Twelfth Night (Lecture 1 of 2)

okay I think we can get started first thing I will warn you King Lear is coming we will get to King Lear next Tuesday and I just want to know it is longer than any of the plays we've read thus far particularly these companies we've just been reading it's about 50% longer so now a little extra time by the time it's only the greatest play ever written and it's more complicated you want to leave a little more time for me as for Twelfth Night I don't know of any really good version there's one that's rarely available directed by Trevor Nunn with the great Ben Kingsley as fest a it's a very dark version of the comedy and in that sense a bit misleading again I don't remember the BBC version I gather it's pretty good and uncut I noticed two versions are on YouTube for free there's one directed by Kenneth Branagh I don't know much about it the reviews say at least that it's virtually uncut the one I'm intrigued by that I didn't know existed and I'll now watch when I get a chance is the earlier one it has an unbelievable cast three of the great actors of the British theatre of the 20th century and Alec Guinness whom you may know as obi-wan Kenobi plays Malvolio that's evidently heavily cut but my guess is that so if you're gonna watch one that's the one to watch okay I'm gonna say a few more words but as you like it and then turn to Twelfth Night I was a little rushed in talking about J cos last time and I do think it's useful to analyze J cos to point out what Shakespeare is not that is Jacob J cos represents a path that Shakespeare doesn't take J cos is a nihilist he is very sour and bitter about the human condition Shakespeare is aware of all the problems that Jake is is aware of after all he created him as a character and in general we've seen that Shakespeare is quite critical of the world he sees all the injustice in the world he sees how phony the aristocracy could be how in many cases the people that ruled the world don't deserve to do so but his reaction isn't to reject the world root and branch as Jake as does I said it said it's an unbelievable irony that that seven ages of man's speech is actually on the wall of the Folger Shakespeare Library at Washington DC as this summarize if this speech this still Shakespeare's wisdom it is simply a horrible view of humanity as pointless and worthless and Shakespeare himself constant contradiction by having the very vital the old figure of Adam come out and show that old age isn't as bad as jakers points it out to be and the main thing to see about that speech is that Jake is feels there is only role playing there's no reality to human identity were just playing roles now Shakespeare is very aware of role play it was an actor himself and a playwright and a lot of his plays deal as we've seen with role-playing but role playing as I was suggesting last time as a means it's a way of working through your problems and comedy to get into a solution as we'll be seeing next week with King Lear Shakespeare is so aware of the gap between nature and convention and human life we've been seeing it from the very beginning with Richard a section second a man who is by convention King but doesn't have the true kingly nature it's the fundamental problem in politics for Shakespeare that convention doesn't always align with nature and the comedies are as I've been showing him are an attempt to try to realign convention with nature by getting out of the world convention into a more natural world but the aim of the companies is to get you back into the conventional world so that we return to Athens in Midsummer Night's Dream and we were going to return to the court at the end of as you like it jakey's takes a position that you should just give up on convention that it's all merely convention therefore just rules that we can adopt jakers has complete contempt for the world as it exists we see this in an early dialogue if you remember if you brought as you like it's on page 40 in any case its act 2 scene 7 about line 58 this is what he announces that he's gonna reform the world that give him the privilege of a fool to criticize society to be a kind of social science satirist he says invest me and my model II give me leave to speak my mind and I will through-and-through cleanse the foul body of the infected world if they will patiently receive my medicine now that's of course a big if and explains why this reform isn't going to happen but I want you to see is that Jake is is the kind of person who wants to reform the world through and through the world is infected it needs to be cleansed it's a foul body this is a kind of radical reform now I think Shakespeare by contrast works from within he doesn't stand outside society and criticize it root and branch and say we have to do away with it he's more interesting what we want my called gradual reform fine-tuning and indeed as so often happens in the play Jake is is criticized for this attitude and Duke senior points out still on page forty so line 64 on the scene most mischievous foul seen in chiding sin for thou thyself has been a libertine as sensual as the Brutus thing itself and all the embossing soars and headed evils that that would license of the free foot escort Wood style dis George discharged disgorge into the general world so the Duke points out that Jake is criticizes the world for false he himself shares he acts as if he stands outside the world some kind of Archimedean point from which he can perform it as if you were puck as if he could stand outside the world and say what fools these mortals be but he's just another foolish mortal and I'll say shakespeare's comedy is much more generous to humanity than J cos J cos despises humanity and Shakespeare does not he wouldn't write this kind of comedy if he did I suspect that there were moments when he got up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning and and had a little bit of despite for Humanity and you'll see his surface at moments in King Lear on the other hand has broad general position is to make fun of human beings but not to ridicule them I hope you've seen the gentleness of the comedy which accepts our humanity even in the process of criticizing it and so Shakespeare's position is not to reject everything and just to say oh it's all pure convention and it's got no meaning the way Jake has does and in fact he has a little dialogue between Jenkins and Roslin to point up this contrast this is our page of 73 to 74 it's the opening scene of act form when Rosalind is interrogating takis they say you are melancholy fellow and Jake says I am so I do love it better than laughing and here we see the embracing of melancholy the rejection of laughter and and jake has insists why it is good to be sad and say nothing and Roslin replies why then tis good to be a post a block of wood is as good as you if the goal is to say nothing and then he goes on to explain his melancholy and a round line of 15 he says it's extracted from many objects and indeed the subject contemplation of my travels in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness Jake this is a traveler and the travelling is the source of his melancholy and he Rosalind seizes upon this line 20 and I foresee want a traveler by my faith who a great reason to be sad I fear you have sold your own lands to see other bands then to have seen much into if nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands and that is Jake as a traveler afar in his own land those who know no Hamlet Hamlet is something like that Hamlet is someone who despises Denmark and criticizes his customs he's travelled too much in his mind and here what Russell says