Act 2, Scene 5, set in Olivia’s Garden, is the famous “M.O.A.I.” scene where Maria shows her wiles, and Malvolio betrays his not-so-puritanical ego. This is Part I of several Director’s Notes blog entries on Twelfth Night: Act 2, Scene 5.

Curiously, Feste completely skips this scene, perhaps because the old fool is more accustomed to nocturnal hours (when there’s likelier to be sixpence for his songs), or is just generally only haphazardly present (thus warranting Maria’s reprimanding words in the brief exchange between Feste and Maria in the opening of Act 1, Scene 5)–anyway, instead of Feste, we have Fabian, a gentleman servant of Olivia’s, with a penchant for bear-baiting (and, who has a grudge towards Malvolio, for getting him in trouble for staging a bear-baiting in Olivia’s garden). Fabian opens Scene 5 with an era-joke about being “boil’d to death by Melancholy (thought by era “medical science” to be a cold humour)”:

Toby: Come thy ways, Signior Fabian.
Fabian: Nah, I’ll come: if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boil’d to death with Melancholy.
Toby: Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly Rascally sheep-biter, come by some notable shame?

Then again, perhaps Feste isn’t present in this scene is due to his intuitive sense of tact (Shakespeare’s fools always seem to have that extra bit of wisdom, quintessentially lacking in his star characters)–it’s a scene where the perpetrators could very-well be caught in their deed to render some “notable shame” to their common enemy.

Fabian: I would exult man: you know he brought me out of favour with my Lady, about a Bear-baiting here.

Toby: To anger him we’ll have the Bear again, and we will fool him black and blue, shall we not, Sir Andrew?

Andrew: And we do not, it is pity of our lives.

Like the others, Fabian’s here, having been slighted by Malvolio. Malvolio tattled on Fabian for holding a bear-baiting session in Olivia’s garden (this is rather something *no one wants!* in their backyard — aside from the damage from the animal slaughter, there’d be massive cleanup from the refuse left by the raucous audience such events draw–completely unseemly!); this suggests that Olivia’s garden is large, and that she might be something of a menagerie. (Our OEP2 set will contain quite a few animals.)

Toby seems more feisty and violent than usual, alluding to beating Malvolio “black and blue” after just a few words, and even calling Maria, his “Metal of India (gold)”, a villain (though this might be a term of endearment of sorts).

Maria enters the garden, perhaps breathless, Malvolio being so close behind her:

Toby: Here comes the little villain: how now, my Metal of India?
Maria: Get ye all three into the box tree!

The three men duck behind the boxtree, while Maria throws the letter, for the “trout that must be caught with tickling”:

Maria: Malvolio’s coming down this walk; he has been yonder i’the Sun practicing behavior to his own shadow this half hour. Observe him for the love of Mockery: for I know this Letter will make a contemplate Idiot of him. Close, in the name of jesting, lye thou there! For here comes the Trout, that must be caught with tickling.

Maria, curiously, leaves. (Perhaps this task of tricking a steward is too coarse for a lady, or Maria would rather not be present to “jinx her plot”, or maybe Shakespeare anticipated emergency doubling’s.)

Tags: Andrew, Fabian, Maria, 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

There seems a number of loose ends (from our modern perspective, anyway) that might need explaining in Shakespeare’s text of Twelfth Night. Here’s some of them from Act 1:

