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

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

Viola has already fallen in love with Orsino before this scene opens. (From Valentine, we find that Cesario has been serving the Duke for three days. Note, Viola seemed already poised to fall in love with Orsino–the first thing she mentioned when she heard of him back in Scene 2 was that her father knew of him, and that he was a bachelor, then.)

When the Duke enters Scene 4, I believe he enters on a different level onstage than Viola, hence his, “Who saw Cesario, ho?” However, though Cesario serves the Duke, they speak as if equals. Instead of immediately following his command to go to Olivia’s house, she questions him, asserting that Olivia, in her mourning, would not let Cesario in. (There might be a slight break in her voice; she might be saying this while reacting to the painful shock that the Duke would ask her to woo Olivia.)

The Duke replies, perhaps, in an exasperated tone, “Be clamorous, and leap all civil bounds, / Rather than make unprofitèd return.” Though she may be saying her next words in earnest, Viola then even goes as far as to question his logic, “Say I do speak to her, my lord, what then?”

Orsino’s reply explains why he’d favored her, to have told her “the book even of [his] secret soul.” He wants Cesario, who has the youth neither he nor Valentine has, to be his voice:

Orsino: O then, unfold the passion of my love,
Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith;
It shall become thee well to act my woes:
She will attend it better in thy youth,
Than in a Nuntio’s of more grave aspect.

Viola’s modesty–”I think not so, my lord,”–prompts the Duke to beseech to Cesario his (her?) graces. Perhaps, there might be a trace of something more than fondness in his voice as he gets deeper into this reverie, as if a part of him knows that Cesario is not really a boy. This should fade as he returns to the present–by the time he calls for the attendants to accompany him.

Orsino: Dear Lad, believe it;
For they shall yet belie thy happy years,
That say thou art a man: Diana’s lip
Is not more smooth, and rubious: thy small pipe
Is as the maidens organ, shrill, and sound,
And all is semblative a woman’s part.
I know thy constellation is right apt
For this affair: some four or five attend him,
And if you will: for I myself am best
When least in company: prosper well in this,
And thou shall live as freely as thye lord,
To call his fortunes thine.

Viola replies immediately, completing the Duke’s pentameter–as if in a trance. She’s perhaps recovering to the Duke’s praises of her beauty, and doesn’t fully understand the significance of her agreement.  She won’t realize the difficult situation she’s trapped in until a beat later, after Duke Orsino leaves, and, completing her pentameter from the previous line, she reveals to the audience her “barful strife.”

Viola: I’ll do my best
To woo your Lady…

Exeunt Duke Orsino and others.

Viola:                         Yet a barful strife,
Who e’re I woo, myself would be his wife.

Tags: love, Orsino, Viola

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