I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's and then to have seen much and to have nothing just to have rich eyes and poor hands you've destroyed your own life by losing your roots you had you're homeless you have no home anymore and and and and Jacob says yes I have gained my experience and resen says and your experience makes you sad I'd rather have a fool to make me marry than experience to make me sad that's very much the spirit of Shakespeare's comedies now do remember he wrote tragedies this is a man who understood human suffering and the misery in the world we'll see this in King Lear but I keep saying he also wrote comedies and you can see why because the spirit of his comedies is I would rather have a fool to make me marry than experience to make me sad and then as at Shakey's leaves mine 31 Rosalind says farewell miss were traveler Lucca Lisbon wear strange suits disable all the benefits of your own country be out of love with your nativity disable all the benefits of your own country be out of love with your Nativity you cannot lead a happy life if that's your attitude and we see that this this famous seven ages of man it's means ohm it's everything that in fact makes life bearable that makes life meaningful such as falling in love getting married having children having them aid you in your old age going to school and learning something else and so on it's much more significant what Jake is omits in that speech than one he mentions so III think Shakespeare builds into this play this character takes such a negative perspective on human life to show us that it's incompatible with comedy and Jake us can't be included in a happy ending he voluntarily leaves and indeed leaves with a religious convert it-- as if this position of his represents something akin to a religious renunciation of the world that sees this world as evil and corrupt and in itself unredeemable again Shakespeare is not naive and certainly not my evilly optimistic yet his comedy Strep resents some hopes that human life can be happy that people can achieve a form of happiness and one way he he explores this is by the possibility of getting conventions back in touch with nature it's a deep problem that our conventions often stand between us and our natural feelings that's what he shows about love conventions that they get it all wrong that this Petrarchan view of love leads to people suffering and love instead of enjoying it but the fact that one set of conventions is wrong doesn't mean that all sets of conventions are wrong and indeed Shakespeare's comedies especially are a search for a better set of conventions in love again all conventions are not equal and Shakespeare is not a relativist I showed you that with koryn statement about how the manners in the country don't work in the court of the bandages and the court don't work in the country that's not a statement of the relativity of conventions it's of the fitness of conventions to specific situations and it says that the manners of the country work in the country and the matter to the court work in the court it just don't get that mixed up and indeed we'll see this in a tragic way in King Lear Shakespeare search for a way to find a more natural basis for politics as in some ways we've explored in histories as well so Shakespeare doesn't simply despise conventions the way Jake is does he creates a character who does despise conventions to see that that's not the right route in fact conventions are necessary in love love requires poetry I love without poetry is Audrey and touchstone it's the mere copulation of cattle love requires poetry but maybe could have a better poetry than the stilted artificial Petrarchan love poetry maybe it will be a poetry moderated and modified by kind of prose as we see with Orlando and Roslyn so the hope here is to reform the conventions of love with the understanding that you can't eliminate them entirely every people we know has patterns of courtship has conventions that make it possible for human beings men and women to get together and get over the difficulties of a man and a woman relating those courtships those conventional courts are very from society to society indeed they look laughable from one society to another but that doesn't mean they're meaningless and ridiculous and again one could say some methods of courtship are better or more natural than others so this is the utopian nature of Shakespearean romantic comedy that it offers us an image of a proper love of a truly natural love Shakespeare knows that none of us are gonna achieve what Rosalind and Orlando do we're never could have quite that opportunity to find the Forest of Arden and these disguises that allow us to overcome the obstacles to love but you can say it's worth showing what this would be like what a love that that that combined refinement and spontaneity what a love the combined poetry and prose let's put it up on the stage so we can see it we may never be able to achieve it in the full synthesis that Rosalind and Orlando achieve but once we see it it can be a kind of guide to us a kind of touchstone so that we can see that the love of Sylvius and Phoebe is wrong and a love of Audrey and a touchstone is inadequate and see what an ideal love would be it'll be like so again I do these comedies do not attempt to portray reality they portray a kind of romantic ideal by which we can at least take our bearings in these much more complicated lives that we human beings lead ok let me move on now to 12 9 12 9 is the real childish discourse in the sense that it's the least political of the players we're doing in a way it is preposterous to put this in a course on Shakespeare in politics your introduction in your audition does a good job of discussing the ways in which Twelfth Night is a mere Bagatelle and it really it needs to be enjoyed for what is a very funny play and marvelous romp when stage well nevertheless I'm Thursday I'm gonna get very serious politically about it because I'm gonna discuss religion in the play and I will show you that I think it actually has a very important political aspect to it but I want to keep it non-political today although I may get to the religious issue by the end just to show you how I think it fits in to what we've been doing namely that the subject of love is always political for Shakespeare in the sense that it deals with this political problem of Eros and I think that Twelfth Night reveals most clearly what Shakespeare is doing in his comedies namely showing trying to kind of thought experiment let's see what's life is like when we abstract from this tremendously complicating factor of politics which often makes like tragic as Shakespeare shows and here let's see what a love would be like in a world with no non love problems and it turns out these lovers are gonna screw things up anyway this is the perversity human love for Shakespeare that people get themselves in trouble even when there's no basis for it anymore and in particular we've seen you know we've we've had relatively peaceful situations in these comedies relatively abstracted from politics but in Midsummer Night's Dream the father for bad the love of Hermia and Lysander and Duke Theseus intervened and as you like it we have some again some complications with family opposing certainly link ups and and and therefore political figures imposing them in this case the Duke falls in love there's no Duke to forbid him loving Olivia he is the Duke there's no parents involved Olivia's got enough she could certainly reciprocate this guy's the Duke after all she doesn't have any family objecting to it it seems like okay alright there's no obstacles famously in this