TWelfTh nighT - Stratford Festival

this new king is another layer of the play’s title, forTwelfth Night, January 6, is also the Feast of theEpiphany, when the new king was revealed to thethree Wise Men.Wisdom and folly in love are recurring motifs inthe play, and Feste, the professional fool, remindsus that the truly wise man admits that he is a fool.He is another example of the changing Elizabethanworld. In an earlier time, he would have beenattached solely to one household, as Touchstoneis in As You Like It. Although Feste lives in Olivia’shouse, he also seems to freelance, working forboth Olivia and the Duke, and he must constantlyask for money.Feste also reminds us that words can betwisted to mean their opposite. And deceptionin all its forms runs rampant through Illyria,as the lovers of the play must indulge theirindividual follies to excess before they learnthe lessons of love. Mad and madness arealso recurring words in Twelfth Night, and fromits half-way point through to the end, its lovesickcharacters ask if they are mad indeed.Only Malvolio refuses to admit that he is, and onlyhe remains outside the new social order that isestablished at the play’s end. His parting shot, “I’llbe revenged on the whole pack of you,” however,reminds us that he will not remain low on the socialladder for very long. Forty years after Shakespearewrote Twelfth Night, the Puritans, under Cromwell,would overthrow the British monarchy – and closethe theatres.Twelfth Night is the last party of the Christmasseason, and Twelfth Night is a farewell to an Englandthat is now on the brink of the Queen’s death. Theword carnival means farewell to things of the flesh.Feste ends the play with a song that begins:When that I was and a little tiny boy,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,A foolish thing was but a toy,For the rain it raineth every day.That melancholy song goes on to list work andlove among the foolish things of the world of adults,where the constant wind and rain are alleviatedonly by fleeting entertainments such as the gloriousone Shakespeare gives us here.Robert Blacker is Dramaturge for theStratford Shakespeare Festival.4