1.  Aristocratic Servant? – When Viola introduces her background as Cesario to Olivia, she makes reference to her noble birth. One might wonder, why would a well-born child be a servant? According to Schalkwyk, it turns out that this is actually fairly common in those days, when over 60% of young people (ages 16 to 24) worked as servants; moreover, the children of noble often worked as servants of other nobles. This might be one of those complex social hierarchies that simply became lost to us modern folks, similar to real feudalism. My conjecture is that this exchange could also be practical, perhaps due to financial reasons; not all nobles are equally wealthy, and some might not even be able to clothe or feed their children “sufficiently aristocratically;” by obligation, the noble the serving noble child serves would have to treat him or her at a certain level (dress them appropriately, feed them, etc.), and so, it is almost like a sort of service-paid boarding school for aristocratic parents who simply can’t take care of their children to send them off to…
2. Is Toby purely manipulating Andrew? – In my interpretation, Toby’s “characteristic cruelness” to Andrew isn’t quite present in Act 1 — it seems that Toby might have a bit of Aspergers, and Andrew is truly one of his only friends (though he also sees Andrew as useful for… other imports relating to his ducats). We always have both Toby and Andrew dancing out to close Act 1, Scene 3, because those two are really having a merry time, and Toby has actually cheered himself up, while trying to cheer Andrew up (with only the slightest undertone that his ducats are the reason). Moreover, women do not find themselves drawn to manipulative men, at least not in the initial stages of love, and if Maria’s romantic fondness for Toby were to begin in Act 1 (rather than in backstory), it’d make sense that, though cynical in her apparent evaluation, Maria sees some sort of compassion from the Toby-Andrew relationship, that her female intuition picks up as a need for like-companionship.
3. Orsino an “Opera-Love”? – Opera often presents love in a way such that love exists only in “the music”, the “spur of the moment,” which seems very similar to Orsino’s take on love. Fidelity in love is a valiant theme in opera, through which some protagonists might even die for, and yet, it seems Orsino’s “love” is as fleeting as the fullness of the music in the air. First Olivia, then Cesario, though homosexuality keeps him back, and eventually Viola. In our 2008 productions (SR1 and AP1), Orsino is presented as old royalty, who perhaps wishes to retire to be able to “be in love all the time,” to revive youthful feelings; in our 2009 production (OEP1), Orsino looks younger, more foolish, and even innocent enough to be in love with an idea. Though the older-looking Orsino might be the type who would be determined to have the heart of one woman, the younger one — youth is all about change — might just simply want the feeling of love, caring not for whom he is in love with, as long as he can be in love.
4. Of Money$ and Penuriousne$$ in Act 1 – It seems Act 1 opens with opulence–Orsino in his court, filled with bouquets ($$$) and musicians ($$$) and luxuries ($$$$$), with hunting expeditions ($$$$$), and servants ($$), and there’s so little for him to do (Illyria is so totally booming and flowing with money, and everyone’s already doing everything), that all he can do is fall helplessly in love with the concept of love itself. And next scene, we have the natural-hazards equivalent of the spike leading to an economic depression, a stock market crash–a shipwreck. A noblewoman loses her family, and is forced to pay a sailor (trader) to gain safe passage into a new land (market). She invests what little she has in a new career, a new beginning, an optimistic rebuilding-attitude to financial loss. Contrast this with Scene 3, where it appears Toby spends his time in revelry partly to put away the more responsible thoughts of earning a living, and to swindle his friend Andrew, into “bringing in” ever more ducats. Viola, though, is still young enough to switch genders to pass for an eunuch and aristocratic servant, unlike Toby in our 2009 production (OEP1), is a middle-aged man, far too old to be an aristocratic servant (though, Toby in our 2008 AP1 production is actually physically a teenager). Both Toby and Viola treat money as a means to an end; Toby, to revelry, and Viola, to be able to make her way in Illyria. And yet, Viola has principles regarding how she’d take money, as seen in Scene 5, where she openly (even rudely) rejects Olivia’s offer of coin. Though her heart pains at the prospect, Viola tries her best in doing her job, which is to try wooing Olivia on Orsino’s behalf. When it backfires, and she feels as if used, she simply stalks away–honorably–as what else can a poor aristocratic servant do?

Tags: Andrew, aristocratic servants, manipulation, Maria, Olivia, opera-love, Orsino, servants, Toby, Viola

The next few moments of this scene should be comic with plentiful burps–and brings the bantering (and sexual innuendos) from the first part of the scene to a climax. (Note, this is just my interpretation.)

Andrew: Sir Toby Belch? How now, Sir Toby Belch?

Andrew belches on saying Toby, but he’s rather drunk and he’s not certain if he’s talking to Toby (though they must have been drinking together at the tavern just moments ago).

Toby: Sweet Sir Andrew.

Toby belches louder to claim his namesake.

Andrew: Bless you, fair shrew.

Andrew actually turns to Toby, though he means to greet Maria. (Very drunk.)

Maria: And you too, sir.

Maria attempts some politeness. Though her voice is strained–she’s disgusted, but trying to maintain a note of decency.

Toby: Accost, Sir Andrew, accost.

Toby is very drunk, but excited, as he confronts Andrew to accost. (He says it as if he were to say, “Mount her.”)

Andrew: What’s that?

Andrew’s “What’s that” is slurred to sound as if he said, “Whuuze that?”

Toby: My niece’s chambermaid.

Toby literally has the bedroom chamber on his mind as he says that. (Were he not drunk, the logic might have been, “Woo Maria, so that she might give you a better word and access to Olivia’s bedroom chamber. But, he’s drunk, so he’s getting the meaning confused somewhat liquidly, from “Make Maria like you, to give Olivia good word,” to actually “Woo Maria.”)

Andrew: Good Mistress Accost, I desire better acquaintance.

Classic Andrew, confuses her as Miss Accost. But, emphasis on acquaintance. You’re very drunk, but you’re catching up to Toby’s drift, yet not totally consciously aware of it.

Maria: My name is Mary sir.

Huge contrast from the lecherous men so far: I imagine that Maria would be saying this as the epitome of chastity, as if she were the virgin Mary.

