The Bard with Bill
The Bard with Bill
Twelfth Night
This episode we find ourselves shipwrecked on the mysterious shores of Illyria, but fear not listeners, the people here are friendly (mostly) and there’s a lot to discover.
If you’re into seismic social upheaval, have an opinion on whether people who hate theatre deserve to be locked up or want to know why it’s good to be a fool, join Bill as he dives into episode 2; Twelfth Night, or What you Will.
Special thanks to Paul Moss for providing this episode's short'n'snappy Shakespeare Synopsis
Hello, and welcome to the Bard with Bill. My name is Bill Ross Fawcet, actor, storyteller, freque t fool and today your guide in o the rambunctious, raucou, radical world of Shakespear. This episode, we find ourselv s shipwrecked on the mysterio s shores of illyria. But fear n t listeners, the people here a friend. And there's a lot o discover. So, if you're in o seismic social upheaval, have n opinion on whether people w o hate the theater deserve to e locked up, or want to know w y it's good to be a fool. Friend, lend me your ear. As we di e into Episode 2 Twelfth As always, we'll begin this episode with our quotes corner. And I'm not sure whether we're going to stick with that. What about phrase forage? Sounds even worse? How about language lounge? No, it's work in progress. But this is the part of the show where I tease out some of the phrases in the play, we're looking at this episode. And you might be familiar with them already. Or maybe you use them in your everyday conversations without realizing you're quoting Shakespeare. And if these visual colorful phrases capture your imagination and foster a creative spark within you, why not have a go at illustrating them, and adding them to our growing online gallery by posting them to the handlebars, Twitter with the hashtag BOD with Bill. Now we'll be touching on some of the more famous quotes and how they work within the context of the play later. But for now, let's kick off with this one. In stitches. You've probably heard this one before we use it when we want to emphasize how uproariously funny something is that time when Bill fell off his bike into a bank of nettles and had to do the whole first week of the tour dressed in bandages up the whole left hand side of his body that had me in stitches. Yeah, that that really did happen in the very first week of my very first tour with the handlebars, which was as a matter of fact, 12th night in this play. Maria, the servant uses this phrase when she says if you desire the spleen and will laugh yourself into stitches, follow me. And when I read this again, I was struck by how extreme an image that is, you laugh so hard that you rupture your body, you split your sides, we use that phrase, don't we side splitting, so much so that you have to get surgical stitches to so that ruptured body back together again. And it's likely that the stitch Maria's referring to is actually these surgical stitches since this procedure was in use by the time Shakespeare's writing. The word stage actually evolves from a very early proto Germanic word meaning to prick puncture, or stab. So the needle pricks to sew, which then becomes a stitch in fabric. So something that was originally a word to describe damage evolved over time to mean something that meant to mend Isn't that amazing? human activity caused the meaning of a word to not just change but to become its opposite. Its antonym. And this complete role reversal is actually a really good foreshadowing for us of one of the major themes within 12th night. One other word on stitching just before we before we move on, stitch today we use it to mean a sharp stabbing pain in the abdomen after exercise. So funnily enough, it's almost as though we've come full circle with the meaning of the word stitch. You may have heard this next phrase, but hopefully you haven't had much cause to use it from the jaws of death is very evocative, and it means to rescue someone from a perilous situation where otherwise they very likely would have died. Antonio, the pirate says this in the play. This youth that you see here I snatched one half out of the jaws of death. And he's you describing how he rescued Sebastian. And we use variations of this phrase for different situations like rescued from the jaws of defeat, or from the jaws of tyranny. If an election or a court ruling has gotten in our favor, we might use that and 12th night doesn't really Really dwell on death a whole lot. But this phrase I think highlights the somewhat complex relationship we as humans have with death. And Shakespeare does go on to prick at this in the play, but we'll look at that and non. The phrase portrays death as this ravenous entity that's intent on