Challenging Conventions: Twelfth Night
[In the essay below, Dash stresses the similarities between Viola and Olivia as young, single, upper-class women who, for a brief period, challenge patriarchal restraints on female independence. She also calls attention to the textual alternations put in place by generations of theatrical directors which have minimized the difficulties Viola and Olivia face as they try to resolve the tension between erotic desire and the norms of society.]
"But if she cannot love you, sir?"
"I cannot be so answer'd."
(II.iv.87-88)
Endowed with wealth, their lives graced by neither fathers, brothers, husbands, nor lovers, the two major women characters of Twelfth Night briefly challenge patterns of patriarchy. Not revolutionaries, but merely young women grasping at suddenly available freedom, each would taste independence in her own way. One retreats behind the garb of mourning for her dead brother while the other, also turning to her supposedly dead brother—her twin—for support, retreats into his persona, adopting his clothes and his pose. Although at the play's end, neither woman achieves her goal, defeated by contemporary conventions surrounding love and matrimony, the dramatist, here, raises questions about women, wealth, power, and conformity, and teases his audience with contradictory evidence.
Shakespeare takes the contemporary debate about women's attire, for example, holds it lightly in his hand, turns it like a multifaceted prism, reflecting and refracting the light, then puts it down, revealing the larger issue that it illuminates: women's independence.1 With humor and insight, he asks how impor-tant is conformity in dress in defining an acceptable woman? Is the woman in breeches really a monster as some of the tracts of the period proclaim because the blurring of fashion could lead to "confusion . . . something that can't be accommodated, a monster" (Shepherd, 1-2)? Or is she related to the tradition of the warrior woman who, like Britomart in Spenser's Faerie Queene, fights for virtuous ends (Shepherd, 67)? Denying these extremes and laughing at the debate, the dramatist offers another answer in Twelfth Night. In the mode of the modern social scientist, he presents a case and a control, revealing that whether dressed in her own garments—those proper to her sex—or in the borrowed clothes of the other sex, a single woman when young and wealthy faces problems in a patriarchal society, especially if she dares to fall in love and opt for marriage.
Although the play's two major women characters, Viola and Olivia, often have been presented on stage as exact opposites because one wears skirts, the other, breeches, the dramatist has carefully sculpted their roles as parallels—not the wealthy, self-confident, or arrogant Countess in skirts compared with the poor, clever, girl-disguised-as-a-page in breeches, but two bright, literate, young women, each with a sense of herself, each in her own way trying to cope, and each believing she has power. Economic independence and the absence of male authority figures in their families seem to promise self-sovereignty. The play explores the options each woman chooses, the resulting interaction between the two women, and the impact of sexual drives and patriarchal mores on their lives.
And here their difference in attire leads the women into unexpected situations and deflects them on their road to freedom. Disguised as the youth Cesario, Viola wins the heart of the independent Olivia but also, in this disguise, loses her heart to the Duke Orsino. Clothes, rather than freeing her, confine her to silence. In contrast, the woman in skirts forthrightly expresses her desire, overtly pursuing the "youth" Cesario.
As a result, Olivia suffers both in criticism and staging. Since patriarchal values favor the compliant woman over the aggressive one, Viola's breeches, ironically, appear far less threatening than Olivia's decision-making and husband-wooing. By endowing the young women with so many similar attributes with the potential for independence, the dramatist not only explores the limits on that independence for women, but also illuminates what is acceptable and unacceptable in women's behavior.
Even in the twentieth century, acceptable behavior for a young woman has been linked with her loss of independence. According to Simone de Beauvoir, women's "erotic urges" in a male-dominated society cause the problem. She writes of the decision women reach at maturity after having struggled during adolescence with the choice between self as primary and self as "Other." Using the term subject to refer to a person's perception of herself as central, or primary, de Beauvoir writes: "For the young woman, . . . there is a contradiction. . . . A conflict breaks out between her original claim to be subject, active, free," and the pressure of "her erotic urges" which dictates that she "accept herself as passive object" (314).2 In Twelfth Night Shakespeare lightly dramatizes the shift in goals for both women. Because this is a comedy, the painfulness of the dilemma is not stressed as it is, for example, in a tragedy such as Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet has not yet recognized the necessity to "accept herself as passive object" and struggles to retain her self-sovereignty even while expressing her "erotic urges."3 Here, in the comedy, Viola says merely, "O time, thou must untangle this, not I, / It is too hard a knot for me t' untie" (II.ii.40-41). But the dramatist's choice of opposite-sex twins, the weakness of Viola's argument for donning disguise, the basic social equality between the two women, and the subsequent hasty desire of each to discard the protective pose she has chosen suggest the applicability of de Beauvoir's comment.
The difference, however, in the ways the two women react to their "erotic urges" explains their "acceptability" in the eyes of critics, directors, and audiences. Unlike Viola, Olivia refuses to perceive herself as "Other," seeking instead to solve her problems by aggressively taking charge. After having claimed fealty to her dead brother's memory and adopting a vow of seven years of mourning, a period meant to discourage all the suitors who do not appeal to her, she then changes her mind about marriage when an attractive young "male" arrives at her door. Still retaining that sense of self as "subject, active, free," she nevertheless pursues Cesario, the disguised Viola. Thus in some ways, Olivia resembles Helena of All's Well That Ends Well But Shakespeare has not only endowed Olivia with freedom, wealth, and power, he has also created an alternative double to her in Viola. Unlike Viola, however, Olivia refuses to leave everything for time "to untangle." Thus, while partially illustrating de Beauvoir's thesis—of the effect of "erotic urges" on women's decision-making—Olivia fails to conform to the properly acceptable behavior for a woman.
Behavior is ultimately more important for society than appearance: the debate on women's dress withers before that larger issue of woman's forwardness. Stage productions and criticism of Twelfth Night attack Olivia's violation of conformity in a variety of ways. First, they blur or ignore the many similarities between the women, magnifying Viola's role as a servant, and excising lines indicating her wealth and class. Thus, she becomes the "poor servant girl" as contrasted with the wealthy, aggressive Countess. In criticism, a blatant example of bias appears in William Winter's introduction to Augustin Daly's large souvenir promptbook of the 1893 production of the play. Winter writes that "Viola is Shakespeare's ideal of the patient idolatry and devoted, silent self-sacrifice of perfect love" (5). In contrast, Olivia draws the following comment:
The poet has emphasized his meaning, furthermore, by the expedient of contrast between the two women. Olivia—self-absorbed, ostentatious in her mourning, acquisitive and voracious in her love, self-willed in her conduct, conventional in her character, physically very beautiful but spiritually insignificant—while she is precisely the sort of woman for whom men go wild, serves but to throw the immeasurable superiority of Viola into stronger relief.
