[Shakespeare] Discussion of Twelfth Night TONIGHT!!!

Tue Jul 20 14:11:17 UTC 2010

Dear friends,

Just a reminder that our discussion of *Twelfth Night *will take
*TONIGHT** at 8pm
EST.*

To take a seat at our virtual round table, call +1.201.793.9022 a few
minutes before 8. There is also a toll-free number you may call:
+1.888.350.0075. When prompted, please enter the following code: 2278583#.

I've pasted the discussion questions below for your convenience.

All best,

Richard

*****

*DISCUSSION QUESTIONS*

* *

*1. IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE, PLAY ON...*

"...Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so
die" (1.1.1-3).

These are the famous first lines of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Moved to
the core by a few bars of music, Orsino orders his musican(s) to play them:
"That strain again, it had a dying fall" (1.1.4). As the musicians find
their place, Orsino describes the music's effect on him: "O, it came o'er my
ear like the sweet sound / The breathes upon a bank of violets, / Stealing
and giving odour" (1.1.5-7). But the music isn't as sweet the second time
around. At the musicians play, Orsino complains, "Enough, no more, / 'Tis
not so sweet now as it was before" (1.1.5-8). In the lines that follow, he
reflects on the peculiar inconstancy of human appetites. "O spirit of love,
how quick and fresh art thou, / That, notwithstanding thy capacity, /
Receiveth as the sea. Nought enters there, / Of what validity and pitch
soe'er, / But falls into abatement and low price / Even in a minute"
(1.1.9-14).

Thus, in fourteen lines--not coincidentally, perhaps, the length of a love
sonnet--Shakespeare introduces one of Twelfth Night's central themes: *the
paradoxical nature of human desires,* which frequently disappear the moment
we attain our objects. How does Shakespeare develop this theme across the
play? Where else do you see him grappling with it? More importantly, what
questions about human nature and morality does it raise? Are our appetites
and desires something to be embraced or rejected? Trusted or distrusted? How
can we live in the moment without becoming bored with life? How can we
forestall pleasure without becoming a "puritan" like Malvolio, whom the play
and its characters mock wholeheartedly?

*2. WOMEN AND MEN IN LOVE*

In Act 2, scene 4, Orsino and Viola (disguised as Cesario) discuss Orsino's
hopeless passion for Olivia, before turning to a more general discussion on
the finer points of love. Olivia/Cesario hints at the love "she" bears for
Orsino: "Say that some lady, as perhaps there is, / Hath for your love as
great a pang of heart / As you have for Olivia. You cannot love her. / You
tell her so. Must she not then be answered?" (2.4.93-6). Orsino is
dumbfounded by the idea that a woman could love as deeply as he loves:
"There is no woman's sides / Can bide the beating of so strong a passion /
As love doth give my heart, no woman's heart / So big, to hold so much. They
lack retention. / Alas their love may be called appetite, / No motion of the
liver, but the palette, / That suffer surfeit, cloyment and revolt. / But
mine is all as hungry as the sea, / And can digest as much..." (2.4.97-105).

In essence, Orsino redefines *a woman's love *as "appetite," something that
"may sicken, and so die." (1.1.3). *A man's love,* he says, transcends the
vicissitudes of human appetite. But wait, hasn't Orsino just advised
Viola/Cesario to marry a woman younger in years than s/he, precisely because
a man's affections are less likely to stick?

What questions is Shakespeare trying to raise through this debate? Whose
side do you think he takes? Whose side do you take?

* *

*3. LOVE, LITERATURE, AND FALSEHOOD*

The deeper we read into Twelfth Night, the harder it appears to identify,
pin down, and define abstract ideas like "love." One place we see this is in
the play's treatment of the very stuff the play is made of: words shaped
into art. The "immortalizing power of literature" is a common theme in our
literary tradition; many of Shakespeare's love sonnets focus on it. Other
sonnets bring it into question, though, and there is no greater instance of
this in his work than the moment in 1.5 where Olivia jocularly announces her
plan to "leave the world no copy" (i.e. not marry and have children) and
instead "give out diverse schedules of [her] beauty" (1.5.223-5). Does she
really believe this will work? No, and it's clear what she's doing: by
drawing attention of the impossibility of language to "capture" reality,
she's reinforcing her earlier point that Olivia/Cesario's passionate message
"from" Orsino (it's not entirely clear who wrote it, but it seems
Viola/Cesario did) may be just that--words--and that t*he more "poetic" they
are, the more likely they are to be false. *Consider this exchange a little
earlier in the scene:

Viola/Cesario: I will on with my speech in your praise, and then show you
the heart of my message.

Olivia: Come to what is important in't. I forgive you the praise.

Viola: Alas, I tool great pains to study it, and 'tis poetical.

Olivia: It is the more like to be feigned. I pray you keep it in.
(1.5.176-81).

Can you identify other moments in the play where Shakespeare calls into
question the integrity of his artistic medium? Can you connect them with
moments in other plays we have read this spring? How do you account for all
these doubts Shakespeare casts on the character of words? How would you
characterize Shakespeare's relationship language?

