This is Part III of my Director’s Notes to Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4.

After Feste’s exit, Orsino decides that he’s had enough of everyone, dismisses everyone but the main nuncio of the theme–

Orsino: Let all the rest give place: Once more, Cesario,
Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty:
Tell her my love more noble than the world
Prizes not quantity of dirty lands–
The parts that fortune hath bestow’d upon her:
Tell her I hold as giddily as Fortune–
But ’tis that miracle, and Queen of Gems
That nature ‘dorns her in, attracts my soul.

Orsino, having caught onto the money-blunder fault with Feste earlier, basically instructs Cesario to get back to Olivia to tell her that he doesn’t want her for her money (”prizes not quantity of dirty lands”), and in fact, he views those “parts that fortune hath bestow’d upon her… as giddily as Fortune” (in other words, he’s too rich to care about more money). Rather, Orsino’s soul loves her for the miracle of her beauty, “adorned her by nature”.

Viola, fearing the worst, asks:

Viola: But, if she cannot love you sir.

Orsino can’t take that:

Orsino: It cannot be so answer’d.

Viola, completing Orsino’s pentameter, tries to reason with him, so what if some lady loves you with as much love as you do Olivia, and you cannot love her. She’d have to take that:

Viola:
      Sooth but you must.
Say that some Lady, as perhaps there is,
Hath for your love as great a pang of heart
As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her –
You tell her so — Must she not then be answer’d?

Orsino then gives a rather misogynistic worldview, of no woman’s body being able to withstand the “beating of so strong a passion / as love doth give [his] heart.” Moreover, he claims a woman’s heart can’t be “so big, to hold so much, [because] they lack retention.” It’s curious how Orsino opened the play wishing to have his love quenched by a gluttony of it, and now his view on love has it such that his is “as hungry as the Sea, / and can digest as much.” Basically, “mak no compare / between that love a woman can bear me.”

Orsino:
      There is no woman’s sides.
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion,
As love doth give my heart: no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much, they lack retention.
Alas, their love may be call’d appetite,
No motion of the Liver, but the Pallate,
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt,
But mine is all as hungry as the Sea,
And can digest as much, make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me,
And that I owe Olivia.

Viola replies immediately, with melancholy:

Viola:    Aye, but I know.

Orsino is surprised at Viola’s quick response, pauses, perhaps cocks an eyebrow, before curiosity takes over at this young page’s impertinence:

Orsino:    What dost thou know?

Viola admits she knows “too well,” the kind of love women have for men, and that this love is “as true of heart” as “ours (men’s).” She then goes on to mention her father’s daughter, who’d loved a man, the same way that Cesario might love his Lord–were Cesario a woman, that is!

Viola:
Too well that love women to men may owe:
In faith they are as true of heart, as we.
My Father had a daughter lov’d a man
As it might be perhaps, were I a woman
I should your Lordship.

Intrigued, Orsino immediately asks for her story:

Orsino:  &nbsp And what’s her history?

Viola begins her tale with the classic result of repressed unrequited love, “Nothing happened, because she never told him… She pined away, patiently like a statue, but wasted away, smiling at this bittersweet unrequitedness.” Viola challenges Orsino’s bulimic appetite with this silent death of a love (that’s very real and present to herself), asking if this is love, and concluding that men say a lot, but it’s all “a show of vows,” as the love isn’t really sinecere:

Viola:
A blank, my Lord: she never told her love,
But let concealment like a worm i’th bud
Feed on her damask cheek: she pin’d in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a Monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed
Our shows are more than will: for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love.

Enchanted by this story of a woman with love so strong, that she would waste away, Orsino asks the blunt question–did she actually die:

Orsino: But died thy sister of her love, my Boy?

Viola, also enchanted by her own story, answers too close to the truth, referring herself to herself as her father’s daughter, and all the brothers as well, but she knows not. Then, she makes a quick exit by changing the topic back “on theme”:

Viola:
I am all the daughters of my Father’s house,
And all the brothers too; and yet I know not.
Sir, shall I to this Lady?