(6)
This hardly defines the Olivia whom we meet in the play—the young woman who graciously speaks of Orsino's virtues although she "cannot love him" (I.V.257); who good-naturedly accepts the criticism of her fool; and who even apologizes to the disguised Viola.
Although extreme in its language, Winter's reaction is not isolated. It had both predecessors and successors. Mrs. Inchbald's edition (1808), for example, faults Olivia for another aspect of her behavior, citing the "impudence of women in placing their affections, their happiness, on men younger than themselves" (4). For Inchbald the text itself warns against this in the Duke's words to Viola:
Let stil the woman take
An elder than herself; so wears she to him
So sways she level in her husband's heart, & C
(4-5)
Unfortunately, the editor lifts the speech out of context—a humorous context. The lines occur during a conversation between Duke Orsino and Cesario. Attempting to express herself as a man, Viola describes the person she loves (the Duke) as one "About your years, my lord" (II.iv.28). This leads to his swift reply that Cesario should choose a woman younger than "himself." The humor of the exchange is apparently lost on the indignant editor who even censures Olivia's treatment of her glum steward, the egocentric, puritanical Malvolio. He, like the Duke, has dreams of marrying her. Misreading his role in the play, Inchbald recommends him:
It might nevertheless be asked by a partizan (sic) of Malvolio's, whether this credulous steward was much deceived, in imputing a degraded taste, in the sentiments of love, to his fair Lady Olivia as she actually did fall in love with a domestic; and one who, from his extreme youth, was perhaps a greater reproach to her discretion, than had she cast a tender regard upon her old and faithful servant.
(4)
Prejudice against a strong woman who fails to conform to accepted societal patterns leads the editor astray. She forgets that Cesario is not a youthful domestic but a young woman whose background very much resembles Olivia's, as the dramatist subtly informs us.
Using a sophisticated theatrical methodology, Shakespeare introduces each woman in a different way—playing upon potential audience bias even while revealing the similarities between the women. Shipwrecked in a foreign land, Viola strides ashore, speaks in her own voice, paints a picture of her misfortunes, and quickly decides how to deal with them. During her first appearance, in scene 2, she also reveals her background. In contrast, hearsay precedes Olivia's entrance. In scene after scene a variety of characters evaluate her decision to mourn her brother's death for seven years. Some of these characters also raise questions about the proper behavior for a young countess. Through this technique, the dramatist employs a series of incomplete vignettes by others to suggest the obstacles confronting her.
Critics and actor-managers—or directors—often fall into the trap. They accept the hearsay about Olivia then find the lovesick Duke Orsino—whom we meet in the opening scene—just as irrational as the woman he so passionately wants to marry but who emphatically rejects him. Herschel Baker, for example, calls them "a pair of high-born lovers [who] indulge a set of attitudes untested by experience" (xxiv) and writes of "Orsino's egomania" and "Olivia's silly posture of bereavement" (xxx). Geoffrey Bullough, too, observes that "by the end of the first scene we know by Olivia's oath to spend seven years grieving indoors that she is akin to [the Duke] in sensibility" (2:278). Actually, we never see Olivia weeping or miserable; the closest she comes to discussing her mourning is in her opening scene when her clown berates her, and she responds by commending his cleverness. Hearsay, primarily, reveals her "silly posture of bereavement." On the other hand, Orsino exhibits his foolishness through his own actions and words in the play's opening scene although many of his lines are frequently cut from productions to make him seem less silly.4
That opening scene appears to have a purpose—to establish the world of Illyria, a mythic, ancient, unavailable world. Again we witness the dramatist's skill. For while he offers realistic reasons to suggest the kinds of options available to women who might freely move in society as equals of men, he quickly withdraws those options by creating this world. Though not inhabited by otherworldly creatures, this land of Illyria derives its magic from the sequential arrangement of scenes, keynoted by Orsino at the start. Unlike Hippolyta and Theseus, who provide a frame through which we, the audience, move into the enchanted wood on a midsummer's night, or the weird sisters who set the mood for Macbeth, here the lovesick Duke sets the distinctive tone and establishes the particularities of place.
The opening scene not only immerses us in that unrecognizable and slightly skewed world of Illyria but also provides the first glimpse of Olivia through the eyes of the Duke. In love with love as well as the Countess, he seeks solace in music. "That strain again," the Duke commands, noting, "it had a dying fall" (I.i.4). And then abruptly, three lines later, "Enough, no more, / 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before" (7-8). He stops the instrumentalist then continues, his lines a mockery of the Petrarchan sonneteer's lyric to his love. Although the comedy later ranges between low, raucous farce and sophisticated verbal jousting, this opening scene carries the audience to that mythical land where both women seek to understand the meaning of freedom.
Recounting how he lost his heart, including a pun on the word hart, the Duke speaks in labored metaphors.5 Languishing in adoration of Olivia, he offers a por->trait of the lover according to the most exaggerated sonnet conventions:
O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purg'd the air of pestilence!
That instant was I turn'd into a hart,
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me.
(I.i.18-22)
Poor Orsino, transformed into a hart, has been pursued by his desires. Enhancing the otherworldly quality of this scene, Shakespeare dubs the courier "Valentine." He, too, contributes to the portrait of Olivia by admitting his failure to deliver Orsino's message. Denied an audience, Valentine reports on Olivia:
The element itself, till seven years' heat,
Shall not behold her face at ample view;
(25-26)
Since the message was conveyed by Olivia's "handmaid," whom we later discover to be Maria, a woman with a tendency to trickery and a love of giving instructions, we cannot be certain whether Valentine's language and delivery characterize the speech patterns in Illyria, or whether they belong specifically to Valentine, Maria, or Olivia. The message has been sifted through two messengers; thus we are twice-removed from Olivia. Valentine continues his report:
. . . like a cloistress she will veiled walk,
And water once a day her chamber round
With eye-offending brine;
(27-29)
Once again an overblown metaphor colors the speech as the reporter describes a woman constantly weeping, a condition never to be witnessed by the audience. Shakespeare has begun the portrait that he will develop in each succeeding scene. Here, indeed, we might agree with Baker's evaluation, until we meet the young Countess.
