For such disguise as haply shall become
The form of my intent.
(Shakespeare 1.2:50-51)
Scholars have long recognized William Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night as a celebration of the carnivalesque in Elizabethan England. As the editors of The Norton Anthology of English Literature write in “Twelfth Night,” their introduction to the play of the same name, “[In Elizabethan England], Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany...marked the culminating night of the traditional Christmas revels...A rigidly hierarchical social order...temporarily gave way to raucous rituals of inversion” (1078), allowing the relief of class resentment and envy. Twelfth Night's disguises, deceptions, eventual comic revelations, and assortment of happy endings mirror the Twelfth Night festivities. The masquerades around which Twelfth Night's plot revolves, however, do more than express humanity's need for occasional communal games of dress-up and pretend. A deeper significance lies in the statement Twelfth Night's masquerades make about the power of performance itself: that some truths can only be transmitted through artifice, and that the theater serves a vital role in the transmission of those truths.
The idea that theatrical illusions could reflect life's realities did not, of course, originate with Shakespeare. Neither did the idea of the world itself as a play, which Anne Righter, in Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play, suggests may first have been used by Pythagoras (65) and was popular among Elizabethan dramatists (84). Shakespeare, however, “seems to have been concerned with the play metaphor to a degree unusual even among his contemporaries” (Righter 89). Righter continues:
Gradually, the association of the world with the stage fundamental to Elizabethan drama built itself deeply into his imagination, and into the structure of his plays. … The play image also became in mature Shakespearian drama a meditation upon the nature of the theatre. (89)Shakespeare appears to signal this thematic concern early on in Twelfth Night, when Sir Andrew remarks, “I delight in masques and revels altogether” (1.3:106). Later on, Viola suggests the deeper purposes hidden within the comedy: “This fellow is wise enough to play the fool,/and to do that well craves a kind of wit...This is a practice/As full of labor as a wise man's art” (3.1:59-65). She speaks of Feste, but her lines could easily describe the work of a playwright, laboring to draw the resonance of serious truths from comic frolics.
That Shakespeare may have consciously chosen to make the theater the subtextual vehicle of truth in Twelfth Night—using a wise man's labor to achieve a fool's seemingly artless comedy—becomes clear upon examination of the plot. Each of the play's major deceptions depends upon some theatrical device for success. To pass as Cesario, Viola dons a costume, one so effective, in fact, that it fools everyone she meets. Infatuated with the sham Cesario, Olivia uses a ring—a prop—to ensure his return to her side. Malvolio wears a costume of sorts in his quest for Olivia, and performs the part of a lordly wooer to secure her affections, and the forged-letter prank which drives him to don those yellow stockings and treat Olivia to his dramatic enactment of flirtatiousness owes its success to both the scripting and acting skills of Toby and Maria. In every case, the characters of Twelfth Night resort to tricks of the theater to achieve their ends.
In every case, too, those tricks allow the revelation of knowledge that would otherwise remain unknown, further developing the idea of theatrical artifice as a key to truth. Obsessed with Olivia, Orsino would most likely not take any notice of the orphaned, shipwrecked Viola as herself. Orsino himself proclaims his contempt for women in general and the constancy of his own love for Olivia: “There is no woman's sides/Can bide the beating of so strong a passion/as love doth give my heart” (2.4:92-94). Only by impersonating a man can Viola attract enough of his attention and respect to eventually prove her worth to him as a woman. In disguise as Cesario, Viola also inadvertently exposes the passionate nature beneath the aristocratic manner and mourning veil of the “virtuous maid” (1.2:32) Olivia, who openly pursues Cesario. And only by inflaming the passions of the priggish Malvolio with a well-forged love letter can Toby and Maria expose his hidden vanities and pretensions. Through all of these revelations, Shakespeare clearly shows that sometimes truth can only emerge through artifice and deceit, a message uniquely relevant to the theater and storytelling.