Orsino, realizing that they’d greatly digressed from his initial intent, gets back on topic. It seems as if he’s enacting the proof of how men’s vows are more show than anything else, as he gives Cesario a jewel to give Olivia (even though wealth is not the reason for his courting):

Orsino:
      Aye, that’s the Theme,
To her in haste: give her this Jewell: say,
My love can give no place, bid no denay.

Tags: Orsino, Viola

This is Part II of my Director’s Notes to Act 2, Scene 4. The music accompanying this piece will be in another post.

Curio returns with Feste.

Orsino beseeches Feste to sing that song from last night, that tells of old knowledge and simple truth that the spinsters and knitters, and even free maids, know and used to sing, back in the “good old days”:

Orsino:
O fellow come, the song we had last night:
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;
The Spinsters and the Knitters in the Sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,
Do use to chant it: it is simple sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the Old Age.

Feste does not try to complete Orsino’s queer pentameter, instead, wants to get this task done with:

Feste: Are you ready, Sir?

And, Orsino commands him to sing:

I prithee sing.

And, Feste sings a song whose tune is lost to our modern mess (though the variorum mentions “Mistres to the Courtier” has a line that goes like “fie away, fie away, fie, fie, fie), so I will get to compose a new tune just for this (see a forthcoming post):

Feste:
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress, let me be laid.
Fie away, fie away, breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid:
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O prepare it.
My part of death no one so true did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin, let there be strewn:
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpses, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save, lay me where
Sad true lover never find my grave, to weep there.

Orsino offers coin, but what’s curious is that though Feste happily accepted Andrew and Toby’s coin last night, he seems reluctant to accept Orsino’s. He even stammers a bit, saying “sir”, twice.

Orsino: There’s for thy pains.
Feste: No pains, sir, I take pleasure in singing, sir.

Orsino seems rather insistent on paying. Feste apparently does not want to get paid — rather, it’s queer how Orsino can take the music so close to heart, and yet treat its voice like just another hired goon. Though both Olivia and Orsino are more well off (financially) than the person they offer coin to, this contrasts with Act 1, Scene 5, where Viola rejects Olivia’s coin, because Feste takes pleasure in performing, and Viola-Cesario, took the act as an obligation. Both, though, believe coin to be superfluous:

Orsino: I’ll pay thy pleasure then.
Feste: Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid one time, or another.

The idea of a hired voice taking so much to heart, as to reject coin–even politely–is too much for Orsino:

Orsino: Give me now leave, to leave thee.

Feste then comments on Orsino’s fickleness, though in obscure riddle (that a tailor should make his doublet of silk of changing-colors, because his mind is opal-like in fleeting change). Feste would set these inconstant men out to see, so that they could do everything, everywhere, thus making a good trip of nothing (their constitution).

Feste: Now the melancholy God protect thee, and the Tailor make thy doublet of changeable Taffeta, for thy mind is very Opal. I would have men of such constancy put to Sea, that their business might be everything, and their intent everywhere; for that’s it, that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell.

And, Feste exits with a formal Farewell.

(It looks like Viola could be Feste’s understudy, with Viola leaving, perhaps to sit in a hidden dept, still within the Duke’s court — so Duke yells out “Mark it, Cesario”. Viola is not present in this exchange–indeed, Viola and Feste might sound so similar, hence the Duke’s voice-confusion, the two might have been played by the same actor!)

Tags: feste, Orsino

This is yet another entry in my “Director’s Notes” category.

Orsino’s Court is gathered, as he enters declaring for yet more music:

Orsino: Give me some Musick! Now good morrow friends.

Orsino then addresses Cesario about the old and clown-like song sung last night, plenty brisk and light…

Orsino:
Now good Cesario, but that piece of song,
That old and Antic song we heard last night;
Methought it did release my passion much,
More than light airs, and recollected terms
Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.
Come, but one verse.

Though it would be Curio who answers:

Curio: He is not here (to please your Lordship) that should sing it?

Orsino, out of his daze, realizes it wasn’t Cesario who sung, but someone else? (This Cesario-Feste song-voice confusion implies that Feste’s voice might be that of an eunuch’s, and thus we’ve cast a girl for Feste.)