In this dual portrait—of Orsino as well as Olivia—our sympathies hardly go out to the fatuous Duke even while we wonder what sort of woman would make such a vow. Shakespeare's audience may have recognized the satire on the Renaissance courtier—as we do not; however, Orsino's method of wooing proved as unconvincing to the young Countess as it does to us today. As for her seven-year vow, while it seems an extreme measure, it certainly should have discouraged this persistent wooer. Like the women of Love's Labour's Lost and Queen Elizabeth herself, Olivia chooses to postpone marriage. Unlike the women of the earlier play, whose one-year wait may imply later acceptance, Olivia's drastic seven-year postponement should prove sufficiently discouraging to send all her suitors elsewhere.
Ironically, at this early moment in the play, Orsino admires her decision even while wondering how she will respond when she does fall in love:
O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame
To pay this debt of love but to a brother,
How will she love when the rich golden shaft
Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else
That live in her.
(32-36)
Despite the awkwardness of this metaphor, as critics have noted, Orsino's shaft hits the mark. Olivia will soon offer love, gifts, and marriage to Viola disguised as the Duke's page, Cesario.
Lyrical, musical, with a touch of melancholy as well as humor, this first scene, with its shimmering surface, quickly dissolves before the next in which we hear the simplicity and directness of Viola's language. Differing in style and tone from Orsino, she tramps ashore and immediately questions the sea captain who has rescued her from shipwreck: "What country, friends, is this?" (I.ii.l) "This is Illyria, lady" (2), he replies. This is the land where she is unknown, where the Duke Orsino rules, and the young Countess Olivia rejects his advances. This is the land where Viola, herself, will seek new identity. In language revealing her skill with words and sensitivity to puns, she continues: "And what should I do in Illyria? / My brother he is in Elysium" (3-4). Even while she captures the resonances in language between "Illyria" and "Elysium"—between life and death—she attempts to sum up her own situation at this moment. We may be in the distant land of Illyria, but we are listening to a realistic young woman with practical wisdom, an ear for words, and a sense of the ludicrous in contrasting Illyria with Elysium.
This short exchange reveals a good deal about her: her concern for her brother, her obvious upper-class background and education through her reference to "Elysium," and her positive attitude: "Perchance he is not drown'd—what think you, sailors?" (5). In five lines, she poses three questions. And when the captain suggests that her brother may also have survived—tied "To a strong mast that liv'd upon the sea," (11-14)—Viola answers with the directness already evident:
For saying so, there's gold. (18)
This first impetuous offer of gold springs from her reaction to his words of hope. She will reward his reassurance with money, a learned pattern, indicating her upper-class background. Later, a second, more considered promise grows from her resolve to conceal her true, female identity and pose as a eunuch. "I'll pay thee bounteously" (52), she vows.
Viola's social status emerges again when, in seeking to convince the captain to recommend her (in her disguise) to the Duke, she lists her musical skills.
. . . For I can sing
And speak to him in many sorts of music
That will allow me very worth his service.
(57-59)
Critics have noted that she never does sing in the play. They therefore cite this as one of the many inconsistencies that tend to thwart audience expectations. M. M. Mahood writes in an otherwise perceptive analysis: "A further puzzle created by the second scene is that it leads us to expect Viola will sing to the Duke, but she never does so" (17). Nor is Mahood alone. Others, including W. W. Greg in his bibliographical and textual study The Shakespeare First Folio, had earlier seemed to establish this expectation as a fact:
It is almost certain from the insistence on Viola's musical accomplishments at I.ii.57-58 that she was meant to be a singer, and from the awkward opening of II.iv that the song "Come away, come away death" has been transferred from her to Feste.
(297)
More likely the insistence on musical training was meant to strengthen her class identification. As Warnicke points out, at this time upper-class young women frequently received a limited musical education (117 and passim). Nor would such an education qualify Viola as a professional—the role of Feste in this play. Rather she is providing one of her several "job qualifications" even if she does not use them once she is employed.
Scene 2 must be understood as Shakespeare's swift, frank introduction of Viola—one that will not be repeated. Rather than anticipating specific later actions, it sketches in her upper-class background. Not only her offers of money and reference to Elysium, but her indication of a musical education, would have been familiar clues to contemporary audiences. In addition, despite its ambiguity, her quick response to the captain's mention of Orsino, "I have heard my father name him" (I.ii.28), followed by the delightful specific, "He was a bachelor then" (29)—leading audiences to believe that the Duke and her father knew one another (never actually confirmed in the text)—seems to reinforce the class connection.6 Not until the play's closing moments does she refer to her earlier life again, except in momentary lapses, such as her lines:
My father had a daughter lov'd a man
As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.
(II.iv. 107-9)
Or it surfaces in her boast of her parentage to Olivia: "Above my fortunes, yet my state is well: / I am a gentleman" (I.v.278-79). In that instance, however, the gender shift masks her identity. But at this point in the play, scene 2 prepares the audience for the combat of wits that will ensue between the two women of similar backgrounds when they finally confront one another three scenes later.
Yet societal values and accepted stereotypes about women blur those similarities and stress the women's differences. As I pointed out earlier, hostility to the young woman who would defy conventions creeps into the criticism just as sympathy for Viola, who suffers in silence, develops. Like the critics, editors and actor-managers, too, prefer to sharpen the contrast between this shipwrecked young woman soon to masquerade in breeches and the wealthy young Countess Olivia who exercises nonconformist attitudes towards men.
To strengthen the difference between the women, staged versions help reshape Viola by excising her line "For saying so, there's gold" (I.ii.18) and deemphasizing her class through costuming. The excision has persisted from the eighteenth century into the twentieth. The Bell edition (1773), for example, which claims to record the play "As Performed at the Theatres-Royal," jettisons Viola's offer of gold to the captain, suggesting what audiences saw at Drury Lane and Covent Garden after 1741.7 Mrs. Inchbald (1808), >as we have seen, refers to Olivia's falling in love "with a domestic" (4-5) and John Philip Kemble, whose acting version, first published in 1810, becomes the standard for theatrical productions for close to a century, also excises the reference to gold.8 By >the end of the nineteenth century, Henry Irving creates his own version, one which stresses his role of Malvolio. Nevertheless, Irving adopts many of Kemble's excisions, including Viola's offer of a reward.9 In the twentieth century, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, among others, also excises the line, perhaps thinking it unseemly for a young woman to be so comfortable with money. More likely, Tree is following a tradition both in text and attitude towards Viola.
