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 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

 Below is my Director’s interpretation of one part of Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 5. For a marked-up/annotated script, see here.

Malvolio’s opening line in Act 1 is a stark contrast to that of everyone else’s before him. Although Maria has a similar scolding attitude, she relents to humor (eventually), but Malvolio seems stubbornly bitter to a huge degree–he’s almost immediately seen as the story’s villain, though later Acts will turn him into a villain. Thus, I believe Malvolio has to act apparently malevolently bitter, but that’s really just a coverup for a sort of tragic hidden inferiority inherent in him.

Olivia: What think you of this fool Malvolio, does he not mend?

Malvolio: Yes, and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him:
Infirmity that decays the wise, doth ever make the
better fool.

Feste: God send you sir, a speedy Infirmity, for the better
increasing your folly: Sir Toby will be sworn that I
am no Fox, but he will not pass his word for two pence
that you are no Fool.

Malvolio’s humor is immediately seen as politically incorrect from our modern POV, when he makes his joke based on Feste’s age. Even in Shakespeare’s days, this is perhaps seen as a foul kind of joke–but, I imagine Malvolio says this matter of factly. (Indeed, the entire exchange can be seen from Malvolio’s POV as an insult to his Lady Olivia–with Feste just being rude all the way through. Feste’s rudeness seems to foreshadow Viola’s, and in the end, it seems as if Olivia seems to favor the rude ones…)

Feste replies in that Feste-logic that Malvolio could use a bit more humor in him–to become a more foolish fool–so he hopes Malvolio would grow old and senile sooner.

Olivia: How say you to that Malvolio?

Malvolio: I marvel your Ladyship takes delight in such a barren
rascal: I saw him put down the other day, with an
ordinary fool, that has no more brain than a stone.
Look you now, he’s out of his guard already; unless
you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gag’d. I
protest I take these Wisemen, that crow so at these
set kind of fools, no better than the fools’ Zanies.

Malvolio continues to ridicule Feste’s wit; after all, he’d just been called a fool himself by Feste! After citing that Feste got verbally owned by a fool dumber than a rock, he claims that Feste’s not funny at all unless someone gives him charity of laughter. Notice how viciously Malvolio returns Feste’s “joke”. I believe he’s acting this way not only because Olivia seems to be letting Feste make fun of her (and him), but also out of jealousy. He’s already developed an affinity towards Olivia, and would rather not have her favor someone so un-worthwhile as this fool.

Olivia: Oh you are sick of self-love Malvolio, and taste with
a distemper’d appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and
of free disposition, is to take these things for Birdbolts
that you deem Cannon bullets: there is no
slander in an allow’d fool, though he do nothing but
rayle; nor no railing, is a known discreet man, though
he do nothing but reprove.

Olivia begins by reproaching Malvolio, and explains why she let Feste make fun of her. She understands that Feste’s joking–and yet Malvolio takes his joke seriously.

Feste: Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou speak’st
well of fools.

Tags: feste, Feste's logic, Malvolio, Olivia

 Below is my Director’s interpretation of one part of Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 5. For a marked-up/annotated script, see here.

Feste opens this segment with an aside, where he openly tells the audience his fears of being not witty enough–and then regains his jovial self when he remembers he can make up deities and adages on-the-go from his behind a la Quinapalus.

Feste: God bless thee Lady.

Olivia: Take the fool away.

Feste: Do you not hear fellows, take away the Lady.

Olivia: Go to, y’are a dry fool: I’ll no more of you: besides
you grow dishonest.

Feste seems to be testing his luck–calling his Lady the fool? It’s interesting, though, that Olivia cites Feste’s truancy second to his dry wit.

Feste: Two faults Madonna, that drink and good counsel will
amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool
not dry: bid the dishonest man mend himself, if he
mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the
Butcher mend him: anything that’s mended, is but
patch’d: virtue that transgresses, is but patcht with
sin, and sin that amends, is but patcht with virtue.
If that this simple Syllogism will serve, so: if it will
not, what remedy? As there is no true Cuckold but
calamity, so beauties a flower; The Lady bade take
away the foole, therefore I say againe, take her away.

Olivia: Sir, I bid them take away you.