devouring life. And, and that's an idea that we see perpetuated today, even in our modern media, I mean, just think of zombies, and their mindless hunger to consume the living death is conceived as a negative to be thwarted and denied. We're literally robbing it of its meal. Let's finish this segment with a phrase. It's not really used by us a whole lot or not, not not in its original form. But we use variations on the theme, and I really like it. And it's got a really good story behind it. And I am a sucker for stories. So at the end of her very famous soliloquy to the audience, that takes the form of a sonnet Viola ends with this rhyming couplet time, thou must untangle this knot I, it is too hard and not for me to untie. And she's referring to the very complex situation she finds herself in this love triangle. And while we might not use this phrase, oh, it's too hard enough for me to one time, well, maybe we do. But when we do we, we'd be quite conscious that we're quoting Shakespeare. We often riff off this theme of likening our problems to tangled knots. In In fact, we're far more likely to quote this phrase, oh, what a tangled web we weave. Pop quiz, which Shakespeare play is that from. And if you're sitting there screaming at me, in indignant rage, you'd be absolutely right to because that is not actually a Shakespeare quote, it's often miss attributed to Shakespeare, but it was actually written much later in 1808, by the poet Walter Scott in his poem marmion. Now, as I mentioned, I'm a story junkie and violence couplet serves as a little bit of an Easter egg for audience members who might be familiar with stories of ancient Greece, which at the time, Shakespeare's writing would have been most of his educated audience members. Now, this quote, stands alone, as as a very good indicator of violets thoughts and her situation. But if you are aware of the story that slightly references, it gives you this little extra thrill of recognition and it creates a personal affinity between you and the writer, you feel like they might be saying this just for you. And it's a really clever little trick that not only Shakespeare uses, a lot of his contemporaries use it as well to, to hide these subtle references to stories, or bits of poetry or, or contemporary writings and stuff. And sometimes they're not even that subtle. They're, they're quite obvious comparisons, but this one, it's very nice. It's very subtle, but it does have a little delicious zest for those who are in the know. So what is the story? Come on, Bill stop holding us in suspense. Well, this story referenced by it is too hard or not for me to untie references, the most famous knot of them all, of course, the Gordian knot. Now, in the ancient world, the Gordian knot was located in the city of gaudium. And it was renowned through the ancient world for its fiendish complexity and as legend had it, the one who solved this knot would be destined to rule all of Asia. Now, that's not actually as impressive as it would be today, since the ancient Greeks believed that the world ended in India and her auditors for example, didn't even believe in the existence of the Isles of Britain. But nevertheless, this legends a little bit like the story of the Sword in the Stone. Many contenders tried their hands. Many more failed until who should rock up one day, but Anna handles her macchiato, better known to us today, as Alexander the Great. Now he listened to the smug folk of gaudium explaining that unbeatable puzzle, and they had a look at it not. And he took a moment. He thought back to all those lessons with his tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. He said, before he drew his sword and with one mighty chop, cut the ropes asunder, thereby putting an end once and for all to the problem of the Gordian knot. Now, someone hold this is the first example of lateral thinking, while some others will just say he was just a trigger happy ignoramus, getting upset and destroying something that he couldn't understand. I will let you draw your own conclusions on the matter. Right? Let's leave the language lounge for now and dive into 12th night proper. But what's it about what happens? The name doesn't really do a very good job of explaining anything for us. In fact, the play doesn't seem to have anything to do with the 12th night of anything, or does it? Well, in order to explain that, we need a short and snappy synopsize Shakespeare can't believe I did that in one take. And to do this, I've enlisted the help of my compadre and fellow handle bond, Paul moss, who is going to attempt to take us through the main plot points of 12th night, all in under two minutes. I'm setting the clock time and now Best of luck Paolo, away you go.