As well as introducing her, scene 2 further develops the portrait of Olivia through hearsay. The captain narrates and Viola listens. A down-to-earth and non-involved spectator, he responds to Viola's query about Orsino's bachelorhood with uncertainty, assuring her only that a month earlier, before the captain left, Orsino was seeking Olivia's hand:
And then 'twas fresh in murmur (as you know
What great ones do, the less will prattle of)
That he did seek the love of fair Olivia.
(I.ii.32-34)
In scene 1, Orsino had provided the emotional background; in scene 2, the captain fills in many of the publicly known details about the young woman. A "virtuous maid," the phrase identifying her youth and unmarried status, she is also:
. . . the daughter of a count
That died some twelvemonth since, then
leaving her
In the protection of his son, her brother,
Who shortly also died;
(36-39)
Alone and wealthy, Olivia has much in common with the young woman listening. Malcolmson makes a similar point although she leaves Viola's exact status in doubt: "The scene does not explicitly define Viola's status as either noble or gentle; rather, her rank is veiled from us just as Viola veils it from the people she will meet. . . . [W]e, and the characters, will know her through her role-playing and her 'intent" (37). Although staging tends to obscure Viola's status, I believe that the dramatist offers sufficient clues both in her speeches and her actions to indicate her upper-class background.
As the captain continues, he also helps identify Illyria's social system, one that places an unmarried woman under the governance of a male in the family.10 Fi-nally, the captain speaks of the Countess's actions now that her brother's protection has ceased. In deference to the love she bore him: "They say, she hath abjur'd the company / And sight of men" (40-41). Omitting any reference to the seven-year limit on the mourning period, relayed by Orsino's messenger in scene 1, the captain's "they say" confirms his general reliance on hearsay and his distance from Olivia. When, therefore, Viola resolves to serve this countess, the captain quickly discourages her:
That were hard to compass,
Because she will admit no kind of suit,
No, not the Duke's.
(44-46)
Obviously, if the Duke has failed, Viola should not even consider such an option. Accepting the captain's advice, she quickly shifts her objective and decides on wearing breeches: "I'll serve this duke; / Thou shalt present me as a eunuch to him" (55-56).
Critics have questioned the ease with which Viola changes her mind, considering her later persistence and success in meeting Olivia. As Ruth Nevo observes, although Viola, upon hearing of Olivia's loss, exclaims, "O that I served that lady," she "does not fly to the Countess Olivia for succour, woman to woman, despite her sympathy for a fellow-mourner. Instead she chooses to be adventurously epicene in the Duke's entourage" (205). Nevo believes that Viola makes a sacrifice here by asking to be presented as a eunuch, a rational explanation for her high voice and feminine appearance. More importantly, the young woman's transformation permits her to enjoy the freedom of action allowed her twin brother, and formerly denied her because of her sex. The speed of her decision also leads C. L. Barber to comment that "the shipwreck is made the occasion for Viola to exhibit an undaunted, aristocratic mastery of adversity—she settles what she shall do next almost as though picking out a costume for a masquerade" (241). He is less concerned with the reason for her choice than with her free and easy manner, her language in making the decision. Unlike these modern critics, Samuel Johnson expresses disdain for Viola's actions and considers this a plot weakness:
Viola seems to have formed a very deep design with very little premeditation: she is thrown by shipwreck on an unknown coast, hears that the prince is a batchelor, and resolves to supplant the lady whom he courts.
(7:312)
The play, however, refutes this theory, as we discover later on when Viola, having fallen in love with the Duke, bemoans the limitations placed on her by disguise then courts the Countess for him.
Differing from Johnson, most actor-managers and directors, as well as critics, favor Viola over Olivia. To focus more sharply on the disguised young woman, these men often transpose the first and second scenes. Again Kemble's influential version dominates. It opens with noise, thunder, and lightning, heralding Viola's arrival on the shores of Illyria. Beerbohm Tree, in 1901, dramatizes Viola's weakness on arrival although the text offers no such suggestion. Sailors bring her ashore "as if insensible. She is put reclining on the steps. Wet dress. Sailors with chest and bundles." Winthrop Ames, in 1906, also has the sailors "supporting a woman, then carrying in a child" (a character added for pathos, I suspect). Augustin Daly, the famous American manager at the end of the nineteenth century, goes even further. He opens the play with the arrival of Viola's brother on the shores of Illyria, eliminating all suspense as to whether or not her twin has survived.
Despite Daly's more radical alteration of sequence, it was only a temporary aberration whereas Kemble's pattern has persisted. As recently as the summer of 1986, New York audiences were treated to a Kemble format under the aegis of Joseph Papp, the production opening with Viola's arrival in Illyria. Possibly the drive for realism and interest in plot development contributed to the decision to open with the second scene. More likely, however, the uncreased emphasis on the heroic Viola in contrast to the foolish Olivia was responsible.
Unfortunately, that transposition sacrifices the airy, wistful tone of the first scene with all its implications and resonances—a scene as important to the play as the three witches who open Macbeth or the ghost on the ramparts who chills the air with foreboding in Hamlet, In Shakespeare's sequence, Orsino's impassioned pleas and posing in the first scene add credibility to Olivia's decision whereas when the play opens with scene 2, she sounds arbitrary and unreasonable since the sea captain warns Viola of the impossibility of meeting this woman.
Shakespeare's scene sequence (as Clifford Leech observed) has its own specific validity and dictates a pattern of relationships (36-37). The patterns in the plays usually affect and often heighten the impact of the work on the audience. Shakespeare's method resembles that of the painter who establishes positive and negative areas of a painting, each helping to illuminate the other while through both he weaves color, line, and design that unify the whole. In Twelfth Night, Orsino's opening scene provides the background (or negative) area—of fantasy—against which Viola's realistic approach proves refreshing. Woven through both is the slowly developing character of Olivia.
Scene 3 intensifies the portrait of the Countess. This time the dramatist takes us closer to her world, introducing us to the ebullient and varied characters who inhabit her home. There, the multidimensional, and skewed, characterization continues to grow as others' words fill in the blank spaces of the sketch first begun by Orsino. The robustious, roaring, frequently drunk Sir Toby, identified in the cast list as "uncle to Olivia," introduces us to the comic characters even while he stews, "What a plague means my niece to take the death of her brother thus? I am sure care's an enemy to life" (I.iii.1-3). Maria, the serving woman, rather than answering, sharply reprimands, "Your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours" (5-6), bearing witness to a more dynamic Olivia than thus far promised by either Orsino or the sea captain. With these two speeches, Shakespeare has catapulted us into Olivia's household and established the firmness of the mistress's control. She has accepted the obligations of her position. A life of mourning has led neither to a retreat from reality nor to an abdication of responsibility, merely an affirmation of the single life.