kind of comedy new comedy there's some kind of obstacle usually some kind of old man that blocks the lovers from fulfillment but nothing like that at this time and so we're we're forced to see these lovers will create problems even if there are any aren't any and it's partially because of this whole image of love they have that love should be tortured this whole Petrarchan idea that it ain't love if you ain't suffering and again it makes it clear it's like it you know romeo giulia oh it's so stem parents of ours and her me Liza oh it's that father of Jesus but what if if Olivia and Duke Orsino can't get together it's their own fault as indeed Shakespeare is showing this is this kind of self generating misery in love because they love it now the play does take place in a kind of utopian space it is it's Illyria which which makes it the Adriatic coast which scene was pretty remote from Shakespeare to us but in fact I will say that the Adriatic coast was part of the Venetian Empire in Shakespeare's lifetime so pretty important and more developed I guess you could say that it is now what's now Dubrovnik was then Ragusa and Ragusa was the second largest or second most important city in the video commercial empire it's one reason Shakespeare has Italians in the play that looks weird to us but the Adriatic coast was Italian in Shakespeare's lifetime again most of it controlled by Venice so it's it's funny when you look at these things Illyria seems like the most remote and fantastical spot actually Shakespeare probably had met some people from Ragusa obviously met some people from Venice anyway but still it's pretty lightly sketched in as a setting and what we mean is this Duke Orsino who is in love with loved this is the very opening of the play page three act 1 scene 1 again very famous lines but I think generally misinterpreted if music be the food of love play on give me excess of it that surfeiting the appetite may sicken and so die that strain again it had a dying ball I guess a if music be the food of love play on that's become a very famous line but what Shakespeare's emphasize here is the decadence of all this give me excess of it that a patek my sicken and so die and he emphasizes the dying fall the falling cadence of the music what we see here is one of these typical Petrarchan lovers who has completely wrapped up in the wonderful experience of suffering and love and so chronicles the dying of love even in his celebration of it line 7 enough no more tis not so sweet now as it was before it's already in decline and we learn line 14 it falls into a pavement and low-price even in a minute he loves hearing music as the background to his love because the music has a dying fall and he's absorbed in this moment of the dying of his love and and then someone asked him this is page 4 line 16 will you go hunt my lord now hunting was a very important activity of the aristocracy in Shakespeare's day it's hard for us to imagine how important hunting was in Renaissance culture but it was thought of as preparation for war Machiavelli talks about that is a good healthy activity to get out and have some physical exercise will you go how about God what curieux the guy is like in a fog here the fog and Petrarchan love what could the heart here comes upon heart means deer but of course it also means hardened why so I do the noblest that I have o when mine eyes did see Olivia first we thought she purged the air pestilence that incident was I turned it into a heart and my desires like fell and cruel hounds air since pursue me now in fact this the use of hunting imagery in Petrarchan poetry was very common there's a very famous sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt called who's who so list the hunt Shakespeare's playing upon that aspect of this poetic tradition here in any case you see here's a man who's not out hunting he's pining away for his beloved Olivia and this is not the best course of action for adieu who should be leading his people indeed on page five the end of the scene Act one Scene one a way before me to sweet beds of flowers love thoughts like rich when canopy with Bowers it's like well that was enough activity for a day I'm going back to bed what we see here is a kind of paralysis here and again he's so wrapped up in the experience of love not actively seeking out this woman there's something very solipsistic and even narcissistic about this form of love so this is the kind of impasse we've been talking about that this Petrarchan notion of love generates against it is the corresponding dead end that olivia has ended up in in her case it's morning mo you are an ing so I'm page 4 so act 1 scene 1 about line 29 we learned but like a cloister Asst she will valent walk and water once a day have chamber round with i offending bride all this the season of brothers dead love which she would keep fresh and lasting in her sad remembrance now she's a coy stris she's in a self-imposed nunnery we would say now we saw this as a threat in the beginning of Midsummer Night's Dream that if Hermia did listen to her father she'd end up in a nunnery and again this is you see the connection between the sterility of this conception of love and a kind of monastic ascetic understanding of the world that we associated with Christianity and notice she she's watering with I offending Brian all these images of agriculture here watering and almost a season their images of sterility it's it's salt water nothing's growing here and indeed that's the problem with Olivia here we learn page six so act 1 scene 2 line 40 they say she hath abjured the sight and company of men so we've got two people at dead-ends here Orsino is so wrapped up and the joys of suffering love that it barely can get out of bed and Olivia who is has locked herself all from the company of men mourning for a brother now it's okay to mourn for your brother Shakespeare understands that but this has gotten unnatural she is rejecting all of life in memory of her brother paid seven sue Toby belch this is so Act one Scene three says what a plague means my niece to take the death of her brother thus I am sure cares an enemy to life remember in comedy the standard is life we must go on living no matter what happens and although it's okay to mourn not if it becomes excessive here and where Olivia's mourning has become an excuse for not getting on with her own life now what a sight it passes from Hamlet to help us again grasp the difference between comedy and tragedy in tragedy mornings for real Hamlet is mourning for his father many ways the precondition for the play have ins further is a great man we know a lot about him we know why havelet's mourning for him in the case of Olivia we don't even know her brother's name Shakespeare knows what he's doing he keeps Olivia's brother a cipher if we knew more about him we could maybe get into this morning but we don't now here's a hamlet in act 1 scene 2 has this very interesting exchange where Gertrude is trying to get hammer out of his morning dew not forever with I fail at lids seek for thy normal father and the dust thou knowest his comment all that lives must die passing through nature to eternity and Hamlet says very bitterly I'm Adam it is common Gertrude says if it be why seems it so particular with me and there's the tragic hero for you he's not common there's something particular to him and indeed Hamlet we see as a deeply sensitive and profound man he has a reasonably mourning his father Gertrude tries to point to comedy to the commonality of human experience now noticed is common all that lives must die and Claudius joins of the act too sweet and commendable commendable in your nature