Paul Moss:Viola and her twin Sebastian are separated in a shipwreck. Both of them think that the other one is drowned Viola lands in a town called illyria. She disguises herself as a young man called Rosario and she gets a job as the servant to the Duke orsino Sebastian also lands in illyria and he meets a sailor called Antonio who looks after him. Now we'll see no is in love with a contest called Olivia orsino. So he sends Rosario with love letters to Olivia to woo her on his behalf. But Olivia falls in love with cesario however, viola, who is Oreo has already fallen in love with our cmo. Now Malvolio is Olivia's head steward. He's a grumpy man, but he adores Olivia. Now the other members of the household who are to Toby belch, Andrew egg cheek, Mariah, festy and Fabian. They don't like Malvolio, and they decided to play a trick on him. Mariah writes a letter pretending to be the Countess Olivia, where she confesses her love for Malvolio and mentions that she wants to see him wear yellow stockings. Malvolio believes the letter dresses up in yellow stockings and tries to seduce Olivia. Olivia thinks he's mad and has him locked up. Now, back to Sebastian who happens upon the Countess Olivia. Olivia mistakes him forces sario asked him to marry her, and he agrees. At the same time, Antonio has been arrested by all coos then and finds viola, who he thinks is Sebastian, and he asked for help via the denying knowing Antonio because she's actually never met before, and Antonio is taken towards Siena. Eventually, everyone is reunited in Olivia's court. cesario reveals herself to be Viola and viola and Sebastian meet each other again for the first time after the shipwreck where they both thought they were dead. And the love triangle that we have is resolved into two couples. So we've got Olivia and Sebastian orsino and viola, a Countess Olivia realizes that Malvolio has been tricked, and she releases the ad.
William Ross-Fawcett:So now that we've got a handle on what happens, we could still be forgiven for thinking, well, what's any of that got to do with 12th night, and you wouldn't be alone in this sentiment. These concerns were also shared by Samuel peeps, the famous diarist. And this play actually has two names 12 night, and what you will, I'll try to satisfy your curiosity about both of those names this episode. But let's start with the most famous and the most used 1/12 night. An easy explanation that's been suggested by some is that this play was originally intended to debut as part of the 12th night revelries at the court of Queen Elizabeth the first on the sixth of january of either 1601 or 1602. But this is a speculation, since our earliest recorded evidence and performance is data to the second of February 1602. And even if we do accept this to be the premise, it still raises the question. So what I mean, isn't it a bit of a cop out to just name your play after the day it was written for us like calling your plane, Valentine's Day or Thursday. So this is where we need to take a bit of a deeper dive into the significance of this day in particular 12th night, or the feast of epiphany 12 nights after Christmas church tradition held this to be the day when the three Magi or the three wise men arrived to visit the infant Jesus. And the Epiphany refers to this revelation that we Bobby Hey, Zeus, would become the savior of not just the Jews, but all the Gentiles that is non Jews as well. So this was a very important Christian feast day or festival. And by Shakespeare's time, it had developed certain attributes that were distinctly non church derived. It was a day of revelry in particular of celebrating Miss rule. This was a day When everything was turned on its head and people didn't go to work. They were feasting and drinking, otherwise making merry. And along with this, there were these customs of social inversion with the everyday order was upset. And these festivities drew that influences from much older festivals like the Roman Saturn gnarlier remar said they were obsessed with the ancient Greek and Roman world. Just another example, where the social order was inverted to the extent that some masters would dine alongside or even serve a table their slaves. Now this Roman festival culminated in the day of February was the Roman god of purification, who gives his name Incidentally, to February. And so that's what this festival was it was purging in preparation for the renewal of spring and the new year. And so 12th night festivities were a bit like a social pressure valve where people could let off steam, they could be naughty forget about behaving and abiding by the social order, so they could get it all out this system before the New Year. Similar to the idea of the film series, The Purge, where for 190 year, all crime is permitted. And I never thought I'd be bringing up the purge on the Shakespeare podcast. But there you go.