Challenges to that single life, however, seem endless. Suitors spring up everywhere. Even Sir Toby has a candidate—his drinking companion, the foolish Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a gull easily separated from his money. Nevertheless, Sir Andrew, skeptical of his chances, would withdraw from the field, admitting, "Your niece will not be seen, or if she be, it's four to one she'll none of me. The Count himself here hard by woos her" (I.iii.106-8). For the third time, we hear of the Count's persistent wooing. Anxious to prevent the departure of his wealthy drinking mate, Sir Toby confidently insists, "She'll none o' th' Count. She'll not match above her degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit" (109-10). Although his motive is suspect, Sir Toby, while he ultimately will prove wrong about the "degree" of Olivia's intelligence, or wit, is correct about her rejection of the Count and probably about her youthful age. Sir Andrew does not contradict him.
Interestingly, critics, too, have wrestled with the question of her age while directors have indicated their opinion through dress, make-up, and stage movement. They usually decide in favor of seniority, thus emphasizing the ways in which an older woman can be bested by a younger, more conventional one. The hostility to the older, aggressive woman on stage remains; she is a subject for laughter and audience mockery. And here the language of the text may inadvertently contribute to this misreading, for whereas Olivia is acting herself, a young single woman, Viola, playing a man's role, is described as "not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy" (I.v.156-57). Leo Salingar in 1958, for example, considers the Countess, "psychologically an elder sister to Viola" (125). 11 Although not censorious, as was Mrs. Inchbald in 1808, Salingar resembles Inchbald in stressing an age differential between the two women. However nowhere, neither in the language nor actions, does the text indicate an Olivia chronologically older or more psychologically mature than Viola. On the contrary, perhaps because of her disguise and the challenges it poses, Viola reveals keen insights into both her condition and Olivia's, insights unavailable to the deceived Countess.
In fact, Sir Toby's comment supports the notion that the two young women were approximately of the same age, thus reinforcing the similarities introduced at the start. Only later, when trapped in a comic relationship and engaged in wit combats built on disguise does confusion arise as to their respective ages. This, however, may result from costuming and staging. For example, an illustration of an older Olivia actually appears in the pages of costume designs in an Augustin Daly souvenir promptbook. Her face looks a bit pinched as well as haughty, in contrast with the illustration for Viola, who, with blonde, curly hair worn in a version of a wide pageboy, has an innocent, inquiring, friendly look on her face and stands in a deferential pose.12 Although both illustrations seem to have provided the basis for the women's costumes, they must also reflect perceptions of the characters in the nineteenth century.13
Occasionally, of course, some independent thinking occurs and we read in a promptbook, "Olivia's youth should be emphasized in every way possible to make her love affair with so callow a strippling as Viola convincing" (Ames prompt, facing I.v.294-95). The comment is sparked by Olivia's soliloquy at the close of the scene where she first meets Viola. Again in a 1988 production at Stratford, Ontario, Olivia's youthfulness was stressed when she giggled with delight at discovering this new young "man," then subsequently discarded her black dress for a pink one.
As the play moves towards this moment when the two women meet, their divergent introductions continue: Olivia's through hearsay, Viola's through direct presentation. In scene 4 Orsino describes his passionate love for the incomparable Olivia, meanwhile confessing to his new page, the disguised Viola, "I have unclasp'd / To thee the book even of my secret soul" (I.iv.13-14). Incredibly, she has won her way into his confidence in a mere three days. Despite her brief period of service, Orsino is revealing all his innermost thoughts to her. The ease with which she accomplishes this suggests that she had no trouble being accepted in an aristocratic household because she could draw on the mores of her upper-class background to adjust to her new situation. But Viola has lost her heart to him even as he is entrusting her with his most precious errand, the wooing of Olivia. Shakespeare thus presents the first challenge to a wealthy young woman who would gain freedom from her sexual identity by donning male attire. Breeches have their drawbacks; but so do skirts, as Olivia too will soon discover.
When she finally sweeps onto the stage in scene 5, in all her grandeur or loneliness, certainty or uncertainty, age or youth, arrogance or self-confidence, she has been thoroughly characterized by the conflicting impressions passed on by others. John Russell Brown writes of the silences in the play—the moments when words are not spoken but audience attention is riveted to a character (28). Surely audiences are waiting to see just what she looks like, how she carries herself, and how she behaves. But the tendency to tamper with the text again changes the portrait. Just as the transposition of the play's first two scenes combined with the omission of many of the Duke's foolish self-pitying lines alter audiences' perceptions of him, and excision of Viola's reference to gold masks her upper-class background, so standard cuts in scene 5—some going back to the early nineteenth century—affect our first impression of Olivia.
Although the scene opens with twenty-five lines of teasing conversation between Maria and the Clown—lines preparing the audience for the Countess's annoyance with him—they seldom reach the stage. Henry Irving, John Philip Kemble, Augustin Daly, and Herbert Beerbohm Tree, among others, chopped off some or all of the exchange.14 As a result, Olivia usually sounds arbitrary and arrogant at her entrance. To the Clown's "God bless thee, lady!" (I.v.36-37), she replies, "Take the fool away" (38). Nor does his "Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady," (39-40) amuse her. Olivia angrily charges, "Go to, y' are a dry fool; I'll no more of you. Besides, you grow dishonest" (41-42). In the conversation usually omitted, however, Shakespeare provides an explanation for this behavior. Officiously acting as her mistress's surrogate, Maria reprimands the Clown for his several absences. In their exchange lies the rational basis for Olivia's opening speeches, particularly her anger at the Clown. The excision contributes to a one-sided and distorted impression of her.