Orsino: Who was it?

Curio, ever-reminding Orsino of his advance age, closer to that of Olivia’s father’s:

Curio: Feste the Jester, my Lord, a fool that the Lady Olivia’s Father took much delight in. He is about the house.

I imagine Orsino going into another sort of “fugue” from his lovesickness, thus when he says “Seek him out,” Orsino refers to both Olivia’s father and Feste the Jester.

Orsino: Seek him out, and play the tune the while.

Curio leaves.

Music plays, as Orsino describes to Cesario how skittish a lover is, and that these tremors and ticks can only be quenched to a monogamous standing-still-contentedness in the beloved’s presence — ideally, this would be timed (in a way, as if Orsino is saying lyrics to a song, timing to tune) so that the tune climaxes to a recognizable phrase right when Orsino says “How does thou like this tune”:

Orsino:
Come hither Boy, if ever thou shalt love
In the sweet pangs of it, remember me:
For such as I am, all true Lovers are,
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is belov’d. How does thou like this tune?

Viola reveals much about the tune–it reflects Orsino’s flavor of wild, lyric abandon in love:

Viola:
It gives a very echo to the seat
Where love is thorn’d.

Orsino, after commending Viola’s lines as a sort of wisdom (though she might have meant it, more satirically), basically says, “I’ll bet my life on it — that you’re in love, right, boy?”:

Orsino:
        Thou dost speak masterly,
My life upon’t — young though thou art, thine eye
Hath stay’d upon some favour that it loves:
Hath it not boy?

Viola replies, “Just a bit, and only if you like it…”:

Viola:       A little, by your favour.

It’s curious that Orsino asks “what kind” instead of another question, but this gives Viola a good opportunity to be both obvious, yet general — she completes his pentameter, thus the two lines together, express a full thought:

Orsino: What kind of woman is’t?
Viola:     Of your complexion.

Orsino humble? “I’m not good enough for you, boy?” Or, does he identify himself with “old”, when considering himself with the boy, and, hence his followup “question for clarification”:

Orsino: She is not worth thee then. What years i’faith?

Viola pauses for a few syllables, starting only at the end of her fresh pentameter:

Viola:     About your years, my Lord.

Orsino would begin his line with a sort of incredulous chuckle, and then advise Cesario on the way “things should be”: that the woman should take someone older than herself, and adapt herself to him, to thus “level her place” in her husband’s heart. She’d have to do that because men aren’t constant creatures, however they might praise themselves, but have giddy, more fleeting fancies than women’s.

Orsino:
Too old by heavens: Let still the woman take
An elder than herself, so wears she to him;
So sways the level in her husband’s heart:
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women’s are.

Viola replies, immediately, completing Orsino’s pentameter with, “I think that’s ok, even though”.

Viola:     I think it well, my Lord.

Orsino beseeches Cesario to find a younger love, one younger than even himself, or his affection would not be able to stand the change–for women are like roses, whose fairness falls the moment they are picked.

Orsino:
Then let thy Love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent:
For women are as Roses, whose fair flower
Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour.

Viola agrees, finds it pitiful, summarizes the crux of the problem, lyrically, “To die, even when they to perfection grow.”

Viola:
And so they are: alas, that they are so:
To die, even when they to perfection grow.

Tags: Curio, Orsino, Viola

This is Part E of the director’s commentary on Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3. (A | B | C | D | E)

Toby refers to Maria as Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons, for the scope of her scheme, and in jest, for her size.

Toby: Good night, Penthesilea.

Toby and Andrew then say some good words of her, and Toby finds wonder in that Maria adores him:

Andrew: Before me, she’s a good wench.
Toby: She’s a beagle true bred, and one that adores me: what o’that.

Pensively, Andrew states the truth (though he’s here on business to woo Olivia, he’s hardly adored):

Andrew: I was ador’d once too.

Toby changes the topic, to more immediate concerns:

Toby: Let’s to bed, knight: Thou hadst need send for more money.

