WHAT DOES TWELFTH NIGHT REALLY MEAN?

by John Hudson, July 2009

When I got to Central Park, making my

second attempt to see the Public
Theaterʼs production of Twelfth Night, I
was told that I was too late, the line had
begun to snake around the reservoir by
7am.

Evidently Charles Isherwoodʼs review

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/th
eater/reviews/26night.html had brought
out the crowds even more than usual. It
was a long and flattering review, claiming
that this was the best production in a
decade. But what did it actually say? That
Anne Hathaway was attractive, the
costumes colorful, the music fine, the
characters funny? I am sorry but this tells
us absolutely nothing about the thing that
really matters---especially if one has
waited in line for six hours---did this
production help people understand the
meaning of the play?

We really cannot assume that an audience nowadays will understand the play without
considerable help from the acting, the set, and the dramaturgy. To begin with, a
production could highlight the existence of the strangely named characters Fabian and
Sebastian. This should immediately remind us, perhaps with a calendar, of the two
saints by those names who share the same feast-day, of 19 January. This is of course
the day that the Elizabethan church began reading St Paulʼs Epistles to the Corinthians
which can be made clear perhaps with the appropriate reading of the lesson. The play
not only includes two Epistles, it is also set in Illyria, a location where St Paul claimed to
have preached, and from which those same letters to the Corinthians were conceivably
written. Indeed at the beginning of the play Sebastian is compared to the Corinthian poet
Arion, and at the end of the play Festeʼs song about what he regarded as foolish when
young, echoes 1 Corinthians, as do his reflections on wisdom and foolishness (1,5,30-
35).
So while on one level this play is set in Elizabethan London, it also seems to be set in
first century Illyria where the events resemble the problems among the early Christians
in Corinth. The reason why Twelfth Night is a play about foolishness of various kinds, is
that foolishness was the defining characteristic of the Corinthians---in whose letters all of
the New Testament uses of this word appear. St Paul argued that to become a Christian
one had to embrace the foolishness of God---which to Jews was a stumbling block, and
to Greeks was not wisdom, and embraced only by Christian fools.

So a production should reveal how these various households are replicated in the play.
We find a Greek Feste, who is a non Christian called a “foolish Greek” (4,1,18), a
household of Jews run by Madonna Olivia (echoing the olive tree the standard Jewish
symbol), and a collection of foolish Christian clowns. Costuming should show their
affiliations with each major Christian denomination. Sir Tony Belch is an allegory for Sir
Toby Matthew, a Catholic sympathizer who later became a priest. The ʻtallʼ Sir Andrew
Aguecheek who has no more wit than a Christian, speaks 3 or 4 languages, but cannot
understand basic Latin or French, is a parody of the very tall and able linguist Sir
Lancelot Andrewes, dean of Westminster, who was known for obsessive nocturnal
studying, and his ague cheek. The noise-hating Malvolio is a parody of the sickly Puritan
T.Posthumous Hoby who, with his mother, was leading a protest against the Blackfriars
theater for causing too much rowdiness, and carrying out a lawsuit against some visitors
who had come to their country house and caused too much noise. So the play mocks the
foolishness of Christianity by presenting each of these denominations as foolish, and it
also goes into detail mocking transubstantiation, and the Trinitarian Eucharistic belief
that one person can have multiple bodies in different places.

One sub-plot however, which appears nowhere in the sources, involves Maria playing a
trick on Malvolio, through an Epistle that causes him to give up his Christian faith. In the
gospels there is a story of Jesus meeting a demoniac called Legion and expelling the
demons from him through an exorcism. Malvolio, whose name even means bad-will, is
also referred to as being possessed by Legion, and all the devils in hell (3,4,86-7). A
fiend speaks from within him, he is bewitched, and tricked into believing “impossible
passages of grossness” by which he is “turned heathen” (3,3,67). Maria has dropped a
letter in which she says M.O.A.I doth sway her life, moai being the Italian word for the
good Lord, who presumably sways her life because while praying Jews often make a
swaying motion. Malvolio is puffed up and believes the letter refers to him. He is tamed,
as Hercules was when he dressed in womenʼs clothes, and bound his legs with cross
garters and put on yellow socco in Senecaʼs play Phaedra. Later Malvolio is confined
under the stage to hell where he is cured and exorcised by a fictitious figure Sir Topas,
named after a jewel that cures madness. So this is a parody of the exorcism cure in the
gospels, Malvolio is cured of his fiendish Christianity, by being shown to be a real fool,
and forcing him to come to his right Five Wits, and no longer participate in the play.