In fact, in the full text, she proves a tolerant manager of this conglomerate household. We glimpse her reasonable governance particularly when she allows the Fool his famous argument against mourning for her brother. "I think his soul is in hell, madonna" (68), he begins, quickly contradicted by her, "I know his soul is in heaven, fool" (69), leading to his conclusion, "The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul, being in heaven" (70-71). The reasoning wins her admiration. "What think you of this fool, Malvolio? doth he not mend?" (73-74), she laughingly concedes. But her steward, a somber man with a great sense of self-importance, is not amused. Olivia then criticizes him, offering astute character analysis in her reprimand: "O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distemper'd appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets" (90-93). Shakespeare has endowed her with a directness of language that matches Viola's. But in some promptbooks, such as those based on the Daly edition (p. 16, 77V 21; p. 22, TN 10), the second sentence, with its analogy to "bird-bolts" and "cannon-bullets," has been excised. As written, the full text reveals Olivia's strengths. During the brief time that she is on stage, she appears neither unintelligent, intolerant, nor humorless. Nor does she exhibit any extremes of grief.
Rather, the young Countess appears well qualified for the battle of wits that will follow between her and Viola—two women who have, in their own ways, built their independent personas on the death (or seeming death) of their brothers, one through mourning, the other through disguise. The equality of their verbal gifts emerges at their first meeting. Sent to woo Olivia for Orsino, Viola combines flattery with insolence. "Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty—I pray you tell me if this be the lady of the house. . . . I would be loath to cast away my speech; for besides that it is excellently well penn'd, I have taken great pains to con it" (I.v.170-74), she complains. When Olivia answers only "Whence came you, sir?" (177), Viola persists in her emphasis on the prepared speech being spoken to the properly identified Olivia: "I can say little more than I have studied, and that question's out of my part" (178-79).
Seeming to be aware of what Viola is doing, Olivia queries next, "Are you a comedian?" (182). To this Viola somewhat saucily responds, "No, my profound heart; and yet (by the very fangs of malice I swear) I am not that I play" (183-84). Why the expression "by the very fangs of malice"? What is its relevance? Does it have an underlying message or reveal her envy of Olivia? For surely, a suitor would not be using the "fangs of malice" to support an argument. Rather while the phrase may suggest an arrogance and a pose of self-confidence on Viola's part, it may also reflect her attempt to simulate male assertiveness first by swearing and then by calling up this strange phrase, perhaps a substitute for "by the devil." In closing, she repeats her request, "Are you the lady of the house?" (184-85). Finally Olivia gives an almost direct answer—although still equivocating—"If I do not usurp myself, I am" (186). But Viola responds in kind. "Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp yourself (187-88). And then once more she refers to her memorized speech "in praise" of Olivia, the suggestion being that not Olivia herself, but the conventions of love are responsible for this praise.
This short exchange is usually reduced on the stage. Since drama is built on the interaction between characters—in other words, since dialogue helps define personality—the omissions alter the portraits of the women. The section leading to Olivia's question "Are you a comedian?" and Viola's mixed answer with its "fangs of malice" are frequently excised. What remains is Olivia's simple "If I do not usurp myself, I am."15 Nor do audiences usually hear Olivia's sardonic ad-monition to Viola to "Come to what is important in't. I forgive you the praise" (192-93), indicating her sense of humor and awareness of the verbal battle under way. In the subsequent conversation, the cuts in Olivia's lines are rather curious. "Speak your office" (207) is all that remains of a speech that includes "Sure you have some hideous matter to deliver, when the courtesy of it is so fearful" (206-7). Eliminated too is the contretemps touched off by Viola's "I hold the olive in my hand" (209-10)—an offer she finds difficult to sustain after Olivia's simple observation "Yet you began rudely" (212). Viola immediately takes up the challenge, "The rudeness that hath appear'd in me have I learn'd from my entertainment" (214-15).
Their verbal combat continues, intensified by Viola's request that Olivia raise her veil although as the Countess notes, "You are now out of your text" (232). Nevertheless, she agrees to "draw the curtain, and show . . . the picture" (233), challenging, "Is't not well done?" (235) A too-quick response springs from the woman in breeches, "Excellently done, if God did all" (236). Just as sharply, however, Olivia retorts, "'Tis in grain, sir, 'twill endure wind and weather" (237-38). But much of this verbal jousting disappears from the stage, and Viola's speech begins instead with the flattering, "'Tis beauty truly blent" (239).
Consider too, the exchange triggered by Olivia's wonderful speech outlining the "divers schedules" of her beauty:
It shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labell'd to my will: as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me?
(I.v.245-49)
Undaunted, the page Cesario/Viola disapprovingly comments: "I see what you are; you are too proud; / But if you were the devil, you are fair" (250-51). And then, as if remembering her mission, she jumps from critical direct address to her major subject, "My lord and master loves you" (252). Promptbooks, reflecting stage productions, tend to retain only the last line, omitting Olivia's "schedule" of her beauty as well as Viola's accusation of pride. Thus the text, mocking the ideal of courtly love, emphasizes pertness and honesty over flattery. These excisions rob the portrait of Viola of irony and reduce Olivia to a stolid, unimaginative woman.
Finally, cut too is her gracious observation:
Your lord does know my mind, I cannot love him,
Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;
In voices well divulg'd, free, learn'd, and valiant,
And in dimension, and the shape of nature,
A gracious person. But yet I cannot love him.
(257-62)
The speech indicates Olivia's sensitivity as she lists his specific strengths. It is a remarkable statement to give to a young woman, since it suggests less an emotional reaction than a thoughtful evaluation of the man she rejects. She mentions none of his weaknesses but bases her decision only on her own taste: "I cannot love him," implying also that nothing in the future will change her mind. Adamant in her insistence that she will never love Orsino, the Countess repeats the words yet again near the scene's close. Viola understands and later attempts, unsuccessfully, to explain Olivia's point of view to Orsino.
Historically, most of the speech disappears from the stage. Kemble's version, setting the pattern for those to follow, combines the single opening line with the speech's closing, resulting in the cryptic, abbreviated message: "Your lord does know my mind, I cannot love him: / He might have took his answer long ago" (Kemble, 1810, p. 19). Conforming to the developing portrait of her in criticism, an arbitrary Olivia emerges here. Other acting texts follow Kemble's lead. Beerbohm Tree (1901) retains the first line of the speech. Augustin Daly (1893), Henry Irving (1884), and others retain its first three lines. These productions span almost an entire century and surely must have affected criticism.
In fact, in 1865, decrying this omission, Spedding writes:
These lines are left out in the acting, which is surely a great mistake. As addressed by Olivia to Viola, they have a peculiar and pathetic meaning, and it is strange that the mixed emotions which they must have excited in her should not have been made one of the "points" in the play.