Though inebriated, Andrew still has some of his wits about him:

Andrew: If I cannot recover your Niece, I am foul way out.

Toby gives the rich man’s son an easy solution–send for more money, and things will all work out in the end:

Toby: Send for money knight, if thou hast her not i’th end, call me Cut.

Andrew, galvanized by Toby’s assurance, declares:

Andrew: If I do not, never trust me, take it how you will.

Not wishing Andrew to be off on his own to think otherwise, he shepherds his friend back to the tavern:

Toby: Come, come, I’ll go burn some Sack, ’tis too late to go to bed now: Come knight, come knight.

Tags: Andrew, Scene 3, Toby

This is Part D of the director’s commentary on Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3. (A | B | C | D | E)

It’s interesting that Andrew’s the first one who starts the discussion of possible plots to get back at Malvolio, and being a knave knight, he suggests that they duel-cuckold the old Steward:

Andrew: T’were as good a deed as to drink when a man’s a hungry, to challenge him the field, and then to break promise with him, and make a fool of him.

And, rather than being the one to propose ideas, Toby offers to help:

Toby: Do it knight. I’ll write thee a Challenge, or I’ll deliver thy indignation to him by word of mouth.

Maria, having recovered from being unexpectedly put down by Malvolio, is ready to get back at him, and to win Toby’s admiration:

Maria: Sweet Sir Toby, be patient for tonight: Since the youth of the Count’s was today with my Lady, she is much out of quiet. For Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him: If I do not gull him into a nayword, and make him a common recreation, do not think I have written enough to lye straight in my bed. I know I can do it.

Toby is intrigued (somehow I imagine him saying this like Sylvester the Cat in Looney Tunes, with a sort of lisp):

Toby: Possess us, possess us, tell us something of him.

Maria continues, setting up her scene:

Maria: Marry sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan.

Andrew, knowing that he can’t beat Maria in wits, now tries to win Toby’s heart via brawn:

Andrew: O, if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog.

Toby is amused:

Toby: What for being a Puritan, thy exquisite reason, dear knight.

Always very straight-forward, simple-minded Andrew replies:

Andrew: I have no exquisite reason for’t, but I have reason good enough.

Maria explains how her scheme will work:

Maria: The devil’s a Puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser, an affection’d Ass, that cons state without book and utters it by great swarths. The best persuaded of himself, so crammed (as he thinks) with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith, that all look on him, love him: and on that vice in him, will my revenge find notable cause to work.

Toby is ready for it–he asks the big “what”

Toby: What wilt thou do?

And she presents it:

Maria: I will drop in his way some obscure Epistles of love, wherein by the colour of his beard, the shape of his legs, the manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. I can write very like my Lady, your niece — on a forgotten matter we can hardly make distinction of our hands.

Toby takes some time to figure it out:

Toby: Excellent, I smell a device…

Floppishly, Andrew is still trying to win Toby’s approval on the scheme to get back at Malvolio:

Andrew: I hav’t in my nose too.

And, Toby figures it out!:

Toby: He shall think by the Letters that thou wilt drop that they come from my Niece, and that she’s in love with him.

Maria, with mysterious and malicious intrigue:

Maria: My purpose is indeed a horse of that colour.

Andrew gets it, too:

Andrew: And your horse now would make him an Ass.

Maria agrees.

Maria: Ass, I doubt not.

Andrew, no longer competing against Maria, enamored by the plan, is all for it:

Andrew: O t’will be admirable.

Maria assigns her cast (though the Fool, being only haphazardly available, will be replaced by Fabian). Maria makes her leave.

Maria: Sport royal, I warrant you: I know my Physic will work with him. I will plant you two, and let the Fool make a third, where he shall find the Letter. Observe his construction of it. For this night to bed, and dream on the event: Farewell.

Maria exits.

Tags: Andrew, Maria, Toby

This is Part C of the director’s commentary on Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3. (A | B | C | D | E)

After Feste leaves, Toby asserts his righteousness, then tells Malvolio to busywork himself by polishing his chain with crumbs. This time, he asks Maria for wine, not Marian:

Toby: Th’art i’th right. Go sir, rub your Chain with crumbs. A stoop of wine, Maria.

