged here, you could be called a lawyer. 

KS: Right. A barrister.

ES:  And it is one of four inns of court that is allowed to call their members barristers. So it's a professional organization like, I don't know.

KS:   Like any sort of Harvard legal society, probably.

ES:  Yeah. Yes, that's a good way. It's a legal society. It's a professional organization and all practicing lawyers have to belong to one. There's four of them in England.

KS:  So this play in particular was not performed originally or created originally for the intent

of being at the Globe Theater. We know that this play was first performed at court for Elizabeth, and we know that because there's records of a diary from John Manningham, who was a fourth year law student at Middle Temple, who wrote in his diary in February of 1602, “At our feast, we had a play called Twelfth Night or What You Will, much like The Comedy of Errors or Menaechmi in Plautus.” I'm sorry, I'm butchering that. “But most like and near to that in Italian called Inganni.” And after this acknowledgement of the play and kind of placing this particular play in a place with a date, he also continues by raving about the prank. He loves Malvolio being tricked into, you know, smiling and wearing the yellow garter, yellow stockings and the cross gartering. He thought it was hilarious. And there are more diary entries that have been found that place this particular play in performances on specific days. Even King Charles, his second edition folio, it didn't give us a date that he saw the performance, but it gave us insight that his favorite character in this play was probably Malvolio because he wrote on his table of contents by the plays, the characters that he liked. So next to Twelfth Night, it says Malvolio. So this was a popular play at the time.

ES: Aww

KS: Yeah. 

ES: Also, fun fact, if you decide to look up Manningham's diary, we did not get the date wrong. Manningham's actual diary is dated 1601 because they were using the Julian calendar during Shakespeare's time and years are slightly longer in the Julian calendar compared to the Gregorian calendar, which is still used today. So if you Google the original performance date, it'll say 1602, which is the date we've chosen to use in the podcast. And if you compare that to the date that Manningham wrote down, it looks like they're a year apart.

KS:  Yeah. No one is making an error. It's just a difference in the calendar being used.

ES:  When we can find those alternate dates, we will call them out.

KS:  Yes. We'll try our best.

ES:  The date of February is interesting because this play is called Twelfth Night and Twelfth Night is an actual annual event.

KS:  Yes.

ES:  It's possible that the first performance of this show was actually on the calendar date of Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night is the last day of the Christmas season, which is then taken over by the election of a festus or a lord of misrule to preside over the maskings, interludes, music, song, and other forms of merrymaking.

KS:  Yes. And in case you heard, festus, Feste. Hm.

ES:  Oh.

KS:  Yeah.

ES:  Did not catch that.

KS:  Oh, did not catch that. Yeah.

ES: No.

KS: There's a lot of these, yeah, a festus and Feste. And the title is more, it is definitely a reference to this holiday in terms of date, but it's also more than that. It's also a reference to that general carnivalesque revelry. This play was written at a time when people were anxious about the state of Queen Elizabeth's health. It was, you know, 1600, 1601 is around the time it was being written. And this play in particular really emphasizes the carnivalesque, topsy-turvy revelry of this holiday.

ES:  Twelfth Night, the Christian holiday, technically celebrates the Feast of Epiphany, which in Western Christianity commemorates principally the visit of the Magi to Jesus, and thus Jesus's physical manifestation to Gentiles. It's also called Three Kings Day in some cultures, as those are the three wise kings.

KS:  That's interesting because this is for later on, but the number three is referenced a ton in this play.

ES:  Yeah. Also, Eastern Christians, which would not apply to England, but it's fun to note, also commemorate the baptism of Jesus on this day.

KS:  Okay.

ES:  And the traditional date for the feast is January 6th.

KS:  Okay. Next January 6th, let's get prepared to celebrate Twelfth Night.

ES:  Yes.

KS:  And this holiday, it's also similar to Saturnalia, if you're familiar with the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, but that's for another episode. In addition to the holiday of Twelfth Night, there's also a lot of interesting things to talk about with setting and geopolitics.

ES: Let's start with the setting.

