In the climax and closing action of Twelfth Night, we see a rapid fire stream of action all stemming from miscommunication and mistaken identity. I wanted to examine the relationship between Viola and her brother Sebastian, as they are the crux of the action in the closing stages of the play. The fact that they are twins seems to be the biggest issue, as it confuses every person in the play that comes across them. I think something that we lose in reading and not viewing the play is exactly how similar they were in looks. For Sir Andrew to run across Sebastian and attack him, he would have had to been wearing something similar to what Cesario (Viola) was wearing during their initial encounter. This may be part of the comedic element of the play, to help along the plot and also create some funny moments for the audience. What is even more curious is the nature of Sebastian and Viola, often playing up the confusion or going along with it as opposed to trying to clarify what is going on. When Olivia sees Sebastian and mistakes him for Cesario, Sebastian accepts the invitation, writing it off as a really nice dream that he is going to play along with. In his defense, most men seeing a beautiful woman beckon might have a similar response. Even though this is a comedy, and as such sometimes you must suspend your disbelief, I couldn’t buy into Olivia mistaking Cesario for Sebastian, who she mistook for Cesario not long before. The way that it’s framed in the play, you would think that Viola and Sebastian are mirror image of one another. All this, not to mention that Olivia married Sebastian before, so she doesn’t even recognize her own husband.

This confusion reaches a fever pitch during the play’s final confrontation: Antonio is yelling at Cesario because he believes him to be a traitorous Sebastian, Orsino is also mad at Cesario because Olivia calls Cesario her husband, who isn’t even the person she married, and Sir Andrew is accusing Cesario of assault (again, it’s Sebastian that they are looking for), and this is only solved by Sebastian himself appearing and causing a revelation among the characters to occur. Afterwards, everyone almost seems to just accept the things that have happened in the play. Orsino, who was completely smitten by Olivia in the beginning, is rather indifferent to find her married to Sebastian and wants to see Viola as a woman (presumably to marry) almost as a consolation prize. It was certainly a bizarre ending to a bizarre play.

I was mostly unsurprised as I read through the last two acts of Twelfth Night; it’s Shakespeare, so we know that we’re heading to a happy ending for Viola, ending in a convenient marriage. What did catch me off guard a bit was the end of Act V, when the Clown is left alone on stage and sings directly to the audience. We have seen this before in a different Shakespearean comedy when Puck is left alone on stage at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Reading this made me wonder why these two comedies end with a minor character talking directly to the audience, but why the other Shakespearean comedy we read, The Merchant of Venice, doesn’t.

In class, we had discussed why Puck directly addresses the audience at the end of AMND: it’s to provide a disclaimer in case anybody is upset by the critiques of Queen Elizabeth through the character of Titania. The Clown’s song directly addresses the audience too, as it ends with the lines “But that’s all one, our play is done/And we’ll strive to please you every day.” While it could just be Shakespeare’s way of ending the show with something along the lines of “Thank’s for coming,” I think there could be more to it there. I say this because the song is sung in verses with four lines, and the fourth line until “And we’ll strive to please you every day” is sung “For the rain it raineth every day.” I interpret that line as life never really changes–and we know the life isn’t that great if it’s filled with a never-ending onslaught of rain (a more vulgar translation could maybe be “same old shit”). It’s also important to note too, that in Professor Deutermann’s earlier blog post about music in Twelfth Night, she linked us to a performance of the Clown’s song. That doesn’t sound like the Clown thanking what we assume to be a lighthearted and happy crowd, rather it sounds almost like a lament.

Unfortunately that’s all I really can say without going into theories that I have no support for. I’m still not even sure which theory I think I support: is this Shakespeare commenting on how he’s forced to continue writing comedies because they sell (Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s later comedies), rather than focusing on a more “noble” historical play or a tragedy? Is this song just the Clown speaking about how tiring and miserable his life is to an audience that will actually listen to him as a human being, rather than dismiss him as a fool (despite the Clown being one of the smartest characters in the entire play)? Am I reading into this too much? Yeah, probably.

Twelfth Night ended with a wedding, and the absurdity of the love triangle…square… pentagon is one that finally gets a resolution. I for whatever reason have some unresolved feelings. I cannot help but question the motives of Viola. It’s a line she says to Olivia in Act 3 Scene 4, “Nothing but this: your true love for my master.” At this point we already know Viola, is hopelessly in love with Duke, so why does she still play along? Why does she insist that Olivia give her hand to the Duke? Is it that she could be so in love with the Duke, that she only wants to see his happiness come to fruition? Or is it something more sinister? Does she say this to Olivia, only because she knows Olivia will never do such a thing? I am also a little skeptical of the ending, in which Viola does end up with Duke. She oddly has little to no lines after the Duke claims her as his mistress/queen. For someone who has been the driving force behind the entire plot of this play, to suddenly be silenced seems odd.