Hamlet to give these mourning duties to your father but now glorious launches into the world of comedy but you must know your father lost a father that father lost lost his and the survivor bound in filial obligation for some term to do obsequious sorrow there it is you experience this and unique your father lost his father and had father lost his father continuity of generations everyone has to face up to this we have to move on and then this speech by chorus but to persever to do obsequious sorrow but to persever in obstinate condolence is a core is a course of impious stubbornness remember what I said to the comic figure the tragic hero looks stubborn and here it is but the persever in obstinate condiment is a course of impious stubbornness for what we know must be and this is common as any of the book most vulgar thing to sense why should we in our peevish opposition take it to heart it is to reason most absurd whose common theme is death of fathers I bring this up this against ya comedy deals with common themes with the universal human experiences what everybody goes for generation after generation and that's why we have to move on tragedy distills out this unique moment a unique person dealing with unique experience I think this is a wonderful way of seeing the difference between comedy and tragedy and here in Twelfth Night we are forced to conclude that Olivia's attachment to a brother is superficial because the moment a handsome young man shows up in a court she's hot for him and starts pursuing viola as it turns out the person of Cesario we quickly realize that the morning was a facade it was an excuse to turn away Orsino and all his persistent love suits moreover we see in violas behavior how you react to her brother's death she in effect mourns it more or as affected more deeply by it than Olivia is but she knows she has to move on moreover she maintains hope that she will regain her brother and deed she jumps at the first sign that he might still be alive so again Shakespeare constructs these play as well so we can see that you know abstractly you might say okay it's alright for Olivia to mourn for brother but really Shakespeare shows how that's the same psychology that Duke Orsino is manifesting these characters enjoy suffering and moreover it's just be crying become a kind of habit to them every day Orsino sends off another love message to Olivia it's rejected he says okay that's enough for today and every day she mourns and rejects the message from Orsino Shakespeare is actually very astute here understanding human psychology that in fact there's a kind of inertia to sorrow this is the therapist will point out when they try to break people out of clinical melancholy that you just can become a habit it becomes safe it's like your life becomes controlled because it's all sorrow and that is particularly not healthy for the community and when it's it's it's blocking the romances in this world so into this world Shakespeare introduces the shake-up factor something that will make the world go topsy-turvy and help people to break out of this impasse that they've somehow gotten themselves into and in this case it's going to be a pair of identical twins with the slight difference that one is a boy and one is a girl and again we're gonna have a girl dress up as a boy viola will dress up as Cesario as I mentioned with with boys playing these female parts Shakespeare lately this point of career would often allow the male actor relief but the boy actor relief by having him play a boy for much of the play but again it goes deeper than that and and once again notice that it's a woman who saves the day that viola is the character who really takes the lead in getting the illyrians out of that romantic impasse here we saw this with Rosalind it's also true of the character Portia in Merchant of Venice i I've been trying to track down this source I think I read it in a comment on amazon.com I want to Shakespeare's plays but it really intrigues me this formulation that for Shakespeare tragedy is when men ruled the world comedies when women rule the world that is and it has something to do the predominance of thumos in tragedy and and eros and comedy but but in in the history plays and King Lear will seen all of Shakespeare's tragedies it's largely a bastion world not completely a masking world there's Lady Macbeth there's Cleopatra will see Gotham on Regan and Cordelia in King Lear but still you can say tragedy is this political world governed by FAMAS and in which men are contending for honor in the comedies the the women seem to understand eros better than the man we saw that in Orlando being instructed by Rosalind we're going to see something similar here between two horsey know and viola and I think it Mill may well be that women understand the family better or understand the goal of eros the goal of eros is generation and the family women are closer to that than men and in general though the women set out to produce a happy ending they want to get out of the impasse they want to resolve things they want to free up the erotic energies the the men often have the stubbornness we associated with tragic heroes and women often have the flexibility we associated with comic heroes and I think it's a pattern that's been sufficiently appreciated in Shakespeare's comedies how much they are dominated by the cleverness and the flexibility and the adaptability of characters like viola Rosalind and again I'll add Portia in the Merchant of Venice so viola by masquerading as a scenario sets up a process that will resolve things and once again as and as you like it the the model for romantic love turns out to be friendship it's as if Shakespeare saying romantic love needs to be a bit more like friendship between men and men and women and women and as we've seen a number of plays he holds that up as an idea and in this play as well the friendship of Antonio and Sebastian is presented as a very deep relationship in many ways superior to say the relationship of Orsino and Olivia I say that because Antonio in particular really cares a lot about Sebastian he's willing to risk his life for him he aids him in many ways he provides him with money when he needs it and even ruses life to show up in Illyria because he can't be without Sebastian and because he's afraid Sebastian is in trouble there's a kind of activity to that friendship that is lacking in the utter passivity of Orsino's love for Olivia I mean he's the true Petrarchan lover because he loves her from a distance he sends her telegrams and instagrams and emails and whatever he never shows up at a doorstep the first time a mail shows up at her doorstep Olivia goes gaga for Cesario at least a guy who's willing to walk a few blocks to see me something's so static and uncommunicative about Orsino's love and so what we see is that these two Affairs what turns out to being the Duke Orsino viola affair and the what turns out to be the Olivia Cesario therefore Sebastian Affair they are set in motion by a situation that's more akin to friendship than to romantic love by that I mean that when Orsino meets the person who eventually learned is Olivia mrs. viola he thinks it's a boy Cesario and they become friends remarkably quickly look at page 13 so this is act 1 scene for reopening here Valentine says to Cesario if the do continue these favors tortoises re or like to be much advanced he hath no knee but three days and already you are no stranger he's known Olivia for years and they're still strangers we don't even know if they've ever met maybe they met in a masked ball one day in Venice but here it is three days and and they're no strangers indeed for