KS:  Yes. This play takes place in Illyria, and Illyria was not well known. It was not a well known location in Shakespeare's time, and it probably was able to disassociate audiences from the geopolitics of the time. Here's a little bit about Illyria historically. It is on the Adriatic coast, and it came to be known for piracy against the Romans, conquering all the places. And eventually, it did fall to the Romans. And then, fast forward a little bit later, I think it's like the 6th century, it became ethnically Slavic, and the Slavs renamed it Albania. So, this area, Illyria, no longer called Illyria in today's day, but it was geographically Mediterranean on the Adriatic coast, it was ethnically Slavic, and it was politically Italian. Italian with air quotes because Italy hadn't unified, but for the sake of simplicity, it's politically Italian. Illyria is kind of a utopian no place that could be any place, and this really gives Shakespeare a lot of liberty to say what he wants to say without the consequences of the geopolitics of setting it in England or setting it in a place that's very real and not kind of mythological.

ES: But then he does reference some real people. For example, the Italian Orsini family has a very similar name to Orsino. The Orsini family was a very well-known Italian family from way back in the Italian Renaissance, and their influence had spread wide by this time. Orsino's name likely would have suggested to the audience that the court system in fictional Illyria is more Italian than English. Additionally, we know that a member of the family, Virginio Orsini, visited the English court in 1601, and that's the Gregorian calendar date for those of you following along, to participate in the Christmas revelries and would have been entertained by the first production of Twelfth Night. Queen Elizabeth actually danced a galliard, which is kind of dance, for him to show off how vigorous she was in her old age. And while it's likely that Orsino was named in his honor, we don't know if the character is actually based on him any further.

KS:  I love that though, the side of a play that was written while people were anxious about Elizabeth's health, standing up going like, no, no, no, no, I got it. I'll show you these dance moves. I am young. I am totally fine. Yeah, I think that's very funny.

ES:  That's about all the background that we have.

KS:  Yes.

ES:  Now we can dive into some of the major themes that happen throughout this play. There's a lot.

KS:  There are so many major themes.

ES:  So, first up. 

KS: In our long list. 

ES: In our long list, love and desire. Most of the characters in this play are motivated by love and romantic sexual desire. Additionally, love is shown as a cause of suffering. Many characters view love as a form of suffering. Starting off with Duke Orsino, “if music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it.” Let me just overindulge in love. 

KS: Yes.

ES: Olivia refers to it as starving, plague. Again, referencing blood sports and how she feels like a bear trapped in the bear baiting cage when dealing with Cesario.

KS:  Cesario's rejection, yeah.

ES:  And then meanwhile, Malvolio and Antonio suffer from a lack of love or unrequited love.

KS:  Unrequited love, yeah. There's also this uncertainty of gender, right? This is one of Shakespeare's so-called transvestite comedies. That's the term that is used traditionally, but it's one of these plays where you have a character dressing up as what would have in Shakespeare's time been called transvestism. Viola deciding to dress up in her brother's kind of image to navigate the world. And this uncertainty of gender confuses Olivia, Orsino. There's a lot of homoerotic undertones. And then Viola herself as Cesario is compared to Narcissus who would have been a Greek character who is in between the lines of being female and male. And then you also have, while male-presenting, Orsino saying that Cesario has Diana's lips, right?

ES:  In addition, when Viola is dressed as Cesario, she is pretending to be a eunuch. Therefore, as Cesario, Viola is still not fully a man and not fully a woman existing in the gray of the binary.

KS:  So there's this kind of lack of binariness in this play that causes a lot of confusion. Just a lot of confusion.

ES:  The whole plot of the show.

KS:  The entire plot of the show.

ES:  Then we have the folly of ambition. Malvolio specifically is opportunistic and is trying to achieve a status beyond his means and his current state. But also Malvolio kind of ends in folly because of his ambition.

KS:  Yes, exactly. It's not like it's not like Macbeth, which had ambition as this tragic device that leads to everyone suffering. This is comical for all the characters on stage besides Malvolio, and it's comical to the audience, us co-conspirators, us spectators.

ES:  In a way, much like Macbeth, Malvolio is punished for his ambition, except this time it's a punchline rather than a tragedy.

KS: Exactly. This play also has a ton of disguise and deception. We see it, you know, straight out the gate, Viola disguising herself to navigate the world. And this disguise deceives those around her, like Olivia, like Orsino. You know, there's a couple of characters who possibly see through this disguise. You could play up that Feste can see through the disguise, but most everyone's deceived. But you also have Olivia disguising, right? She's suffering. She has the loss of her father and her brother, and she's wearing traditional mourning blacks and she's got a veil that she's using to disguise herself.