Malvolio attempts to beseech Maria, wrongly believing her to be an ally. Except, Maria entertains Toby’s wish, giving him more wine, and thus Malvolio gives his threat.

Malvolio: Mistress Mary, if you priz’d my Lady’s favor at anything more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule. She shall know of it by this hand.

Malvolio exits via a quick door. Maria, quite shaken up by his threat, replies with fury:

Maria: Go shake your ears!

Tags: Andrew, Malvolio, Maria, Toby

This is Part B of the director’s commentary on Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3. (A | B | C | D | E)

Maria enters in the middle of Scene 3, after the festive trio have been making some noise via songs and such.

Maria: What a caterwauling do you keep here? If my Lady have not call’d up her Steward Malvolio, and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me.

Toby replies partly in prose, partly in song:

Toby: My Lady’s a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio’s a Peg-a-Ramsey, and Three Merry men be we. Am not I consanguinious? Am I not of her blood: tilly vally. Lady, There dwelt a man in Babylon, Lady, Lady.

Toby’s reply might be taken to be a punny though drunken “tilly vally” (”fiddlesticks” nonsensical) retort, where, he “reasons” if he’s a “Caterwaulian,” his “consanguinious” (blood-related) cousin must be a “Cataian”. If the three must be quiet, then they might as well be plotting politicians, and if Malvolio’s the person who’d tell them off, then he’s the Peg-a-Ramsey spy… And the festive trio converge to just one person, and thus there’s just three parties–the Cataian Lady, the politician, and the Peg-a-Ramsey.

Crystal Shakespeare interprets Toby’s reply to have some “sense” to it: Cataian - a scoundrel or spy from the Cathays (an area, “roughly” known as China), politicians (players of intrigue), and Peg-a-ramsey (song samples: here and here), referring to the ballad of a spying wife. On giving a geographic interpretation to Cathays — incidentally, this article by Y.Z. Chang has more info on the Elizabethans’ perception of the Cataian or Cathayans (Incidentally, it was published in 1936, a year before the Nanjing Massacre).

Both Arden and the Variorum suggest using the tune of Greensleeves for “There dwelt a man in Babylon…” — for comic effect (and, since we’re not doing a period production, per se), perhaps have a bit of a “Broadway ring” in the ending, “Lady, Lady.”

Toby’s drunken imagination seems to be irking Feste, “beshrewing him,” in that Toby seems a better fool than he, now.

Feste: Beshrew me, the knight’s in admirable fooling.

Andrew, being Andrew, seems eager to claim credit for fool:

Andrew: Aye, he do’s well enough if he be dispos’d, and so do I too: he does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.

Toby bursts into anthem:

Toby: O the twelfth day of December.

Maria’s like, “Oh for the love of god, SHUT UP!”

Maria: For the love o’God, peace.

And then Malvolio enters. Traditionally, he’s dressed in PJ’s, perhaps even with a nightcap. A Steward’s traditional role is to keep order in the house, so, in a way, he’s just doing his duty, but he’s Malvolio, and there’s plenty of repressed angst he’s just got to let out:

Malvolio: My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like Tinkers at this time of night?

At this point, Toby throws the apple at Malvolio, who ducks and continues dissing them:

Malvolio: Do ye make an Alehouse of my Lady’s house, that ye squeak out your Coziers’ Catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?

Toby knows that the trio hasn’t been exactly in-tune or even singing anything worth a sixpence, but, at least they kept in time. He hiccups and sneezes, in time, too!:

Toby:
We did keep time, sir, in our Catches.
(He hiccups and sneezes)
Sneck up!

Malvolio first tries to reason with Toby, in his own way, saying that Toby-sans-clamor is welcome, but the current Toby, however, must be “separated from misdemeanors”:

Malvolio: Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My Lady bade me tell you, that though she harbors you as her kinsman, she’s nothing ally’d to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your misdemeanors, you are welcome to the house: if not, an’ it would please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you farewell.