the damn page 13 act 1 scene 4 line 11 standing or looses area thou no snow less but all excuse me stand you are aloof he says everyone else then Cesario thou knows no less but Hall I'm in class to thee the book even if my secret soul three days three days and they're sharing the secrets of their souls and ID indeed I think the point here that Shakespeare is making is that many ways two men can get along together because all apparatus of romantic love isn't there they can speak as we would say as man-to-man again we saw this with Orlando and Ganymede in as you like it so this this means that Orsino meets viola in a masculine form Cesario somebody can become friends with before they become lovers I Shakespeare said you know be nice if the man and woman knew each other if they'd actually met before they form this great attachment as Orsino does long distance well Olivia now similarly Cesario shows up as the messenger from Orsino to Olivia this is on page let's see 23 no 21 page 21 act 1 scene 5 Babylon 166 now the goal from Shakespeare's one view is to break down these artificial love conventions and unwittingly Caesarea does a great job of it or viola this is again page 21 act 1 scene 5 line once assist the Honourable lady of the house which is she now well you'll see what I mean don't speak to me I shall answer for her you will most radiant exquisite unimaginable beauty I pray you tell me if this is people lady in the house for I never saw her now if she is a radiant exquisite of natural beauty you can pick her out in a crowd you're not supposed to you're about to address your message the most beautiful woman in the world you're not supposed to shock that well which one of you is this most beautiful woman in the if she were truly the Petrarchan Love goddess anyone could pick her out of a crowd this is a marvelously funny moment the Honourable lady in the house which is named and then I pray you tell me if this mobility of the house or never sir I would be loath to cast away by speech for besides that is excellently well penned I have taken great pains to con it that is to memorize it now this is a terrible admission here that there's actually a pre-existing text of this love Petrarchan love is supposed to be spontaneous suppose to be attributed Wells up from the depths of the soul to the beloved the Oliv violates all the conventions of romantic love here by pulling out the text and say oh yeah I got this sauna to read you we just had it written first so you know it's a wonder it's a marvelous moment when she mentions the well penned speech and how she's memorized it it suggests the textual 'ti of this Petrarchan love that it doesn't exist in real emotion and an honest spontaneous interchange between man and woman it's just another text another poem and I I don't know Shakespeare doing this but I was very surprised to discover again this is a leery of the Adriatic coast there was serbo-croatian Petrarchan love poetry my colleague of Virginia Gordon brain is the world's greatest expert on Petrarchan ISM wrote a book they actually discovered there's a whole volume of Petrarchan love Silas science I think was published in 1507 and there are serbo-croatian again I doubt Shakespeare doing this but Shakespeare defines these things even in Illyria the Petrarchan texts are are prevalent and Shakespeare makes a lot of jokes with Petrarchan conventions in this sequence page 24 viola points can always enter characters Cesario this is act 1 scene 5 about line 242 nature and nature in the case of arrow sleeves generation just beauty truly blend to his red and white natures on sweet and cutting hand laid on lady you're the crueler she alive if you will leave these graces to the grave and leave the world don't copy what she's saying is you're so beautiful have children we need copies of your beauty that's very interesting that Shakespeare's sonnets begin with just this sequence he's writing to a young man possibly a hero Southampton but he's urging him to marry and saying you're so good-looking you can't take these good looks to the grave let's let's have some children here to preserve your good looks and again it is that the typical Shakespearean critique aperture organism that it ignores the function of euros which is generation now olivia is very snide about it this is line 244 Oh sir I will not be so hard-hearted I will give out diverse schedules of my beauty it shall be inventoried and every particle in tencel label to my will as item tulips and different red item to grey eyes would lids to them item 1 neck 1 chin and so forth she's making fun here of a Petrarchan poetic trope it's called the blazing BL azo in it actually Shakespeare makes fun of it in that sonnet number 130 I read to you I'll just repeat that quickly my mistress eyes are nothing like the Sun coral is far more red than her lips red if snow be white why then her breasts are done that is in this patron control you go down the form of your beauty and say how beautiful eyes are how beautiful her air is how beautiful her lips are and so on very standard Shakespeare just making fun of it and that sonnet and he has Olivia make fun of it here that as item two lips in different red item to graze eyes with Liz then she's heard a lot of Petrarchan poetry and she's sick of it but she knows it leads nowhere it's just a lot of poetry and indeed earlier page 22 like 191 Olivia says come to what is important I forgive you the praise there was a alas I took great pains to study it and his poetic off the speech she's brought and Olivia says it is more like to be feigned again we saw this dialogue between touchdown and Audrey and as you like it the issue of how lying the poet's can be and so we're in this typical situation when nothing's gonna happen until viola drops the prepared text and then this is aligned to 65 if I did love you if I did love you at my Master's flame was such a suffering such a deadly life in your denial I would find no sense I would not understand it I would not take no for an answer or seen those been taking no for an answer for years evidently and what does it say about his love that he does take no for an answer and Olivia's a little surprise here this isn't typical Petrarchan love poetry behavior why what would you and finally viola shows a little youthful energy here make me a willow cabinet or gate and call upon my soul within the house right loyal Canton's have contended love and sing them loud even though that at night hello your name to the reverberate hills and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out Olea oh you would not rest between the elements of air on earth but you should pity me and let me says you might do much what is your parent is she's immediately interested and the yeah Oh get you to your Lord I kinda love him let him send no more unless perchance you come to me again that's how fast it happens just one sign of youthful exuberance of sexual Impossible impetuosity if I may say so and Olivia forget about a dead brother at about Orsino she's got the hots here for young Cesario and you know that's what loves about it's about a youthful energy and indeed it will not so now again she's not gonna marry viola she's gonna marry Sebastian but Sebastian looks just like Cesario and again the point is that they've overcome this impasse that Olivia and Orsino lose in because viola in the person Society was actually shown up and some kind of communication can take place and some kind of energy can be introduced in the love and so she she gets to meet Sebastian in a tamer form if you will in this feminine form that's less threatening to her and it's kind of allow a marvelous resolution to this