Twelfth Night (Vol. 85) | F. B. Tromly (essay date spring 1974)
F. B. Tromly (essay date spring 1974)
SOURCE: Tromly, F. B. “Twelfth Night: Folly's Talents and the Ethics of Shakespearean Comedy.” Mosaic 7, no. 3 (spring 1974): 53-68.
[In the following essay, Tromly suggests that folly is a positive force in Twelfth Night, one that allow the characters to come to terms with life by learning to accept “delusion, vulnerability, and mortality.”]
Well, God give them wisdom that have it, and those that are fools, let them use their talents.
(I, v, 13-14)
To speak of the ethics of Shakespearean comedy, and especially those of a play so dedicated to “good fooling” as Twelfth Night, smacks of critical perversity. When Feste asks Toby and Andrew, “Would you have a love song, or a song of good life [a song praising the virtuous life],” the two superannuated roaring boys surely answer for the audience as well as for themselves. Toby...
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