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William Ross-Fawcett:So when we look at 12th night with this raucous, topsy turvy socially rather risque holiday in mind, we start to see that the play is filled with these carnivalesque inversions, women becoming men, servants ordering around their masters pirates becoming protected fools being lauded as wise men were confronted with this jarring inertia within the very first lines of the play. The Duke orsino says, If music be the food of love play on as an audience, we hear this and we instantly come to the conclusion that this guy is pursuing love, he wants it to flourish to thrive, just listen to all those lovely vowel sounds. If music, the food of love, play on, you can really imagine the gill goods and the lines and Livia is really milking those vowels. And that's because in Shakespeare, the presence of vowels can be extremely effective in conveying emotion. So we think we know from the very top of the play, what this character wants, he wants to love. But then he carries on with this line, give me access of it, that surfacing the appetite to me second, and so die. Hang on a minute. Now he's saying give me so much that I get sick of it. He's not seeking for love to grow, he's seeking to smother it. And what's happened to those lovely vowels, they've morphed into bitty choppy consonants give me excessive it that suffering the appetite to may 2 and to die. It's gone from open and emotional to close that and harsh immediately was slapped in the face with this complete about turn. And that's just the first line. The setting gives us even more of this topsy turvy, Enos and inertia. And it takes us until the second scene to actually learn where we are. This is a linear lady, says the captain. But where is linear? is a cheeky task for you. If you're a younger listener, ask this question to your geography teacher Not in front of the whole class. We at the handlebars are very, very much of the school of thought that we only want people to look silly when they're in on the job. So just ask them near that side of the class on private just to see what their response is. And if they get it right, give them a massive round of applause because this is so so far out of their area of expertise. And that's because illyria doesn't exist anymore. And in fact, it barely even existed. in Shakespeare's day, it was another one of these harkening back to the age of ancient Greece and Rome. illyria is the name the Romans gave to the coastal region of what is now Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania, it was known as a rough and dangerous place full of pirates and mercenaries. So for Shakespeare's educated audience members, this would have conjured these features Feelings of danger mingled with exotic excitement. And Shakespeare's audiences might also have been aware of the geopolitics of the region. At that time. The Turkish Ottoman Empire had expanded into the region during the 14th century and the place had become this battleground of shifting dominance between the Christian kingdoms and empires of Western Europe, and the Islamic Sultanate of the East. So it's a place whose identity is in constant flux and is constantly shifting a place of extreme possibility. And that's what violet does, she decides to disguise herself as a young man, thereby joining joining the very select group of Shakespeare's cross dressing heroines. Now, while we're talking about heroines, I have a confession to make. I was peddling mistruths, I was saying that false news in our last episode of Romeo and Juliet when I discussed which heroines had the most lines in Shakespeare, I claimed that it was Cleopatra, the source I was using was actually marking it by speeches. The reality of the situation is that Rosalind from as you like, it has the most lines of any heroine and Shakespeare, then it goes Cleopatra. In third place, we have imaging from sibling in fourth place, Portia from The Merchant of Venice, and Juliet is in fifth place, rounding off that top five, so apologies if I maligned your favorite Shakespeare female character. So cross dressing heroines in Elizabethan theatre, female characters were played by young men. So this would actually be an example of double cross dressing, because the actor would be dressing as a woman dressing as a man. And by doing this, Shakespeare expands the possibilities of theatrical conceit. And he's challenging his audiences because you really have to pay attention to keep up to know not only which twin is which, but remembering who is disguising their gender. And we can explore some really interesting ideas and pick apart some concepts of gender in this play. Viola adopts the identity of a man because she thinks she'll be safer and she will have more control over her own destiny, because she believes that she's completely alone in the world after the shipwreck. And you know what? She's vindicated. She's proved right, because orsino interests her with jobs as cesario and she has free movement between the courts and she's able to defend her gender in a debate with off see know when he claims that women don't have as great capacity to love as men. So, by removing this barrier her gender creates, she's able to act autonomously as an individual in the society. In contrast with the lady Olivia, and to a lesser extent, Maria, who are constantly viewed and referenced by the male characters, as objects of desire, or marriage or possession, or perhaps a combination of all three, at the very end of the play, when all is revealed, it's worth noting that we don't ever see Viola returned to her maidens, wheat, her women's clothing, like we do with Rosalind at the end of as you like it, it's promised in the text. But our losting visual is orsino pairing off with a male presenting character. And