At this point, we are really not certain if the fool’s still got his wits–this simple syllogism is amusing, but its aloof logic (similar to Feste’s hanging jokes) also puts to question the state of his mind.

Feste: Misprision is the highest degree. Lady, cucullus non
facit monachum: that’s as much to say, as I were not
motley in my brain: good Madonna, give me leave to
prove you a fool.

And now, it seems Feste is smarter than we think. His past few lines are actually building to a point.

Olivia: Can you do it?

Feste: Dexterously, good Madonna.

Olivia: Make your proof.

Feste: I must catechize you for it Madonna: good my Mouse of
virtue answer me.

Olivia: Well, sir, for want of other idleness, I’ll bide your
proof.

Feste: Good Madonna, why mournst thou?

Olivia: Good fool, for my brother’s death

Feste: I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.

Olivia: I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

Feste: The more fool - Madonna - to mourn for your Brother’s
soul, being in heaven. Take away the Fool, Gentlemen.

Feste begins explaining why the Lady Olivia is actually the fool, but catechizes her — asks for her involvement; Olivia admits she’s nothing better to do, and will thus entertain him. He goes right to the point, asking very directly why she mourns for her brother. His next line is said almost as if he wishes to be fired–but, only if we believe she were absolutely serious about devoting her life to mourning. This, along with Sir Toby’s opening line in Scene 3, helps establish that Olivia may be prone to leave her mourning if given adequate “entertainment.” Feste’s next line, continues the same sort of Feste-logic that believes hanging may be better than a bad marriage, by saying it’s no point in mourning for her brother if he’s in Heaven.

Tags: feste, Feste's logic, Olivia

Below is my Director’s interpretation of the first part of Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 5. For a marked-up/annotated script, see here.

Feste and Maria open Scene 5 in what appears to be a variant reprise of the opening of Scene 3. Feste is Toby’s analogue in this scene, but Maria has more of an accusatory feeling towards him than one of affinity. Also, despite their differences in ranks, the biggest difference between Feste and Toby is that Feste is old(er). There is no budding romance between Feste and Maria, and the best that might come out of them might be an alliance in later acts. Feste is jovial, except for his ponderous words alluding to his own death, while Maria is generally scolding him, except when she’s uncertain if Feste is really going to kill himself. (Feste and Maria are old friends.)

Maria: Nay, either tell me where thou hast been, or I will
not open my lips so wide as a bristle may enter, in
way of thy excuse: my Lady will hang thee for thy
absence.

Notice that Maria starts with a much more harsh line than what she said to Toby in Scene 3–which is really only of concern and not as threatening as when Maria tells Feste that Olivia might hang him. She’s both exasperated and frustrated at him for being absent for so long. Feste replies lightly, and perhaps with a faint vigor of a double entendre (a reprise of Toby’s in Scene 3), as reiterates the word “hang”:

Feste: Let her hang me: he that is well hang’d in this world,
needs to fear no colours.

Maria replies asking basically “How,” with a trace of a smile, knowing that there’s a joke to come, and yet she’s exasperated that Feste doesn’t take her threat seriously:

Maria:  Make that good.

Feste replies with heavy words that suddenly change the mood of the scene. Remember, he’s an old clown, and death is something he’s pondered. I’d say, the next line is spoken very gravely. (I also think that this interpretation fits especially well with the current global economic crisis. You’ve probably heard of people who’ve considered death or suicide to avoid their financial crisis — albeit those are usually investors and not clowns! Feste is essentially saying that those who hang, shall have nothing to fear [after].)

Feste: He shall see none to fear.

Maria is provoked into an uneasy reply, accusing him of hearing that from Soldiers, when he’s never encountered Death himself. (She’s essentially saying: “You wouldn’t kill yourself. You haven’t the experience.”)

Maria: A good lenton answer: I can tell thee where that
saying was born, of “I fear no colours.”

Feste: Where good mistress Mary?

Maria: In the wars, and that may you be bold to say in your
foolerie.

Feste catches Maria’s drift - though she sounds like she’s belittling him, he understands that she’s really uncomfortable with the possibility of his suicide. The mood of the conversation becomes light again:

Feste: Well, God give them wisdom that have it: and those
that are fools, let them use their talents.