ES: In many productions, they give her many handmaidens who are also wearing veils. So that moment when Cesario asks who is the lady of the house, it's because there's just a bunch of people wearing veils.

KS: Veiled women

ES: So she is in that moment in disguise.

KS: You also have Feste, who is dressed up as Sir Topas, the parson, in order to trick Malvolio in the darkroom scene.

ES: Right. And of course, there's the entire deception of the plot against Malvolio, writing letters pretending to be somebody you're not. Maria using the fact that her handwriting is similar enough to Olivia's to play this prank.

KS: And you find out that Sebastian, when he first is rescued by Antonio, has disguised himself and deceived Antonio and calls himself Roderigo. You have a slew of characters who are all disguising themselves, all deceiving themselves, and it happens very frequently in this play.

ES: Next up, there is madness. We see many accusations of being mad. Well, obviously, with Malvolio getting locked in the darkroom. 

KS: Yes. 

ES: But also, Antonio and Sebastian have a back and forth accusing each other of madness because of the mistaken identity. Antonio seeing Viola as Cesario and mistaking Cesario for Sebastian. And then Cesario thinking, calling Antonio mad.

KS: Yes, being like, he's a madman. I've never met this man in my life.

ES: Yes. And then Sebastian also feeling like the world has gone topsy turvy because he's shown up in Illyria and this woman has told him that she loves him.

KS:  Hey babe, let's go get married.

ES:  Let's get married.

KS: Let's just do it now.

ES:  And he's just like, I mean, I'm fine with it, but I might have lost my mind.

KS:  Yeah. And then in the same scene where he's also questioning his madness, he's like, well, maybe she's mad. And then it's like, no, if she was mad, how is it that she's able to control everyone in her household? If she's mad and she's got her control over her household, she's really good at doing what she does or everyone else is mad.

ES:  Therefore, I must be mad.

KS:  I must be mad. Yeah. Another theme that we have is time. The perception of time is different depending on who is talking about time. Viola decides that she's going to just trust time. She says, “this knot is..’ that. Sorry, Elyse, I want to get that quote.

ES:  “Time, thou must unravel this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me to untie.”

KS: “for me to unite”  Yeah. Yeah. I just don't have it memorized.

ES:  I don't know where that came from. I'm so sorry. 

KS: That's OK. I, OK, I mean. 

ES: Give yourself 20 years.

KS:  And they're going to stick there.

ES:  Oh, my God.

KS:  Elyse just had her own grappling with time. 

ES: Yep. Uh huh.

KS: “Oh, time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me to untie.” You also have Olivia, who is, who sees time with anxiety as she's trying to get Cesario to say yes. Once Cesario has said yes, let's get married. Time is of the essence to Olivia. The priest is a kind of timekeeper in which he reminds us of, you know, moving towards death. Malvolio talks of temporal decorum. Sir Toby talks of timelessness. So there's a lot of discrepancies on how characters view time. And on top of that, there's a discrepancy on the window of time that the play takes place. So you've got Curio talking to Viola saying, oh, it's been three days since you've been here and Orsino is really, you know, really likes you. And then at the end of the play, you find out that it's been three months since Cesario has been in Orsino's court. So time is just not really clear. That also makes a lot of sense with the topsy turviness of the play.

ES:  So those are some big ones, big major themes. Then we have a couple things that are just sprinkled throughout the play. Sir Toby talks a lot about the legal system, his troubles of the legal system. Feste's had trouble with the legal system that Olivia's had to get him out of.

KS: The captain, we found out at the end of the play, is put in jail because Malvolio has sued him. So that's another thing with the legal system. Yeah, Sir Andrew Aguecheek can never get the legal system right when he's trying to defend himself against the duel and the violence. And then he, you know, incriminates himself.

ES:  Antonio is literally not allowed to be in Illyria because he's a pirate and has been banned by Duke Orsino. So there's a lot of small external from the play things to track of.

KS:  Right.

ES:  Other things going on in these characters' lives outside of the shenanigans that they’re getting into.