this ambiguity and fluidity is picked up in the language as well. Sebastian tells Olivia, you are betrothed both to a maid and a man, since she first fell in love with Viola dressed us as Oreo, and orsino calls viola, his mistress, and his fancies Queen, which casts her as his social superior, and it inverts the contemporary power dynamic that existed between husband and wife and Shakespeare's day, the gender play in 12th night is is such a delicious gift for creatives to explore. And even after 400 years, it can still serve to challenge and push that envelope in the spirit of Miss rule. Nowhere else in 12th night is this concept of inversion and subversion felt more keenly than with one character in particular, whose name even translates to party or festival. We're talking of course about fest a the fool who occupies a really interesting place, both within the world of the play, and within theatrical history. Firstly, is a fool but from very early on, were challenged on what that actually means. One of my favorite lines in Shakespeare belongs to fest date, better a witty fool than a foolish wit, ie, it's better to be perceived as a fool. Well, in reality, you have your wits about you than to be seen as some great fancy intellect, but the truth is, you're an idiot. So it plays on one of Shakespeare's key can sense that he keeps returning to constantly throughout his career, this nature of appearance versus reality. It's a really good question. What would you prefer? for everyone to think that you were a fool? But you really are clever, all for everyone to think that you are great genius, but actually, you don't know what's going on. first days for is a courtly form, which means it's his job to hold his social superiors to account with his jokes. He mocks or Sina for his flip flops at nature, saying, My mind is every opal on the surface this is a compliment since it opal is a precious stone but in reality, it's a criticism since an opal shines with many colors, depending on which way the light hits it. Fast they also called Olivia for for mourning her brother's death. He says her brother's soul is in hell. So Olivia responds angrily. She knows it's in heaven. And then festa asks, Why are you upset then, if you know his souls in paradise. So this is when Shakespeare is poking at this conflict of emotions regarding the passing of a loved one. That's what I mentioned before about this relationship with death. And Shakespeare is not only needling Olivia's character, he's also poking at his audience and their views on heaven and hell and everything in between really. It's also implied that first they might be the only one who can see through violence disguise. So throughout the play, we see this fool character elevated to intellectual heights far above his social betters. bit like Maria, who, despite being a servant, manages to engineer the entire subplot her take on Malvolio down a peg or two in 12th night, it's the lowly that are exalted, and the nobles are steadily lampooned. First, they also marks a change in the character of the fool in Shakespeare's plays in general, prior to this period, Shakespeare's fools were rustics think buffoons like Nick bottom from Midsummer Night's Dream or Peter, the servant from Romeo and Juliet, we laugh at them, the joke is always on them. But around this time in his career, we start to see the appearance of witty or wise cracking fools that are commenting on the action that happens around them. Touchdown in jQuery from as you like it, the Grave Digger from Hamlet. And later on, we've got autolycus and tranquillo and Leah's clown, and it marks a shift in comedy from one of self deprecation and silliness to one of a more satirical nature, the humor moves away from punching down at the lower classes, and towards punching up those in positions of power or security. And this is something in the modern day that is still really central and key to comedians, who is the butt of the joke, it can often be the deciding factor in whether a joke lands or not. So what caused this shift for Shakespeare? Well, the answer very likely lies in matters of personnel. Will Kemp, the famous slapstick clown of the day left Shakespeare's Theatre Company and there are some really delicious tidbits that we can derive from Shakespeare's works about his maybe his feelings on will camp as an actor. He often has a subtle jibes at actors going off script or trying to create laughs for themselves just by doing silly jokes or stuff. And that was very much will Kemp's bag it was very much about doing a silly dance folk dance or something that people would just find entertaining. So when will kemba leaves the company. His replacement is an actor called Robert Armin, who amongst other things was known as a beautiful singer. Now it's believed that Armin was capable of delivering these witty, wisecracking sharp lines to great effect, which enables Shakespeare to include these new fools in his works. It's a real marriage of talents from both on and off stage. And I really like this as a reminder of the constraints that Shakespeare and all creatives experience we, we often talk about the social and the political factors that molded Shakespeare's work in his psychology, but we often overlook the really material matters, he can only work with the tools he had, and in this case, it was the actors in his Theatre Company. He wasn't like a modern playwright who writes in a vacuum, you know, they they write their work to be put on by anyone, but Shakespeare was writing for a very select group of actors he had access to. And so we trundle through this topsy turvy revel to the end of the night, the end of the party, we're in classic comedy tradition. Everybody gets what they want, or at least the classic quartet of lovers do. And even then, there's still