romantic impasse that's developed in the play let me put it to you this way if Orsino and Olivia would have married there'd be a question of who got the better deal since one was getting Olivia and one was getting Orsino but the way this play works out they get the same thing they both get this curious being Cesario who is viola and Sebastian they both get the same deal and it is interesting that in particular they both get some younger and of a lower social status the one thing we learned about Olivia in the play is that she wants to marry someone beneath her this is an interesting detail we get early in the play page 11 act 1 scene 3 line 106 told me actually explains what promise show none of the count she'll not match above her degree neither in a state years nor wit I've heard her swear to it so that's this is when he's trying to convince aunt Andrew aguecheek that he has a shot at marrying Olivia but not you know if she married the Duke she would be subordinating herself to him he's the man he's the Duke he's older she gets a better deal by marrying Sebastian eventually because she is older she's more socially prominent she will perhaps not dominate the relationship but she should have more of a shot at it than she would if she subordinated herself to a do similarly the Duke in marrying Olivia might have some problems because she's pretty highborn we see that she has a high opinion of herself and in discussing this this is page 39 with Viola Cesario the the Duke insists on this - this is act 2 scene 4 line 29 let's still the woman take an elder than herself so we're sure so where's she to him so sways her level on our husband's heart for boy however we do praise ourselves our fancies are more Gideon and firm wrong waving pseudo lawsuits and women's are so we see here that he wants a woman that won't be subordinate to him indeed what's really interesting that emerges in the sequence is this great Petrarchan lover this great worshipper of women of the abstract has utter contempt for real women again I think Shakespeare is really so interesting in exposing the psychology of this poetry this kind of poetry because look what happens here this is still page 39 so I too seen for about mine 15 if ever thou shalt love in the sweet pangs of it remember me for such as I am all true lovers are unstained and skittish in all motions elves say in the constant image of the creature that is beloved you know he's so proud of himself who remaining faithful to this image and yet what does he go on to say about women you know let thy love be younger than my selves this is a bad line 36 or thy affection cannot hold the bend for women are as roses whose fair flower being once displayed the fall that very hour so there it is he doesn't think women can reciprocate man's faithfulness it's the the man who should be the friend who can be a great lover the woman is just fickle and again I think there's something to be said to Shakespeare's understanding here but he understood in this perturb and love you are loving a woman in the abstract an image of a woman not a real woman you're not interacting with this is something Orlando can be taught by rosalind that a woman has emotions that you're going to deal with them in a marriage Orsino is never looking forward to marriage in a reality because he's not looking forward to a real woman and who teaches him what a real woman is a woman namely viola in the person of Caesarea this is on page 42 you know the old has already fallen love with Orsino and she's showing her nobility in that she's willing to take messages from him to Libya but this is what act 2 scene 4 line 90 say that some lady is perhaps there is half free love as great a pang of heart as you have for living it and we're seeing us as that is impossible I am a man I'm the only true lover 194 there is no woman sides can buy the beating of so strong a passion as love death give my heart no woman's heart so big to hold so much they lack retention how can this man who claims to be so devoted to a woman have such contempt for women alas their love may be called an appetite no motion of the liver but the pallet that serve suffers surfer climbing to revolt but mine is all as hungry as in the sea and could digest as much make no compare between that love a woman could bear be and that IO Olivia you see the narcissism of this kind of love here it is that that oh how great I have the world's greatest lover and no woman could equal had and the Duke says but what does thou know and the only has a - well what loved women - man male as cautious woman in faith they are as true as hard as we my father had a daughter loved a man as it might be perhaps where I am woman I showed you a lordship what's her history a blank my lord she never told her love here's of course she's speaking about herself but let concealment like a worm in the bud feed on her damaged cheek she pined and thunk and with a green and yellow melancholy she sat like patience on a monument smiling at grief and there's you know a woman informing this man you know when women have feelings too and so again you see how these characters Orsino and Olivia must break out of these stereotypes they have of men and women of their habits of suffering in order to achieve something real now it will turn out to be a reordering of the affections hear or see no find he's in love with Olivia I was with viola and Olivia will fight she's in love with Sebastian and indeed they will both discover there's something to be said in reciprocity in love especially in Orsino's case he is wallowing the idea that the only true love is an unreciprocated love is the love of a woman who doesn't return your affections P a page 57 Olivia has to learn this is actually seen one line 158 but rather reasoned us with reason fetter love so does good but given unsought is better it's a complete turn on the Petrarchan tradition there and then similarly towards the end Orsino has to learn page 99 this is i5 scene 1 9 267 boy thou hath said to me a thousand times that never should love woman like to me you know prove it I've lost and Aliyeva do you really love me because that's gonna be important Ali does ask to see her in her women's clothing before it makes it his final decision on this matter but again Shakespeare introduces in this confusion into the play these different roles people switching their sex roles in the and suddenly they break out of this impasse and by the end of the play there's a kind of liberation in Illyria okay uh I'll come back to the the the love story and I'll come back to Sebastian and particularly but let me turn now I'll get to a little earlier than I thought I was going to the the story of Malvolio and the real politics of the play which turn out to turn on religion now in fact this play largely turns on the story of Malvolio typically great actors have been attracted to this play in order to play the role of Malvolio you know no less than obi-wan Kenobi Kenobi playing Gallic in displaying a Malvolio and that version that's up on YouTube and Malvolio is a really interesting creation on Shakespeare's part and I will simply go for the jugular here page 36 we learn whom who Malvolio is this is act 2 scene 3 about line 140 Marius sirs sometimes he is a kind of Puritan if I thought that I'd beat him like a dog what for being a Puritan nice was the reason to unite I have no squares the reason for it but I hate reason good enough the devil appeared and that he is or anything constantly but Malvolio is a Puritan now our notes rather unhelpfully point out a straight-laced censorious person Maria makes it clear that she is not using the label in a strict ecclesiastical sense I'm