Toby, ever the self-asserting individualist, even when drunk, declares (in song!):

Toby: Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone. (Hiccup!)

Toby and Feste continue to banter in song, “singing about Malvolio behind his back.” Maria doesn’t join their singsong, nor does Malvolio, who takes their song-lyrics literally.

Maria: Nay, good Sir Toby.
Feste: His eyes do shew his days are almost done.
Malvolio: Is’t even so?
Toby: But I will never die.
Feste: Sir Toby there you lie.
Malvolio: This is much credit to you.
Toby: Shall I bid him go.
Feste: What and if you do?
Toby: Shall I bid him go, and spare not?
Feste: O no, no, no, no, you dare not.

On Feste’s support, Toby starts railing about Malvolio’s presumed “holier-than-thou” attitude:

Toby: Out o’tune, sir, ye lie: art any more than a Stewart? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more Cakes and Ale?

Feste, makes his leave, perhaps delivering his line with a wishy-washy commitment:

Feste: Yes, by Saint Anne, and Ginger shall be hot i’the mouth too.

Tags: Andrew, feste, Maria, Toby

This is Part A of the director’s commentary on Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3. (A | B | C | D | E)

The Fun Scene… with Song!

Toby opens this scene, by goading a likely-tired Andrew to “stay awake” via a perversion of proverb “early to rise…”, though in Latin. For comic effect, he might as well pronounce “deliculo surgere” as “deli - qu - lo  cigar - ray!”:

Toby: Approach, Sir Andrew: not to be a bedded after midnight is to be up betimes, and Deliculo surgere, thou know’st!

Andrew’s drunk-as-heck, so he’s just like, “By my guts, all I know is that, to be up late, is to be up late.”

Andrew: Nay by my troth I know not: but I know, to be up late, is to be up late

In this case, Sir Toby Belch lets go the other bodily function, he whizzes into an empty milk can, the first (yellow-tinted) “milk of the day”:

Toby: A false conclusion: I hate it as an unfill’d can.

It’s a long piss, so he continues philosophizing while whizzing:

Toby: To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then is early: so that to go to bed after midnight, is to go to bed betimes.

Toby zips up his fly:

Toby: Does not our lives consist of the four Elements?

Andrew is a rather down-to-earth-man (read: ok, so, he’s more than a tad uncultured):

Andrew: Faith so they say, but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.

More booze is always good for Toby (he’s just pissed it all off, anyway):

Th’art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say, a stoop of wine.

It’s curious that, in context, Maria does not enter the scene until much later (when she complains about the noise), and yet–all of a sudden–Toby mentions a name that seems similar to her name, but does not actually refer to Maria. “Marian”, in my interpretation, refers to the painting of the Virgin Mary (with wine!) that hangs in Olivia’s pantry (Both paintings by Joos van Cleve: Candidate 1 [info] [pic] | Candidate 2 [info] [pic]), wherein Toby makes an obscure reference to the Marian Dogma, which might be fitting for a performance of Twelfth Night at the Blackfriars (considering its Dominican roots).

Feste enters with a bottle of wine, and gathers the trio together in a lovely picturesque moment in front of this painting of the Virgin Mary with wine:

Feste: How now, my harts — did you never see the Picture of we three?

Toby asks for both song and wine “in a catch” from Feste:

Toby: Welcome ass, now let’s have a catch.

Andrew then commends Feste for his voice (”excellent breast”), but since he’s drunk-off-his-ass, he might as well also be staring at Feste’s breast while thinking of the graceful foolery with dance and song last night, and the sixpence to Feste’s “Leman” (lover).

Andrew: By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. I had rather than forty shillings I had such a leg, and so sweet a breath to sing, as the fool has. In sooth, thou was in very gracious fooling last night, when thou spok’st of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the Equinoxial of Queubus: ’twas very good i’faith. I sent thee sixpence for thy Leman, hadst it?

