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.