Into this Illyria also arrive the twins—who had been separated in a shipwreck that took
place on the date of the major schism in Christianity—as noted by Steve Sohmer in his
essay ʻIllyriaʼs Faulty Calendarʼ. Sebastian (the revered one), from the non existent town
of Messaline (an allusion to the messiah), has been in Elysium (heaven), and in a
“watery tomb” from which he emerges symbolically on the third day. He is imitated
(3,4,393) by Cesario (meaning belonging to Caesar). By pretending to be the messiah,
and holding the olive branch in his hand, Cesario gets the love of Orsino, of Olivia and
Antonio who does devotion to his image as a vile idol (3,4,374). At the end of the play
however, both of Cesarioʼs disguises are revealed to the other characters in the play, the
foolish illusion is over, and he is discovered to merely be a girl Viola. And although Anne
Hathaway looks charming in her “smart, brass-buttoned blue military jacket and boots”,
this hardly reads as a Caesar pretending to be a messiah. To convey that meaning I
would rather want to use a simple meta-theatrical solution such as an actress wearing
the purple toga of a Caesar and holding a cardboard cut-out of Jesus in front of her.

This would make the annunciation parodies in the play especially amusing. They were
identified by Maurice Hunt in his article ʻTwelfth Night and the Annunciationʼ. Cesario
plays the role of the angel Gabriel trying to persuade Madonna Olivia to bear a child as
the wife of Orsino. Like a sexless angel Cesario is a eunuch and “messenger” (1,5,207)
and holds an olive branch like Siennese paintings of Gabriel at the Annunciation.
Whereas Mary was fearful, Olivia fears that Cesario has some “hideous matter to
deliver” (1,5,209). In Renaissance art, the Virgin Mary was associated with a garden
enclosed, and for her assignation Olivia asks that the garden gate be closed (3,1,94). It
was widely thought in Renaissance theology that the Virgin Mary conceived through her
ear, and Cesario assures her that the matter is secret, for her “most pregnant and
vouchsafed ear” and is “to your ears divinity”. Like all the other annunciation parodies in
the other plays, this one goes wrong, but without Madonna getting pregnant at all the
real Sebastian of Messaline soon emerges from his tomb and comes on stage.

Finally, the healing of the demoniac Legion at Gadara, on which Malvolioʼs exorcism is
based, has been shown in the latest NT research to be a fictional event. Like other key
events in the gospels, it is a literary satire of one of Caesarʼs victories over the Jews
during the Roman-Jewish war. Evidently the author of Twelfth Night was well aware of
this, because the playwright created Malvolioʼs sub-plot as a counter-satire. So my hope
is that future productions will use their stagecraft to show the play not as a mindless
comedy but as what it is---a device for undoing the foolishness of Christian belief.
Perhaps after all that is why it is called Twelfth Night, the night on which the twelve days
of Christmas fantasies are over, and when the stark reality begins to set in. That would
make a review worth reading.

John Hudson is Artistic Director to the Dark Lady Players, an experimental

Shakespeare company that is re-inventing allegorical dramaturgy. His new book
The Dark Lady: The Woman Who Wrote Shakespeare is available at
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16441192/The-Dark-Lady-the-Woman-who-wrote-
Shakespeare-Vol-1 and a major academic article on this new Shakespeare theory
will appear this summer in a special issue of The Oxfordian. For details of
upcoming New York performances email Darkladyplayers@aol.com.