For those of you who are wondering what some of these songs sound like: here is a link to “Hold Thy Peace,” the catch that Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown sing while carousing late at night at Olivia’s in Act Two. It’s a kind of round (think “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”) that gets more intricate (and of course louder) as more singers join in. Also, this is getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but the Clown’s final song can be heard here, as performed by the countertenor Alfred Deller.

In Twelfth Night, one of the central or crucial themes would be the fact of social status within the generation. Like Sarah has already mentioned and from the discussion in class, the switch of hierarchy/authority represents how “The 12th Night after Christmas” is a scapegoat for the younger individuals to rule or overpower the people in which are in a higher status than them. At first, when we first mentioned this in class, it seemed quite amusing to me to be able to just imagine what that would be like in our own shoes. If we were given a sense of authority towards our relatives or parents, it would change your lives, even if time of use were limited.

One of the characters in which I find very amusing to see appear would be Malvolio, who seems to be constantly confused and blamed to his actions. It’s almost like Malvolio is naive and doesn’t quite understand how his actions reflect how how his character is shaped. For example, the ring in which is in ACT II, Malvolio gives Cesario the ring that Olivia has sent with him. This has made Viola realize about Olivia’s deception and eventually plays along with it, pretending that she did indeed give the ring to Olivia and then she ends up telling Malvolio that Olivia took the ring and encourages her to keep it. This scene gives me a better view of how naive Malvolio can get when he is put to a task or has the sense of responsibility of something. Due to the fact that Malvolio throws the ring afterwards, give me a better sense of the person he is. He is in love with Olivia and isn’t happy with the fact that he isn’t able to have her. However, I do feel sympathy towards him and see how hes in a disadvantage when it comes in even liking Olivia in the first place since he is in a lower social class than she is. Take the play for instance, it doesn’t really show how Malvolio is in a disadvantage nor does it hinders any sort of sympathy towards the character itself.

Below is a version of the entire play, there are also several alter versions that are based on Twelfth Night. However, (not to be a spoiler) but, in this version Olivia here is portrayed so sensibly, so different from what I imagined, or maybe it’s just based on my own perspective or what not.

Perhaps one of the most interesting themes in Twelfth Night is the inversion/subversion of class hierarchy. Like we mentioned earlier today, the 12th night after Christmas was a celebration of “misrule,” when men dressed like women and servants and children were bestowed authority (although art history seems to suggest they all just got massively black-out drunk.)

Peter Paul Rubens, Twelfth Night or The King Drinks

Cross-dressing aside, the two lower-class characters in the play really push the boundaries of power relations in different ways, and in doing so, they reveal greater truths about the nobility.

The Clown somehow has the liberty to constantly mock the self-indulgent melancholy of the nobility – Olivia supposedly mourning her brother and father for seven years and Orsino narcissistically obsessing over his own heartbrokenness. The Clown gets away with this over and over again, calling Olivia the fool in a brilliant role-reversal – “The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.” (1.5.69-71) – as well as calling the Duke out on his capriciousness, “Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.” (2.4.73-75). Although the nobility dismiss his playful insults as nonsense, he actually makes a lot of sense.

On the other hand, poor wet-blanket Malvolio is actually punished for violating class structure. Citing a precedent of “the Lady of the Strachy” (2.5.39-40) marrying below her rank, he dreams of marrying Olivia. Hilariously, this is not because he loves her – in his fantasy, he has just “left Olivia sleeping” (2.5.49) on some couch – but because he wishes to be able to tell his kinsman Sir Toby that he’s a drunken waste of space. That said, Maria’s letter-trick seems excessively cruel (I’m of the opinion that everybody in this play needs to chill) when humiliating Malvolio into wearing cross-gartered yellow stockings culminates in deeming him insane and “hav[ing] him in a dark room and bound” (3.4.141-142).

Maybe I’m being overly sentimental (har har), but it’s hard not to feel sympathy for Malvolio when he’s filled with such joy and hope and especially because he’s hardly an antagonist at all compared to Aaron, Shylock, or Richard III. When Malvolio storms out on his bullies, he says, “Go hang yourselves all! You are idle shallow things; I am not of your element.” (3.4.129-130). At the risk of sounding like a Marxist, aren’t the nobility idle? Aren’t they shallow? Is it worth being of their element?

Johann Heinrich Ramberg, Olivia, Maria, and Malvolio (1789)

So Malvolio is a party-pooper who doesn’t like getting sh**faced. So Malvolio desires social mobility. Are these really such huge crimes?

Richard’s opening speech endeared him to me even though in it he warns the audience that he probably won’t be likeable very long since he has sinister plans. I find him to be so relatable even today since there are many characters like this in movies on tv and in real life- people who feel cheated because of the way that they happened to be born, referring to his deformity.