*4. LOVE AND PLAY*

Twelfth Night invites us to look at language, especially "poetic" language,
with great skepticism. At the same time, though, it clearly relishes in the
play of language--just as Hamlet enjoys his witty interchange with the first
gravedigger, and the fool in King Lear exults in his verbal gymnastics.
Furthermore, this *love of wordplay* we see time and time again in
Shakespeare extends to something even bigger: *the love of play, of plays,
of play-acting, of impersonation, of disguise.* How do you account for this?
Is it Shakespeare celebrating his artistic medium? Questioning the nature of
human identity (maybe we are all just a collection of roles)? Drawing
attention to some deep need in the human spirit?

Additionally, for all the gaps highlighted by the play between the real
world and the world of play, there is one absolutely beautiful moment when
the two come together. As you may have noticed while reading Twelfth Night,
Sir Toby's expressions of love for Maria are often inspired by her
cleverness in managing and directing the "play" on Malvolio. Is Maria's
dramatic genius the reason Sir Toby falls in love with her and marries
her--the only marriage actually to occur during the play?

*5. COMEDY AND SADNESS*

Scattered throughout this comedy are moments of intense hurt, frustration,
and sadness. Some are obvious. The play begin's with Orsino's sadness;
Olivia, the woman he pines for, can't return his or any man's love while she
moans for her dead brother. Cast upon the shores of Illyria, Viola, too,
believes she has lost her brother--likewise, her twin Sebastian believes he
has lost a sister.

Some of these moments of sadness are less obvious. Take the song "O Mistress
Mine," a love song sung by Feste in 2.3; in this song, pleasure tasted today
is tinged with grief by the uncertainty about what tomorrow holds in store
for us: "Present mirth hath present laughter. / What's to come is still
unsure" (2.3.46-7). At least, that's how I read it. How would characterize
the tone of the song?

Can you find other moments in the play where you detect an undercurrent of
sadness or grief flowing beneath the play's antics? What is their dramatic
purpose? Is it to provide "tragic relief," as some readers like to say that
scenes of mirth in tragedies provide "comic relief" for their audiences, or
is Shakespeare doing something else?

*6. COMEDY AND TRAGEDY*

In addition to its many instances of sadness or grief, there are moments in
Twelfth Night where the action of the play comes close, even dangerously
close, to something much darker, something much closer to tragedy. The
practical joke played on Malvolio turns into something that has disturbed
many readers: imprisonment in a makeshift "asylum" where everything Malvolio
says in his defense is willfully construed as further evidence of his
madness. (How would you direct this scene? Would you do it as straight
comedy? Or would you draw attention to its darker features? How?) Near the
end of the play, Malvolio storms off the stage vowing to "be avenged on the
whole pack of you" (5.1.381). And then there's the moment a little earlier
in the final act where Orsino seems quite intent on killing Viola/Cesario,
rather than allowing "his" love for Olivia to continue. Reread Orsino's
monologue at 5.1.15-29; Orsino's language is really, really dark. This, I
think, is where Twelfth Night veers closest to tragedy, and you see this
kind of trajectory in other comedies as well, for example A Midsummer
Night's Dream.

Shakespeare tests the boundary between comedy and tragedy in other ways as
well. For example, there seems to be a recurrent question about whether
mirth or sadness, happiness or sorrow serves as the "baseline" of human
experience. Consider Feste's songs: "O Mistress Mine" (2.3.30ff), "Come
Away, Death" (2.4.54), and the deeply enigmatic closing song "When That I
Was a Little Tiny Boy" (5.1.392ff). Using these songs as starting points,
consider the relationship between comedy and tragedy as they pertain to the
world we live in. Is it complimentary? Hierarchical? Is the real world, the
world we live in, primarily comic or tragic, or does it contain equal
amounts of both? Is comedy something that springs from tragedy, allowing us
to deal with or forget it? Or is tragedy something that ensues when we let
the comic spirit run on for too long?

*7. THE ENDING*

In Act 1, Viola asks the Captain to disguise her as a man, so she can enter
Olivia's service: "Conceal me what I am, and be my aid / For such disguise
as haply shall become / The form of my intent" (1.2.55-7). We never see
"Viola" again; at the end of the play, she is still in her disguise, and she
is not going to put on her woman's weeds until her promised marriage to
Orsino. What do you make of this? Many comedies are based on disguises and
mistaken identities, and these typically end with unmaskings and a clearing
up of confusion. In this play, we have a clearing up of confusion, but the
unmasking is not complete. Why? We also don't get to see a marriage, another
conventional ending point for comedies. Viola is going to marry Orsino, and
her brother is going to marry Olivia, but we aren't invited to these
celebrations. There IS one marriage in the play--Maria's to Sir Toby--but it
happens completely offstage. This "ending" has puzzled critics. What do you
make of it?

*8. SKEPTICISM*

"What's to come is still unsure" (2.3.47). Is Twelfth Night a skeptical
play? Does the play mock Malvolio's "puritanism" because of his austerity
and prudery--"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no
more cakes and ale" (2.3.104-5)"--or does the play express a deeper aversion
to religion? Why or why not?

-- 
Richard Johnston
Resident Tutor, Cabot House
Teaching Fellow, Department of English
Harvard University

-- 
Richard Johnston
Resident Tutor, Cabot House
Teaching Fellow, Department of English
Harvard University

-- 
Richard Johnston
Resident Tutor, Cabot House
Teaching Fellow, Department of English
Harvard University
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