Feste tells Andrew that he has indeed pocketed Andrew’s gratuity, but he says it with a sort of “ring” or a “trill” to his voice, “gratillllllity,” and perhaps says the rest of his line with rap-like rhythm, explaining that Malvolio’s nose couldn’t catch him in giving it to his lady, who appeared too innocent, and the hired killers (Mermidons) weren’t home, anyway, to fix up the matter.

Feste: I did impeticos thy gratillity: for Malvolio’s nose is no whip-stock, my Lady has a white hand, and the Mermidons are no bottle-ale houses.

Andrew’s again delighted by Feste’s nonsense.

Andrew: Excellent: why this is the best fooling, when all is done. Now, a song.

Toby sees through Feste’s hardship, and offers him a sixpence for himself:

Toby: Come on, there is sixpence for you. let’s have a song.
Andrew: There’s a testril of me too: if one knight give a –

Feste bows, in character, and takes on his street-entertainer persona, offering a choice of songs:

Feste: Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?

Toby: A love song, a love song.
Andrew: Aye, aye. I care not for good life.

Feste sings his ditty*:

Feste:
O Mistress mine where are you roaming?
O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further pretty sweeting.
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.

I’m going to post my own sheet music for the songs that the actor and I figure out for these singing parts, but meanwhile, Duffin’s Shakespeare Songbook has a series of samples available online that can help cue you in on-tune.

Toby and Andrew then both clamor for “Encore!”, and Feste continues singing:

Feste:
What is love, ’tis not hereafter,
Present mirth, hath present laughter:
What’s to come, is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me sweet and twenty:
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

At this point, Andrew is so drunk that he gives his last retort in a declare of a shout, and then falls down, on the floor, drunk:

Andrew: A mellifluous voice, as I AM TRUE KNIGHT!

Contagious referring to the contagion of not just music and singsong, but also that of drink:

Toby: A contagious breath.

Andrew: Very sweet, and contagious i’faith.

Toby then rouses them all to action, goading them on to “make the sky shake (make the Welkin dance)”, and awake even the “Nightowl in a Catch”

Toby: To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall we make the Welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the Nightowl in a Catch, that will draw three fouls out of one Weaver? Shall we do that?

As described in more detail in our OEP2 playscript (pdf | celtx), I’ve gone a bit far and literal, to actually have Toby throw around an apple, in a game of moral catch, where both Toby and Feste betray a bit of their cruelness to be fully revealed in later acts, when they play around with poor Andrew as dog. Toby throws the apple to Feste (who misses and curses “Bloody, sir, and some dogs will catch well!”), while Andrew crawls on all four (drunk), trying to get at the “ball”:

Andrew: And you love me, let’s do’t. I am dogged at a Catch

Feste: By’r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.

Andrew catches the ball, drops it in front of Feste, sings “Thou Knave”:

Andrew: Most certain: let our Catch be, Thou Knave.

Feste then takes the apple, and, in mockery, knights Andrew with an apple balanced on the knighting-sword:

Feste: Hold thy peace, thou Knave knight. I shall be constrain’d in’t, to call thee knave, Knight.

Andrew rises:

Andrew: ‘Tis not the first time I have constrained one to call me knave. Begin fool: it begins, “Hold thy peace.”

Feste: I shall never begin if I hold my peace.

Andrew: Good i’faith: come, begin.

And Maria enters, monetarily pausing the caterwauling…

Tags: Andrew, feste, Marian, Toby

This scene conveys Viola’s famous “ring speech.”

It’s amazing how peevish (rude!) both parties are in their initial exchange! Though Olivia’s endowed with a significant estate, I’ve set this scene in Olivia’s Garden, such that Malvolio’s opening line might not just be the formal statement of a neutral servant, but contains subtext of a disregard, “Do I know you? You were with the Countess Olivia, right?”:

Malvolio: Were you not e’en now, with the Countesse Olivia?

Viola’s reply is basically, “Yeah, duh, even walking at regular speed, I’ve only walked so far. (Whom else could I be?)”:

Viola: Even now, sir, on a moderate pace, I have since arriv’d but hither.

Malvolio wishes simply to be done with this matter, to brush off this churlish messenger with a ring:

Malvolio: She returns this Ring to you (sir).