I liked the lines “He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber, to the lascivious pleasing of a lute” which made me think of Safety Dance by Men Without Hats : “if they don’t dance well they’re no friends of mine…you can act real rude and totally removed and I can act like an imbecile.” I see Richard as feeling left out of all the fun and then deciding that those people having fun are prancing perverts, and so they must be punished. But he feels this way because he is deformed, ugly. And don’t most of our modern villains tend to be hideous? Richard seems to strive for power to overcome the burden of his hunchback, as power and money are great equalizers. Do we not see wealthy, aesthetically unpleasing men with beautiful wives in our world?

I think it also goes with this idea that our society has that beautiful people are trustworthy and more deserving of certain  benefits.

I know that later in the play we find out that Richard does not really think his deformity hinders him from acquiring a lover, but at the this point in the play, if we take his speech at face value, it contains an interesting social commentary.

So far, Portia and Anne can be seen as complete opposites of each other in terms of their development and their actions. At first Anne appears defiant and unfeminine in her acts of spitting at Richard and cursing him to die a painful death or to kill himself. However, Anne becomes a weak yet pious figure at the end of Act 1 thorough her refusal to kill Richard herself with a knife that Richard gave her and refusing to repeat her wish of Richard committing suicide. Anne demonstrates through her refusals her strict following of God’s commandment that “Thou shalt not kill” as Anne refuses to kill Richard either directly or indirectly and prefers to accept the ring from Richard, her worst enemy for having killed her husband and father-in-law, than commit one of the worst sins. Richard’s flattering may have also affected Anne’s decision to not be the person responsible for Richard’s death.

Portia, on the other hand, is not afraid to commit deeds that others look down upon such as cross-dressing as a male doctor of laws since women were not allowed to uphold these kinds of prestigious positions. Portia goes as far as to humiliate and reprimand Bassanio for having given away the ring she gave him. She creates this scheming plot of retrieving the ring to get back at Bassanio for talking ill of her in declaring that he would give her up in order to save Antonio’s life. Portia is successful in attaining the ring as the doctor of laws and then shows the very same ring to Bassanio as herself in Belmont while falsely declaring her infidelity towards Bassanio by having slept with the doctor by telling him, “For by this ring the doctor lay with me” (5. 1. 259). The last act of the play is mostly comedic with snide remarks such as “Ay, if a woman live to be a man” (5. 1. 160) said by Nerissa and a joke well received by the audience because they know of Portia’s plan and to make fun of Bassanio’s and Gratiano’s cluelessness and astonishment throughout this act.

It is interesting to note that rings are present in both plays and that the rings are used in a way to humiliate someone. Richard maliciously enjoys having been able to woo Anne while she was still mourning and burning with rage over Richard’s acts. Richard later mentions how easily Anne has forgotten that he murdered two of her loved ones and that she quickly accepted the ring especially after admitting that he murdered King Henry because “t’was [Anne’s] beauty that provoked me” (1. ii 180).

P.S Watch this video, which proves that Portia is misunderstanding God’s commandment by refusing to let Richard die. This has to do with the difference between the words “kill” and “murder”. I think this video provides solid evidence especially in the way the commandment has been mistranslated. http://www.prageruniversity.com/Ten-Commandments/Do-Not-Murder.html#.VP8HCLDF8rM

This other video is what the murderers accuse Clarence of committing. Find out the correct meaning of this commandment by watching this!

http://www.prageruniversity.com/Ten-Commandments/Do-Not-Misuse-Gods-Name.html#.VPzQj7DF8rN

What genre of play does The Merchant of Venice fall into? After reading Act 5 of the play, it certainly appears to have characteristics of a comedy, but I struggle to find humor in most of the play. After the tension of the court scene and the merciless sentencing of Shylock, Act 5 opens with gushing lovers Jessica and Lorenzo, and a comedic appearance of Launcelot. It closes with Portia and Nerissa joking about sleeping with the characters they played earlier in court. The jolly ending seems too light to fit with the preceding acts, and caused me to rethink how I read the play. Alyssa’s previous post made me shift my perspective on Shylock’s role from enigmatic depiction of a marginalized minority to obscene caricature of an exotic race. In my opinion, Shylock is meant to be the play’s fool, but the religious aspect hinders his effect to me as a reader. I can imagine that his impotent stature is highlighted in the on-stage portrayal and his greed and “blood lust” are comical to an audience that believes this stereotype of Jews. The play ridicules the Venetians, but Jews occupy an even lower position in the minds of the English audience. It might have been funny when it was written, but now it is definitely amongst the grossest examples an anti-Semitic work. Is it still a comedy?