Maria finds it safe again to emphasize her threat:

Maria: Yet you will be hang’d for being so long absent, or to
be turn’d away: is not that as good as a hanging to

Feste asserts that sometimes dying is better than suffering through a bad marriage, and getting fired during the summer might not be so bad!

Feste: Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage: and for
turning away, let summer bear it out.

Maria is uneasy again (though the mention of Feste’s suicide is lighter than that first time), “You’re serious!”:

Maria: You are resolute then?

I’ve often seen this as a personal joke between Maria and Feste in their common past (Feste is further trying to comfort Maria)–perhaps, when Feste was younger, he did a trick and his pants fell off. Ideally, Feste would be flexing his suspenders as he says this, waiting for Maria to complete the joke. (Maria is making fun of him, but they’re both laughing together.)

Feste: Not so neither, but I am resolu’d on two points.

Maria: That if one breaks, the other will hold; or if both
breaks, your gaskins will fall.

Feste commends Maria for remembering that common joke from their past. But, he’s old–and he accepts how Maria may feel more affinity for Toby than him. So, he mentions Toby and Maria as eve’s flesh.

Feste: Apt, in good faith, very apt: well go thy way. If sir
Toby would leave drinking, thou wert as witty a piece
of Eve’s flesh, as any in Illyria.

Maria is no longer as angry at him for his absense, and gives Feste advice:

Maria: Peace, you rogue, no more o’that: here comes my Lady:
make your excuse wisely, you were best.

Maria leaves as Olivia approaches. Feste gives his soliloquy, where he sounds uncertain at first about how much his wit can help save him… until he discovers Quinapalus (his infinite ability to pull b/s out of his arse!):

Feste: Wit, and’t be thy will, put me into good fooling;
those wits that think they have thee, do very oft
prove fools: and I that am sure I lack thee, may pass
for a wise man. For what says Quinapalus, “Better a
witty fool than a foolish wit.”

Tags: age, feste, Maria, reprise

Continuing our tradition in producing several plays, but focusing on just one Shakespearean play per year, to make it the *best* that it can be - this year, we hope to present a full length Twelfth Night, entertaining and educating - worth *every* minute of your time.

If you’re in the SL Shakespeare Company group inworld, check group notices archive for a HoloLight attached in the latest group notice. Or… visit the SL Globe Theatre to grab a free copy of the 2009 Edition of the SL Shakespeare Company HoloLight. Last year, we had the Ghost from Hamlet. This year, we’ve got Feste the Clown! Rez & click to find out the next show date!

Tags: feste, HoloLight

The Characterization of a SL production creates the image and visual character of the players. Since, there are basically no limitations in appearances in Second Life (lag allowing), it typically involves considering both the original character, as well as whom you have available. It’s also akin to playing God by breathing life into the avatar representation of a play’s character –or, at the very least, it’s making the PR images look pretty. Artistic Director’s notes on each character below:

• Cesario: “Shakespeare’s Mulan, except her battle is in finding her fate and identity in the land she becomes shipwrecked in.” ~age 14, in that awkward interface between boy and man, young enough to be a “squash before a peascod or a Codling almost an Apple, his mother’s milk scarce out of him”. Youthful and naive, such that she’d choose to serve Olivia just because of their common loss of a brother to Elysium, but chooses to serve the Duke–as an eunuch, not bothering to think much over the problems that course of action may lead to; of upper class parentage, and of wealth as evidenced in her attitude with money–prone to give it for good words, and prone to reject it out of honor. Though she’s Viola in disguise, she can still make it as a cute young boy. Yet, there’s sadness in her eyes, for like the Lady Olivia she is assigned to woo, she, too, mourns the loss of a brother. But, that doesn’t stop her from attempting to do the best of what she can at her job–she’s young, outgoing and optimistic, direct and yet very delicate: “very comptible, even to the least sinister usage.”
  • Interestingly, as the Duke’s messenger, she seems to echo the basic meaning of one of the Bard’s sonnets, especially in her inquiry to Lady Olivia that her seclusion-in-mourning is an undue cruelness to the world, which would be without her beauty, “Lady, you are the cruel’st she alive, if you will lead these graces to the grave, and leave the world no copy.”
• Feste: “The embodiment of comic relief, his words often dispense some very perceptive insights on characters.” He’s an old clown, and as wit dwindles with age, perhaps he’s less wanted by the haughty Olivia. But, though he invokes the fancy-sounding but essentially no-namer Quinapalus in trying to justify a point, he beseeches the Lady Olivia: “Cucullus non facit monachum,” or “Don’t judge a monk by his cloak,” and goes on to prove her wrong, by making fun of her mourning (were Olivia less valley-girl-ish, she might have taken this as a grave insult). Yet, it’s interesting how he so-easily shows Olivia’s fickleness; she’s angry, at him, and calls for people to take him away, but he soon changes her perspective (perhaps foreshadowing her change when Cesario comes in), “Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou
  speakst well of fools!”
  • Why was he gone for so long, and for how long? Seven years missing, like the Bard himself?
  • In S5, Feste takes out the drunk madman and leaves Act 1. Goes with Feste’s theory of draughts in explaining what a drunk man’s like:
    “Like a drowned man, a fool and a mad man: / One draught above heat makes him a fool; / the second mads him; and a third drowns him.”
• Duke Orsino: “The man in power in love with the concept of love itself.” Duke of Illyria, but not fettered with political matters, he’s greatly trusting, such that he’ll bestow the fruit of love itself to music and this new young eunuch, which a native Captain of the land introduces to him. Love is a distraction he’s willing to binge on — for him to avoid a melancholy of uncertain origins, that causes him to realize in the midst of a great speech praising the sweetness of love that it’s all too fleeting. In age, he’s the opposite of Cesario–of a venerable age for dukedom, and perhaps that’s why he casts favor on Cesario over Valentine, “a nuncio of more grave aspect.”
  • Might the actor who played Olivia also have been the one who played Orsino? He never seems to speak directly and in person to Olivia. O…
• Olivia: “As her name implies olive, or Homer’s ‘liquid gold,’ she is the female embodiment of the alchemist’s gold–for Orsino, the perfect vision of love, whom he sends envoys to but never gets to know–but like liquid mercury in how she changes her affections.” Of noble birth and of a decent inheritance, shallow in her fleeting obsession with mourning her lost brother–or perhaps she merely brings up on the seven years of eye-offending brine to ward off Valentine and Orsino. Stereotypical upper class who’d listen to an old clown or an unknown embassy for want of something more interesting to do. Beautiful by most standards, and yet Cesario/Viola should stand out. Arrogant enough to disregard her own beauty into an inventory list. Appearance: Fair, blonde, gray-eyes. In mourning clothing (black - as this is not an era-specific production), even if her attitude changes from mourning to loving at the end of act 1. Mischievous, with the coin trick, but not as much as Maria in Act 2.
  • Her name is nearly an anagram of Viola, but sans i.
• Malvolio: Bitter and infinitely envious of others, arrogant, wishes to be the spotlight himself. Act 1 does not reveal that much of Malvolio’s character yet, but the way he responds to Feste the Fool in Scene 5 with Olivia shows an undue meanness, the words of which at such a moment may be enough for Feste to seriously hate him enough to pull the cruel prank on him in later scenes. (Feste is trying to convince Olivia to re-hire him, and this is the worst time for Malvolio’s deprecating words.) About him, there’s the quintessential insolence of a butler, who sometimes believes he’s the lord of the house.