sorry Malvolio is a Puritan and this is Shakespeare's portrait of a Puritan and that's what makes the place so interesting in political terms this is a remarkable play in political terms because it it sets an opposition the Cavaliers and the Roundheads the very forces that were to make up the English Civil War in 1642 that is the the what looks like the subplot of the play is the comic conflict between sir Toby belch and Sir Andrew aguecheek and Malvolio that is between two aristocrats and a Puritan and those are the forces that lined up at the English Civil War the Puritans or the Roundheads leading rebellion against Charles the first and his aristocracy it's almost uncanny that Shakespeare saw already around 1600 when he wrote these plays but exactly the forces that were gonna tear a little part and exactly why let me say a few words about the Puritans now so that we will have a background and I'll work this out in detail next time the Puritans were a more radical Protestant sect than the Anglicans I should say first of all that period they did not call themselves Puritans Puritan was a term imposed upon them by their enemies it was a term of reproach only Puritans this often happens in in religion I guarantee of the Quakers didn't originally call themselves Quakers and even the Methodists didn't originally called himself Methodists these were terms that were imposed upon them that people had objected to them so going back a bit to Henry the eighth 1535 as I said as I've told you before Henry they broke with the Catholic Church in order to create a Protestant Church of England many Catholics opposed that and Catholicism was restored under Queen Mary and the Spanish and an armada to try to restore Eaglin to Catholicism and there was a lot of religious strife in Shakespeare's lifetime between the Protestant Anglicans and the Catholics but that wasn't the only problem that the Anglicans faced if you want to put it on a political spectrum we could say Catholicism was the threat from the right Puritanism was the threat from the left many Protestants felt that Henry the Eighth had not gone far enough in breaking with a Catholic Church that in some ways he just renamed the Catholic Church the Church of England he had just substituted himself as the head of the English church for the Pope some of the things that these people that were then called Puritans objected to were the retaining of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Catholicism that is the Anglican Church still had bishops and in Archbishop of Canterbury there was still a very strict hierarchy in the church and it was top-down the king was the supreme head of the Anglican faith and got to a point the Archbishop of Canterbury and so on the Puritans wanted what we would call church democracy yeah in fact they felt that congregations should run themselves there shouldn't be bishops there shouldn't be Archbishop's and moreover they objected to many aspects of the Catholic Church that had survived as you may know when the Puritans came to power one of the things they did was to destroy all the religious art in England they whitewashed the churches destroyed centuries a beautiful b-mart almost no English gothic art survives for just this reason it was destroyed by the Puritans you find it often in other countries where was they I found an unbelievably beautiful work of English gothic art in Naples and I was there last May more beautiful than anything I've seen surviving in England the Puritans and here's where we start to get the the meaning of the word Puritan as we use it today the Puritans objected to the desecration of the Sabbath they wanted the Sabbath to it be a total holy day so no parties on the Sabbath no eating and drinking and wild parties on the Sabbath all the things we associate with the Plymouth Colony and the pilgrims coming to the u.s. in fact I was very surprised there actually is a reference to the pilgrims in this play if you turn to page 59 this is act 3 scene 2 line 32 where Andrew said I has I had least as lief be a brownest as a politician now you note here says brownest follow with medium-brown that's wrong and I know that because I looked it up a Wikipedia it's Robert Brown and the Pilgrims were brownest the people that came to found the Plymouth Colony were brownness followers of the sky Brown who had left England because they were too radical as Protestants they'd gone to the Netherlands some of you may know the story and the brownness were Congregationalists they didn't believe in church hierarchy bishops and Archbishop's they wanted each congregation to organize itself and in fact thanks to Wikipedia I learned that the pilgrims were known as the brownest emigration in the 17th century I thank heavens from Wikipedia but it's really quite extraordinary that Shakespeare mentions a brownest in this play because I think it makes the connections to radical Puritanism clear and everything you associate with the Plymouth Colony and you know no parties sober dress and all that all that is what's associated with the the Puritans they wanted to purify the English church to make it more Protestant more radically Protestant get rid of the church hierarchy honor the Sabbath and one of the main things they wanted to do is to shut down the theaters now this is during Shakespeare's own lifetime one reason they were called pure dance is they thought the theater was impure that the theater was a school of abuse as one of the anti theater Puran pamphlets said that plays showed things immoral on the stage they encouraged immorality and above all these peers objected to the cross-dressing that was necessary to the Elizabethan stage because boys dressed up as women that violated the old testament prohibition against men wearing women's clothing so one of the chief cries you heard from the Puritan opposition to the English theater was it's an abomination the male dresses up as a female on the stage now this was serious stuff during Shakespeare's lifetime in part because of the political configuration of the day the the center of what we call Puritanism was the City of London a Puritanism as we'll see in the case of Malvolio was largely a middle-class even lower middle-class phenomenon the aristocracy was not Puritans certainly not with a small pea in the period that is the aristocracy was big on indulgence indeed that's exactly what Shakespeare shows in Toby belch and Andrew a youichi here the aristocracy was the establishment and so it supported the established Church the Anglican Church is very much part of the Elizabethan establishment or as this called blow broadly the Tudor establishment and it brought into power was that these aristocrats ruled the country and had power over the church the Puritan forces tended to be urban middle-class and again centered in London that's why Shakespeare's theatre was not in London it was outside the then city limits of London I 100 is a vast sprawling city now but in Shakespeare's day it was rather small it was restricted to the region that the Roman wall had surrounded the Roman city of Londinium if any of you know London it's still called the city what's called the city in London which by the kind of synonymous with Wall Street because that's where the financial center what it is but when people refer to the city in London they mean the old Roman city the old boundaries of the city that were there in Shakespeare's day the the municipal affairs of London were not sympathetic to theatres they were Puritan leaning now again there England had an established Anglican Church at this point and you didn't openly start a new church then in fact it led to war over this issue or