(Fraser's Magazine; quoted in Variorum Twelfth Night, 90)
The lines not only affect Viola, who herself would like to "be his wife" (I.iv.42) but also illuminate the character of Olivia. She knows her own heart and mind; she can recognize virtue in others, even someone who is a bit foolish, like Orsino. Of course, she has only seen that side of him which is tangled in the conventions of wooing. Viola, on the other hand, hears a more relaxed man confiding his ideas not only about wooing and women but also about life generally. Employed as his page, she has also found him generous and trusting, having given her, an unknown youth, a position and quickly taken her into his confidence. Like Hermia and Helena, who encounter two different aspects of Demetrius in the early scenes of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Viola and Olivia encounter two different Orsinos.
Unmoved by the Orsino she knows, Olivia is captivated by his envoy, Viola. In this disguised woman of comparable background and wit, Olivia finds the perfect wooer—the one who verbalizes her own dream of what wooing should be: a challenging wit exchange between equals; honesty; and an absence of posing. Direct language can open a path to the heart. In scene 5, Viola adopts this method. Without realizing it, she once again departs from her "text" (232). This time she delivers an impassioned love lyric. Though meant to win Olivia for Orsino, it also reveals something of Viola's own feelings for the Duke: "If I did love you in my master's flame, / . . . I would. . . . / Make me a willow cabin at your gate, / . . . Hallo your name to the reverberate hills, / And make the babbling gossip of the air / Cry out 'Olivia'" (264-74).
The speech overwhelms the young Countess as it does the audience. Here are lines that differ from Orsino's flowery words; familiar images flood the language. One need not search for hidden meanings, merely visualize the youth standing before a simple cabin and hear him hallowing the name "Olivia." The air and the hills echo the name; the speaker captivates the listener, who admits in soliloquy after the young page leaves:
16How now?
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
Methinks 1 feel this youth's perfections
With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.
(294-98)
But she doesn't "let it be." Instead, Olivia immediately sends Malvolio on a false errand, to return to the young Cesario a ring he never gave her. Each woman has been caught in an emotional response that will alter her self-perception and her desire for anonymity or privacy. No longer thinking of the brother she was mourning, Olivia seeks only to assure a return visit from Orsino's youthful page.
Perhaps squeamish about the possible impact of individual lines or simply choosing to cut at this point, actor-managers excised and revised. Charles Kean, the mid-nineteenth-century manager, for example, crossed out some of Olivia's speech above, specifically those lines expressing admiration for "this youth" (296-98). The intention was probably to remove any suggestion of Olivia's being homosexually attracted to Viola. In this comedy of mistaken identity, however, Shakespeare, not only suggests such an attachment, but then, through the sequential arrangement of scenes quickly offers an alternative possibility.
Olivia's startling emotional discovery precipitates an immediate scene change to the lost Sebastian, Viola's twin brother, who has survived the shipwreck. Derrida argues that the meanings of words are constantly being modified by the next signifier (Moi, 105-7). Building on Derrida's insight, I propose that meaning in drama derives not only from verbal signifiers, particularly the interaction of characters as they speak on stage, but also from the sequence of scenes as they unfold. This arrangement affects both our first, immediate response as well as the modification of that response. Moreover, because theater differs from the written text in at least one significant detail, it addresses a captive audience who must listen and react as the play progresses, this "deferral of meaning" occurs to a far larger extent with drama than with written literature since a reader may put down a book and stop reading.
The young Countess's comment about the disguised youth now takes on a different perspective with the introduction of Sebastian. His presence holds the promise of a possible new pairing, although audiences will have to wait to see when, and if, Sebastian meets Olivia and how that meeting will develop. The striking physical similarity between the twins will eventually resolve Olivia's dilemma. She will later woo Sebastian as Cesario although, as Heilbrun points out, Shakespeare, himself the father of opposite sex twins, surely knew such an indistinguishable resemblance to be impossible (37).
Similarities do, however, exist. Like Viola, Sebastian is first introduced with a sea captain, Antonio, who rescued him. Also like her, Viola's brother arouses intense feelings of affection, in his case from Antonio, who would serve the youth. And again like her, Sebastian stubbornly resists. "If you will not undo what you have done, that is, kill him whom you have recover'd, desire it not" (II.i.37-39), the young man insists before departing. Left alone on stage, Antonio, in soliloquy, first blesses the youth: "The gentleness of all the gods go with thee!" then reveals the intensity of his feelings.
I have many enemies in Orsino's court,
Else would I very shortly see thee there.
But come what may, I do adore thee so
That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.
(II.i.44-48)
The speech suggests a strong, even if one-sided, affection. The captain will risk capture for the pleasure of following Sebastian.
Brother, like sister, rejects an implied homosexual relationship. Unlike Viola, however, Sebastian is not suffering from a misreading of his sexual identity since no disguise exists. And so the soliloquy is seldom heard on stage. The Bell version retains only a form of the first line, "The gentleness of the Gods go with thee!" (335), after which the two men "exeunt severally" (335). Kemble's text, followed by the French edition (TN 18) and others, transforms Antonio's first line into part of a brief dialogue, Sebastian answering with an invented line, "Fare ye well."
This first scene between Sebastian and Antonio often changes not only its shape, but also its place in the sequence. Despite its importance in the pattern of alternating scenes that illuminate the development of the two principal women characters, actor-managers and directors have often reshuffled the text—sometimes to simplify plot, sometimes to stress Malvolio's role (although it is shorter than those of Viola and Olivia), and sometimes to sustain a contrast between the women, favoring the disguised youth in breeches. Again Kemble's text set the example, transposing the Folio sequence by placing Malvolio's scene with Viola immediately after Olivia's order to "return the ring," although the introduction of Sebastian interferes with such a smooth narrative sequence.17 Other directors, such as Irving, who played Malvolio, have withheld Sebastian's surprise appearance until later in the play.18 Focusing on his own role, Irving also abbre-viated the women's lines.19 Other actor-managers tended to fall into similar patterns, sometimes stripping the scene of most of its intense lines with their homoerotic implications, sometimes transposing the sequence, and often doing both.
Occasionally, as in the Sothern and Marlowe production at the beginning of the twentieth century, the scene was even merged with the second brief Sebastian-Antonio scene even though each of these functions differently. The first creates that happy shock of recognition of the physical resemblances between the twins; it also introduces the relationship between the two men. The second adds important plot elements: the captain decides to remain in Illyria, despite the hazards, then lends his purse to Sebastian, later seeking to retrieve it from Sebastian's double, Viola. The scene also testifies to the intensity of Antonio's affection for the youth. Sequentially, the second scene separates Maria's description of Malvolio in yellow garters from his actual appearance on stage.