• Toby: The Sot of Illyria! ~age 25, but appearing literally a teenager in both self and form (in this interpretation). He’s clever, and makes me laugh more than Feste (at least in Act 1). But, why does a man–a noble–resort to drinking and staying drunk all the time? It’s escapism of a liquid sort, to dull one’s consciousness into a constant stream of drunken euphoria, avoiding a deep and bitter melancholy. Money, perchance? Sir Toby inherits the title of a noble, and yet no money, such that he’s reduced to flattering (and using) the better-endowed Sir Andrew for need of his 3000 ducats a year. Would it be too strange for him to marry the venerable-aged Maria? “Nay, but what’s a drunken man like?”
• Maria: Just an old servant woman who complains a lot until we get to Act 2. But, you do see a bit of her cleverness manifest even in Act 1, in her response to Feste’s “two points,” “That if one breaks, the other will hold; or if both breaks, your gaskins will fall.” and also her potential cruelness, when she snickers condescendingly at the young bare-peascod Cesario, all alone beneath the the house right balcony in Olivia’s house. (It’s all latent in her coyote-hazel eyes.) Does she look like Gertrude from Hamlet — perhaps they’re blood, but she’s just a servants woman in Illyria for this show! (What’s that hting with Toby and Maria, though?)
• Andrew: “The Tall Tale of a Man, and yet not really…” - rich but vulnerable and comic relief by himself. Clueless but with fine-breeding from ample education, money and class. Loves revels and masques, sometimes both at once. Believes in dirty accost-ing. 3000 ducats a year, and he can be manipulated and brown-nosed by a certain Falstaffian sot. Tall (or at least as tall as Toby or his top hat). Hair fine and thin as if from a distaff, un-frizzled at all.
• Captain: Though he appears only in a single scene, his role in introducing Cesario as an eunuch to land Viola her job with the Duke Orsino is crucial in moving the story along. He connects this shipwrecked squash-before-a-peascode with a means to go about a way in Illyria. In that respect, this character should look distinctly familiar. Thus, his face is the splitting image of the Ghost in Hamlet (SL Shakespeare Company’s inaugural production), although his body is more towards the bulkier side, being a well-fed ship-captain and all.
• Valentine: “The original embassy of love to Olivia from Orsino. And yet this Valentine of sorts is a graver nuncio [than Viola-Cesario].” Moor by birth (director’s interpretation), but loyal to his Duke, and carries out his commands. Yet, though once young, he’s already a man by age, and, perhaps that gets the lesser of him, especially when a new young eunuch comes to replace him. But, he’s honorable and does give Cesario good advice. Dress - similar to Cesario’s, but perhaps in less vibrant colors.
• Curio: “The Duke’s Young Cousin” Other interpretations have taken Curio as a lord who takes Orsino’s words as less serious and lofty, and perhaps a bit in low jest — the hunt and the hart as double entendres. Due to casting, my interpretation is to just have him be either a young-ish cousin of the Duke’s, who’s staying there and enjoying the feast of a hart, and anxious that his uncle go out hunting to replenish the feast. His words are thus nothing but the literal. He’s a chubby little boy with a gruff-ish voice who just wants more hart! Hark, the boy wants hart, the food! The music can be there or not, he cares not for the heart!
• Viola: “Shipwrecked, lost, but determined to find her way.” Shipwrecked, her brother gone, lost in the strange land of Illyria. A quintessential sadness in her eyes, as well as face capable of conveying the ample spirit needed to find her way in this new land. Her facial bone shape should be easy to masquerade as a young boy, with or without the obvious length of hair. Ideally, dressed in a tattered purple dress–color of royalty or great wealth, but marred by a shipwreck, now mayhaps to suffer the fate of a commoner. (See Cesario)

Tags: !Twelfth Night, Andrew, AP1, Captain, Cesario, characters, Curio, Duke Orsino, feste, Malvolio, Maria, Olivia, Orsino, Toby, Valentine, Viola

When you’re working on a virtually non-existent budget, you have to be pretty sharp with things. Though our costumed tag-team staged reading series this summer did cast more actors than we’d need (as well as the upcoming audio book and act-along-karoke versions), not all actors are available for the show this season. In case we don’t have a Toby, we might just cut out his few lines of “letcherie” in Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 5. We’ll just have a silent actor “step in” while appearing “drunk” and collapse. The skip will start from after Olivia’s “By mine honor half drunk” and end at “Toby’s Well, it’s all one (inclusive)”, to omit Toby’s voice parts and yet appear seamless. Olivia and Feste can still have their little aside on drunkenness, and Feste can still leave escorting Toby out. (In which case, Feste’s voice will likely also be the voice for Toby.)

Tags: !Twelfth Night, cuts, drunkenness, feste, letcherie, Olivia, prompt-book, Toby