this ambiguous question about attraction and the deception that was involved in the love story. But what about everyone else? Well said Toby and Maria are married. How we think that will work out will depend on how the performance present the relationship between the two of them. So Toby is by no means anyone's idea or catch but he does represent an advancement in the Maria's social station. And maybe he in turn is a knight is brought down a peg. So Andrew au cheek, on the other hand is definitely left unsatisfied, because he's impoverished himself and unsuccessfully wooing Livia. As far as the text is concerned, we leave Antonio, the pirate in the custody of the officers still accused of piracy by orsino. Now, I imagine that most productions would include some sort of nonverbal Oh, really sim and it's all forgiven because you save Sebastian, blah, blah, blah. First day, well, we don't really know what first day once. Throughout the play, he's often asking for money, and he's trying to get money for his jokes. And he seems to revel in this Miss rule and upheaval, and it gives him fertile ground to point out everyone being foolish. So maybe now that everything is settling down into marriage, he'll have less opportunity to make jokes and therefore less of an opportunity to derive income. And then there's Malvolio. Well, in most productions of 12th night that I've experienced, the audience's opinion of the character undergoes a reversal through the journey of the play. At the beginning, he's ripe for ridicule. He's a pompous killjoy. He's sick of self love, and the other characters call him a Puritan. Now, the Puritans in Shakespeare's day were a group of fundamentalist Protestants, who routinely sued for the closure of the theaters because they deem them hotbeds of vise and sin. So for Shakespeare's social crew. Now, volio is probably a greater villain than Lady Macbeth or rich the third and he serves as a sort of comedy sibling to measure for measures puritanical Angelou, which was written within a year or so of 12 night. Even this name Malvolio conjures negative connotations, because it translates to bad will or bad desire in Italian benvolio on the other hand, from Romeo and Juliet means goodwill. Malvolio is going at the hands of his enemies is often one of the more memorable moments in any production, and it's been the case since the first written response to the plain 16 no to, but then the hilarity takes a turn for the sinister. When the conspirators have Malvolio, imprisoned and treated as a madman, they deprive him of light and they subject him to nonsense in gibberish. And in our production with the handlebars. We even went a step further and we had the characters visibly dismembering his teddy bear in front of him. And let me tell you, once you've killed off a character's Teddy Bear, there is no getting the audience back on your side. By the end of the play, we realized that navali his entire professional and social relationships are in tatters, and he makes this final declaration to the ensemble. I will be revenged on the whole pack of you. It pricks this otherwise classic comedy ending with a sour note. Not only is he accusing the characters who tricked him, but we as an audience might also find ourselves feeling a bit complicit because we were laughing along at his torment. Or maybe not. Maybe that's part of the rough and tumble of life and what goes around comes around. And this is not what drama in life is about. It's the clash and interplay of different people following their own volume, their desire, whether it's Ben or Mao good or bad. Isn't that just a matter of perspective? I don't know. What do you think, for me this, far from picture perfect ending is so much more interesting than something like A Midsummer Night's Dream where we have a total resolution and we're reminded that the whole thing was a play, and therefore it wasn't real and it's not really worth bothering with. But the issues at the end of 12th night also don't serve to completely derail the whole piece in the way that Taming of the Shrew, all's well, that ends well does for many audiences. I think 12 nine is this perfect alchemy between entertainment and provocation? And for me that that's one of my, my key theatrical tastes. I really love that line that's drawn people's theatrical tastes shifts, some people shift more towards the entertainment. Other people are more into the provocation. And I think that's what 12th night does really well. It's this bubbling miasma. It's this primordial goop that's full of possibility. And that's why it's such a brilliant piece for the handlebars rapid Because they have this chaotic, irreverent celebratory style, but really it will work for anyone who tries to adapt it because it has all of these potentials to change to adapt. It's a play about defying convention. It's about being cheeky about being a little bit sneaky, being a little bit freaky, perhaps it's about wrestling with your heart's desires, about measuring how they might conflict with other people's. And ultimately, it's about giving yourself permission to pursue, in the words of the plays alternative title, what you will thank you for tuning into this episode of a bard with Bill. Join us next time as we venture into the woods and take up residence for a while poking at the perfect storm pastiche that is as you'd like.
Lucy Green:This podcast is brought to you by the handlebards. Please remember t subscribe and leave a review. I was produced by Tom Dixon an Paul Moss and researched an voiced by William Ross Fawcett. It was introduced by me, Lucy green, and the music is created and performed by Guy Hughes. To find out more about the handlebards, just head over t our website handlebards.com r follow us on Twitter, Facebo k and Instagram. Just search t handlebar