Beneath this relatively simple statement, however, lies a more complex one. Each character can be taken as author and performer of his or her own play, and the outcomes of their individual attempts make a bold artistic statement: only by using the masks and deceptions of the medium to explore and reveal genuine truths can one's performances succeed. Viola's imposture allows Orsino to appreciate her true loyalty and intelligence; she wins his love. Olivia's ring trick, though doomed to fail in capturing Cesario, reveals the integrity of her character, since it proves her capable of loving and marrying beneath her social class; in the end, she is rewarded with marriage to Sebastian. And, though mean-spirited, the forged-letter prank Toby and Maria play on Malvolio is designed to unmask his social pretensions, an admirable goal. They succeed. In contrast, Malvolio's masquerade fails, perhaps because of the essential impurity and untruthfulness of his feelings towards Olivia. Malvolio, after all, doesn't desire her for herself, but for the power and status marriage to her will bring him. Believing himself alone, he imagines life as “Count Malvolio” (2.5:32), “sitting in my state.../Calling my officers about me, in my branched/velvet gown/...And then to have the humor of state” (2.5:44-49). Theatrical masquerades, these outcomes suggest, can only succeed if they contain true feeling, and fail if used as self-serving manipulations.
Manipulation, of course, is the stock in trade of any fiction and any performance, making Shakespeare's apparent stance in Twelfth Night artistically admirable. Himself adept at wringing the resonance of truth out of a medium dependent on artifice, he reveals an uncompromising pursuit of honesty. His definition of honesty, in addition, appears distinct from conventional morality. The characters' deceptions, of course, are by their very nature dishonest, a quality considered negative and not to be rewarded by society as they are in the play. Beyond that, too, if the characters' deceptions depend on good intentions or the ultimate betterment of their victims for their success, Toby and Maria must fail miserably at tricking Malvolio. Instead, as Milton Crane writes in “Twelfth Night and Shakespearian Comedy,” “the baiting of Malvolio is unrelieved in its comic heartlessness, and is not even superficially moral in its purpose. … No one takes the slightest interest in whether all this will make a better man of Malvolio” (5). This clear separation of truth from the conventional morality rewarded by morality and mystery plays underscores the artistic integrity inherent in the message implied by Twelfth Night's plot.
This message, that masks, artifice, and performance are not only necessary for the revelation of truth, but should only be used for the revelation of truth, appears too consistent throughout the play to be accidental. Shakespeare's great plays, such as Twelfth Night, demonstrate a cohesiveness of parts leading to a powerful and consistent whole that could only happen through conscious effort on the part of the author. In The Writing of Fiction, Edith Wharton cautions, “Any theory [of storytelling] must begin by assuming the need of selection. … To choose between all this [potential dramatic incident and detail] is the first step toward coherent expression” (11). Seemingly carefully selected, each action and incident in Twelfth Night fits within, and enhances, the play's overall theme. This suggests a conscious intention on Shakespeare's part to embed his statement about storytelling and performance in the text of the play.
If this is the case, one may wonder to whom Shakespeare may have directed this message. Elizabethan audiences “were sufficiently immersed in the conventions both of theater and of social life in general to accept [theatrical artifice]” (Logan, Greenblatt, Lewalski, and Maus 1077), and probably did not need a reminder of the occasional necessity of the carnivalesque. The religious politics of Shakespeare's time, however, suggest that the Puritans, who “attacked the theater for what they saw as its links with paganism, idleness, and sexual licence” (Logan, Greenblatt, Lewalski, and Maus 1078), did need that reminder. Then, too, perhaps the message simply served as a proclamation by the playwright of his artistic intentions. We may never know. What we can know, however, is that Shakespeare's own body of work proves the message of Twelfth Night true. The truths Shakespeare revealed using the masks and lies of the theater have immortalized his name and work in the canon of Western literature and drama, while most of his contemporaries—perhaps doomed by intentions more akin to Malvolio's than Viola's—have faded into obscurity.
Works Cited
Crane, Milton. “Twelfth Night and Shakespearian Comedy.” Shakespeare Quarterly. Issue 6 (1955): 1-8. Web.Logan, George M., Stephen Greenblatt, Barbara K. Lewalski, and Katharine Eisaman Maus, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B, 8th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Print.
Righter, Anne. Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play. London: Chatto & Windus Ltd., 1962. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. Logan, Greenblatt, Lewalski, and Maus 1027-1139. Print.
“Twelfth Night.” Logan, Greenblatt, Lewalski, and Maus 1077-1079. Print.
Wharton, Edith. The Writing of Fiction. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924. Print.
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