the case of these brownness they're going off to the Netherlands or to a godforsaken place notice Massachusetts but the you could not have a public theater within the boundaries of the City of London that's why again they build the theaters were originally I think in Shoreditch the other side of the limits of London and then they went to the south bank in the tamps which was not part of incorporated London in there those days and there the theater was protected by aristocrats generally speaking the not Shakespeare was very popular with the ordinary populace of London but it wasn't popular let's say with the Lord High Mayor of London all these kind of proto peered and authorities in London so that's why the theatre company needed aristocratic sponsorship Shakespeare's company originally the Lord Chamberlain's Men there was an Admirals men company later shakespeare's under theater company became the Kings man under King James the first they needed to be protected against these Puritan forces who wanted to shut down the theater and eventually did just at the start of the civil war in 1642 Parliament closed the theaters Provident which was by then dominated by Roundhead forces petered and forces that were about to trigger the civil wars again which is a war between Charles the first his aristocratic supporters and the Anglican Church with the middle class the urban population and these these Puritans now this was a very important Shakespeare's day it's why he chose to make fun of Malvolio the Puritan in this play and to portray him in such a bad light there was a lot at stake here for the English theatre had the they knew that if the Puritans would ever triumph they would shut down the theater and they did in 1642 there was no Theatre in England until 1660 when the monarchy was restored under charles ii one of the first things they did was to reopen the theaters in london now this is you you see Puritans being made fun of all the time in Elizabethan and then Jacobi in a theater I'll just refer to a few cases again I'm trying to make plausible why next time and I put so much emphasis on Malvolio as Puritan Shakespeare's great contemporary Ben Jonson wrote two plays in which he makes fun of Puritans one is called the alchemists in which a pure name tribulation wholesome wants to get the Philosopher's Stone to turn lead into gold so they can lead a revolution and take over England the Puritans like to give themselves very holy names and and Johnson makes fun of this with a character named tribulation wholesome and he also has the characters speak in that elaborate Puritan dialect that we know from period films about plenty and so on and then Johnson's greatest play is a play called Bartholomew fair in which there's a Puritan named zeal of the land busy who spends much of the play in vain against the fair this is Bartholomew fair is just a fair kind of we would call a country fair it's a real fair outside London where people go and they indulge themselves in food and sex and other things and there's also a theater there's a puppet theater at the bar founders fair and zeal am busy attacks it and he complains that the men dress up as women and in the great culminating moment the puppets throw up their little clothing and show they have no sex organs so there's nothing wrong we're neutral we're neuter we're not men masquerading as women and zeal and busyness totally humiliate it's a great it's one of the funniest moments in renaissance theatre I highly commend this play to you if you ever get a chance to see it but again I'm it was quite routine in Shakespeare's day to make fun of the Puritans on the stage the the theatre knew on which side its bread was buttered that in fact it was the aristocrats supporting them and the Puritans opposing them and so we get the great confrontation here in the play on the one hand we have Andrew Asian you cheek and Satori belt now sir Toby belches a lot like Falstaff you may have recognized he's a party animal he loves drinking Shakespeare does not try to glamorize the aristocracy here now he felt there were many great men among the aristocrats he's shown them in Hotspur Prince Hal but he also was aware of who lot of the the aristocracy wasn't that impressive and indeed we see here surround you a Jew a Jew cheek is portrayed as a coward no hotspur he he will run from a battle toby belches portrayed as a drunk again I don't want you to think that Shakespeare was blind to the limitations of an actual aristocracy he knew how empty many of these people were their claims to greatness nevertheless when it came down to choosing between the aristocracy and the Puritans Shakespeare knew his side he was on paints 34 so this is act 2 scene 3 line 87 where my Romeo appears say my masters are you mad well what are you have you no wit manners nor honesty but to gabble like teachers at this time of night do you make an alehouse of my lady's house that you squeak out your Casas catches without an indication or a morsel voice is there no respect of place persons nor time in you and so we'll be exploring this next time but here's what Malvolio stands for all the middle-class virtues the virtues that the Puritans had the virtues of thrift of Industry of self-discipline of standing up for order and what is totally reply to this page 35 act 2 scene 3 line 113 outer tombs or Eli and aren't any more than the steward thus thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cake the case a tale Shakespeare is a great answer to two pure innocent and really this is deeply in the spirit of the play again a festive comedy as CL barber calls these plays Twelfth Night that refers us to Christmas Twelfth Night is January 6 the day of the Epiphany when the wise men show showed up to honor the Christ child the twelfth day of Christmas we would say that's what this play is about we think it may have produced for a law school Christmas party at the Middle Temple or maybe for something at court but it is somehow in this festive spirit of of Christmas we should be celebrating life we should be enjoying it we should be drinking aaand we should be eating cakes and what Shakespeare objects to is anything that tries to tamp that down and he sees it again from the point of view of the theater the theater celebrates carnival recent comedy the theater is itself a kind of festive event in Shakespeare's day was so clear you left the precincts of London cross the river went over to this area on the south bank would specialize in three things brothels bear-baiting and the theatre the three big forms of entertainment in Elizabethan England and it was a kind of holiday spirit that prevailed within the plays and that Shakespeare would celebrate and we see here in this play the great threat to that the great threat to Shakespeare's theatre and and the threat to the joy of life itself this radical form of Protestantism Puritanism which doesn't want any amusements on the Sabbath day which wants people to lead a sober restrained existence and again everything you picture with Massachusetts Puritans would be applicable for understanding this play indeed is so fascinating that Shakespeare without nothing you know mentions the brownness in this play who were the the the pilgrims who left for America so that's the way in which this play is political because it raised this religious issue and next time on Thursday we will we will explore the character of Malvolio Shakespeare's extraordinary portrait of the Puritan and it's and it's connection to the middle class you

Channel: Shakespeare and Politics

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Length: 83min 53sec (5033 seconds)

Published: Mon May 01 2017