Andrew: Good Mistress Mary Accost-

Toby: You mistake, knight. ‘Accost’ is ‘front her’, ‘board
her’, ‘woo her’, ‘assail her’.

Toby gradually increases the sexual innuendo in his line, so that by the time he says, “assail her,” it’s basically like he’s saying “take her” (more to the point: “take her now, right here, in the open”).

Andrew: By my troth, I would not undertake her in this company.
Is that the meaning of ‘Accost’?

Andrew is totally scandalized. Of course he won’t whip out his troth and take her here, right now! But, Andrew begins to betray his very-limited vocabulary (hardly to span even one language, much less three or four!) – he has to ask if he’d taken the meaning right.

Maria: Fare you well, gentlemen.

Maria is sick of the guys’ childish games. She thinks: Toby can take him himself.

Tags: Andrew, belch, Maria, Toby

Below is my Director’s interpretation of the first part of Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 3. For a marked-up/annotated script, see here.

I see Maria and Toby’s opening conversation in this scene as very sexually charged, perhaps with a slight bit of repression only from Maria. It’s night; Toby is very drunk. Maria tries justifying how Toby should come in earlier and should not drink so much by saying her Lady Olivia disapproves of it. Toby is Olivia’s cousin. Family members often take such requests of care from others less seriously, so it seems every time Maria (who’s only a servant) tries invoking Olivia’s request as justification, Toby pushes it off.

Toby: What a plague means my niece to take the death of her
brother thus? I am sure care’s an enemy to life.

Maria: By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier
anights. Your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions
to your ill hours.

Toby: Why, let her except, before excepted.

Maria: Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest
limits of order.

Toby: ‘Confine‘? I’ll confine myself no finer than I am.
These clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be
these boots too; an they be not, let them hang
themselves in their own straps!

The words in bold above can be read with heavy emphasis on the sexual interpretation. “Death” is Elizabethan slang for orgasm. Toby’s inebriated as he enters the scene. Maria already has some affinity towards him, and notice that she emphasizes the words “cum” and “nights” and scolds Toby for his “ill hours.” Maria mentions he should confine himself, and lecherous Toby replies (metaphorically) saying, “I’ll take off my clothes whenever I want.”

Maria: That quaffing and drinking will undo you. I heard my
lady talk of it yesterday, and of a foolish knight
that you brought in one night here, to be her wooer.

Maria continues the metaphor of stripping Toby. But, once again, the trend to note is that Maria’s lines mention Olivia only as an ending–as if an afterthought. Perhaps Maria, a mere servant, is hiding her affections towards Toby by attempting to say it is really Olivia who cares?

Toby: Who, Sir Andrew Aguecheek?

Maria: Ay, he.

Toby: He’s as tall a man as any’s in Illyria.

Maria: What’s that to th’purpose?

Toby: Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.

Toby’s drunk, so perhaps the truth flows more freely from his mouth. It comes straight out. He sticks with Aguecheek for purposes of money.

Maria: Ay, but he’ll have but a year in all these ducats.
He’s a very fool, and a prodigal.

Toby: Fie, that you’ll say so! He plays o’th’viol-de-gamboys,
and speaks three or four languages word for word
without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature.

While we will later discover that Toby would openly lie for Andrew, this can also be interpreted as Toby trying to find justifications for himself for hanging out with Andrew (other than for ducats). Toby should spout the lies naturally–and yet the lies should sound like lies.

Maria: He hath indeed, almost natural: for besides that he’s
a fool, he’s a great quarreler, and but that he hath
the gift of a coward to allay the gust he hath in
quarreling, ’tis thought among the prudent he would
quickly have the gift of a grave.

Toby: By this hand, they are scoundrels and subtractors that
say so of him. Who are they?

Maria: They that add, moreover, he’s drunk nightly in your
company.

Maria belittles Andrew as a drunkard who doesn’t cause much trouble because he’s a coward; Toby reacts with chivalry, demanding to know who has debased his friend. Maria wittily replies that it’s the people he hangs out with who gave Andrew away. Now, Toby would continue the banter, taking blame away from his drunken friends, directing the conversation finally with respect to Olivia:

Toby: With drinking healths to my niece. I’ll drink to her
as long as there is a passage in my throat and drink
in Illyria. He’s a coward and a coistrel that will not
drink to my niece till his brains turn o’th’toe like a
parish top. What, wench? Castiliano vulgo, for here
comes Sir Andrew Agueface!

Ironic that he drinks (the drink that would undo him) with the purpose of toasting Olivia. And he’d turn all his bad qualities that Maria had been scolding him about into an alternative way of paying his respects to Olivia! So, we go full circle. Maria begins this exchange by citing her (demanding) concern as Olivia’s, and Toby ends by claiming his actions are actually for Olivia.t

Tags: Maria, Toby

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

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