But, perhaps the endorphins released from the action of thrusting the ring at her, gets his galls up, to the essential Malvolio:

Malvolio: You might have saved me my pains, to have taken it away yourself.

Malvolio regains his composure, and attempts at the professional aloofness, again, though it seems that he’s brimming with relish in stating Olivia’s condition, “unless it be to report your Lord’s taking of this.”

Malvolio: She adds, moreover, that you should put your Lord into a desperate assurance; she will none of him. And one thing more, that you be never so hardly to come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your Lord’s taking of this. Receive it so.

Malvolio has been holding his hand out, with the unaccepted ring the whole time. Viola hasn’t accepted yet. He commands her, to “Receive it so,” (”take the ring, you rascal!”), but Viola smartly replies, keeping Olivia’s secret, and expressing the rudeness in Olivia’s fickle decision in first taking, then returning:

Viola: She took the Ring of me; I’ll none of it.

Malvolio gives his commentary (”Seriously, kiddo, you rudely threw it at her.”), and then attempts the professional servant’s aloofness (”Her will is that you take it back.”):

Malvolio: Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is, it should be so return’d.

Malvolio throws the ring to the ground, the two make eyecontact on the ring. Malvolio is obviously a servant too lofty to wish to pocket ring change, so, knowing that this peevish messenger might not even pick it up, he just haughtily throws it away, this prize of a ring:

Malvolio: If it be worth stooping for, there it lies, in your eye: if not, be it his that finds it.

After Malvolio leaves, Viola is alone onstage, delivering a soliloquy at a point in the story, where her character feels lonely, as well–no one really knows who she really is. She begins by wondering about the ring she never gave to Olivia, and in fact, the entire speech is a meditation on interpretive implications from the ring:

Viola: I left no Ring with her: what means this Lady?

Viola then cites the only logical explanation for the hackneyed “love at first sight”–indeed, the two had barely met, so it could only be her looks that have done this.

Viola:
Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her:
She made good view of me, indeed so much,
That methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts distractedly.

Although she first thinks that Olivia is simply secretly giving her a token of her fondness for him, she begins to consider that Olivia might actually love her–the mere fact that Olivia’d invited her in, and her rudeness, too. And, why did she refer to the ring as her Lord’s ring?:

Viola: She loves me sure, the cunning of her passion
Invites me in, this churlish messenger:
None of my Lord’s Ring? Why he sent her none.

Epiphany–Olivia loves Cesario!:

Viola: I am the man, if it be so, as t’is,
Poor Lady, she were better love a dream!

It’s true, Olivia can only have Cesario, “in her dreams!”. “And, it’s all due to this disguise, and wow, we have yet a potential enemy due to it, this whole same-gender relationship mess. Ack!”

Viola:
Disguise, I feel thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.

Why is it that women so often fall for Mr. Wrong (in this case… Ms. Wrong!):

Viola:
How easy it is, for the proper false
In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms:

For the next, I’ve gone along with the line, as printed, from the folio, where Viola cites frailty (tendency to be soft-hearted, too-trusting thus too-quick to fall-in-love) as the cause, not women, per se–and if they’re frail, it’s because they’re made with frailty:

Viola:
Alas, O frailty is the cause, not we,
For such as we are made, if such we be!

Viola then states the crux of the problem, this love triangle created by herself as this gender-disguised “poor monster”, and Olivia “mistaken”, and her master. Even if she were a real boy, the real Cesario, she would still be bound as Orsino’s servant, required to do his bidding, to woo Olivia on his behalf. But, as a woman, as she really is, she’d only cause Olivia heartbreak:

Viola:
How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly,
And I (poor monster) fond as much on him:
And she (mistaken) seems to dote on me:
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master’s love:
As I am woman (now alas the day)
What thriftless sighs shall poor Oliv’a breathe?

This entire episode is done while Viola ponders, standing, meditating/staring at the ring, figuring out what to do with it. She then bends down, picks up the ring, decides to let fate be her arbiter:

Viola:
O time, thou must untangle this, not I,
It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.

Tags: Malvolio, Viola