KS:  The immediate actions. Yeah, yeah. This play is also full of sexual innuendos. There's a lot of bawdy humor. We see that a lot with Mariah and Sir Andrew. Those are the two really big ones, especially with that accost scene. But there's a lot of sexual innuendos and bawdy humor throughout this play. Oh, the C's, the U's, the T's and P's. This play takes a lot of, has a lot of fun with dirty humor.

ES: Yeah. Then, of course, speaking of humor, there's folly and fools. This is the first, I mean, this is only our second play, but this is the first one with a true fool. The fool tradition is alive and well in Feste.

KS:  He is a licensed fool, a licensed clown. And it is his job to be a fool. It's his job to be a clown. And there's a lot of question of being a professional fool versus being a fool by nature. You've got Malvolio and what is being a fool? And the last thing that we just want to kind of acknowledge is that this play, Twelfth Night, does a lot of changing between prose and verse. So beginning at the beginning of the, beginning at the beginning, beginning at the beginning of the play, you have the characters of the aristocracy speaking in verse to each other. And you have members of Olivia's house speaking in prose. And one thing that's really interesting to note is that Viola kind of code switches. When she's speaking with Olivia and Orsino, she's oftentimes speaking in verse. And when she's speaking to Feste or she's speaking to members of Olivia's household, she's speaking in prose. So in a way, that's also topsy turvy.

KS: Viola is–

ES: –living between the binary of prose and verse.

KS:  Yep, exactly. Like Twelfth Night, the holiday itself, there's a lot of stuff that shouldn't happen, but it does happen. Social ranks, gender ranks, verbal ranks, all of it's getting switched up in this play. And it's, it's fun to watch.

ES:  Yeah. And it's not just fun now. It was fun back then. The play was incredibly popular when it premiered and for decades later. And like we said earlier, King Charles I really enjoyed Malvolio.

KS:  But unfortunately, the play went out of fashion from roughly the 1670s until 1741 due to its silliness. During and after the English Restoration, there was this kind of general neoclassical taste in art of the highest rank. And this play was considered too silly to a lot of people. We actually have some diary entries from some curmudgeons of the time who decided that Twelfth Night was too silly.

ES:  Yes. Samuel Pepys wrote the first ever recorded bad review of this play in 1661 after seeing the play with King Charles II. And then in 1663, someone apparently forced him to see it again and he wrote that he took no enjoyment. But Korey has the full quotes.

KS:  He wrote, he, “observed at the opera, a new play, Twelfth Night, that was acted there and the king there. So I, against my own mind and resolution, could not forbear to go in, which did make the play seem a burden to me. And I took no pleasure at all in it.”

ES:  So he's saying, so he's saying that because the king's there, he can't say no, even though he doesn't really want to go watch this play. And so he just sat there, miserable.

KS:  Yes, thank you for translating it. And then in 1669, he was back for his third attempt and his judgment is still more severe. “Thence to the Duke of York's house and saw Twelfth Night as it is now revived. But I think one of the weakest plays that ever I saw on the stage.” So.

ES: Not a fan. One star, would not see again unless I'm forced to, said Samuel Pepys. It's like he's going, why does this keep getting revived? Well, lucky for him, a few years later, people would be…

KS:  People would agree with him. And then the play had a, was revived in 1741. And since then, it has been wildly popular. One of William Shakespeare's most popular comedy plays to perform and to go see.

ES:  And that wraps up our Stuff to chew on on Twelfth Night.

KS: And we'll be jumping into our first topic of the Twelfth Night series. 

ES: In two weeks. 

KS: So stay tuned for that.

ES: Thanks for listening

Quote of the Episode

KS:  From The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 4, Scene 4, spoken by Sylvia. “Go give your master this. Tell him from me, one Julia, that his changing thought to forget would better fit his chamber than his shadow.”

Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp.

Note: When this episode was recorded, Kourtney Smith was using the stage name "Korey Leigh Smith".

Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.

Follow us on Instagram at @shakespeareanyonepod for updates or visit our website at shakespeareanyone.com

Works Referenced:

“Introduction.” Twelfth Night, edited by Keir Elam, The Arden Shakespeare, 2008, pp. 1–26. Third.

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNotes: Twelfth Night.” SparkNotes.com, SparkNotes LLC, 2005. Accessed 14 May. 2021 from https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/twelfthnight/.