In contrast, the Sothern-Marlowe merged scene (II.ii. in typescript—TN 31) retains only the factual information necessary for the plot's later development. It begins with the opening of Shakespeare's second of the two scenes (III.iii.1-15) where Antonio reveals his decision to accompany the young man, but it excises specific references to his love for Sebastian. Next follows the youth's disclosure of his identity, plucked from the earlier scene (II.i), thus confirming as well Viola's upper-class background. Finally, returning to the later scene, this new mongrel concludes with Antonio giving his purse to Sebastian. Sequentially, it follows Malvolio's outburst to the drunken Sir Toby and Sir Andrew (II.iii) and precedes Viola's debate with Orsino on love (II.iv). Although in many ways the Sothern-Marlowe version defeats the purposes of the two separate scenes, it does not subvert the play's ability to construct strong parallels between two wealthy, young, single women who have lost father and brother. That was Daly's contribution and he achieved it by opening the play with Sebastian's arrival in Illyria. This assured audiences that the relationship between Olivia and Viola was just a game and that Viola's early quest for independence had no reality since her brother lived.
Shakespeare, however, not only raises this issue of independence but also further develops it in Viola's retort to Malvolio when he delivers the ring. For the dramatist here offers a significant example of women bonding. Knowing she never gave Olivia a ring, the disguised page nevertheless answers the steward: "She took the ring of me, I'll none of it" (12). Although the line has puzzled some editors, it seems consistent with Viola's constant makeshift attempts both to conceal her disguise and to reveal her insights as a woman into another woman's actions. This will occur again two scenes later when she attempts to explain to the Duke Olivia's feelings for him, but instead nearly trips over her own identity. Clearly in her scene with Malvolio, Viola understands what has occurred, as her soliloquy, following his brusque departure, indicates: "I left no ring with her. . . . / Fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her" (II.ii.17-18). Indeed it has. But Sebastian's arrival may promise a "happy ending," even while the play continues to explore the women's struggles, whether in breeches or skirts, to assert their sense of self.
In the scenes that follow, Olivia's struggle once more comes to the fore, again through hearsay and inference as Shakespeare thrusts us ever more intimately into the dynamics of her household. Again the challenge to her independence grows out of her position as a marriageable, wealthy young woman. When the drunken Sir Toby and Sir Andrew wobble in, raucously singing, Maria first reprimands them, invoking the name of her mistress, but then later joins them. Less flexible, Malvolio, awakened from sleep by this boisterous crew, more vehemently chastises them, again invoking Olivia's name:
My lady bade me tell you, that though she harbors you as her kinsman, she's nothing allied to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your misdemeanors, you are welcome to the house; if not, and it would please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you farewell.
(II.iii.95-101)
Since he never carries out the threat but is himself bested, his lines indicate his misreading of Olivia, exhibiting his lust for power and his method of exercising it. Betraying his ambition as well as his vulnerability to the gulling he will later suffer, his speech illuminates the extent and intensiveness of another of Olivia's pursuers. He will readily adopt cross-garters and attempt to smile in his effort to win her hand and, with it, permanent power as her husband. Little disappears from this comic scene in staged versions—only the songs. First omitted from the Bell edition, they are later excised by Kemble and Irving who substitute other, briefer drinking songs.
A far different fate on stage meets the scene which follows: the debate between Viola and Orsino on men's and women's capacity for love. The scene loses much of its substance through cutting. It is full of inconsistencies and contradications in Orsino's arguments while stressing at the same time the complexity of Viola's position as she strives to convey to the Duke something of a woman's point of view. Filled with humor and further mockery of the conventions of the Petrarchan lover, it continues the portrait of Orsino begun in the first scene—a silly lover drowning in self-pity. Again, his desire for music opens the scene:
that piece of song,
That old and antique song we heard last night;
Methought it did relieve my passion much,
More than light airs and recollected terms
Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.
(II.iv.2-6)
Still seeking to "relieve" his passion, Orsino sounds very much like the melancholy character we met earlier. But this request for music does not appear in the Bell edition, the Kemble edition, or the French edition, basically covering a century of staging. Instead, in those editions, the scene opens with Orsino attempting to warn his page of what to expect from love. "Come hither boy," the Duke instructs, "If ever thou shalt love, / In the sweet pangs of it remember me" (15-16). Observing Cesario/Viola's downcast expression, her master quizzes her about her beloved's appearance: "Of your complexion" and "about your years" (26, 28), confesses the disguised woman.
Her lines trigger Orsino's first dissertation on love, which will eventually be contradicted by his second. "[H]owever we do praise ourselves, / Our fancies are more giddy . . . Than women's are" (32-35), he claims, advising Cesario to choose a woman younger than himself. Later, however, when describing his own love for Olivia, the Duke contradicts himself, insisting, "no woman's heart / So big, to hold so much; they lack retention" (95-96). He also compares a woman's love which "may be call'd appetite" (97) with his own, which is "all as hungry as the sea" (100). Kemble and Bell omit the first assertion and Kemble, Bell, Irving, Daly, and Sothern and Marlowe omit its contradiction. As a result of these excisions, the Duke sounds consistent, a quality that Shakespeare denies him. The elimination of both groups of quotes by Bell and Kemble alters the scene's emphasis, losing much of its irony.
In these editions, reflecting stage performances, not only do the contradictions disappear, but also Orsino turns into a fairly direct, attractive man. Reduced, the text's long lecture on love becomes merely a brief comment to Viola/Cesario on her beloved, "too old, by heaven" (29), followed immediately by the direction: "Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty" (80), Olivia. Covering a mere two pages in the Kemble text, the scene fails to develop the portrait of a melancholy and self-pitying Orsino resembling Shakespeare's Duke. Instead, it becomes a brief interlude of disagreement between the disguised page and the man she loves in which she stumbles when trying to fictionalize her love for him.
Juxtaposing the young page's clearly reasoned defense of Olivia against the Duke's confused and contradictory comments on men's and women's capacity to love, Shakespeare in this scene once again illustrates women bonding and also gives Viola rational arguments favoring a woman's right to free choice. Furthermore, the scene reaffirms Viola's sense of her own identity; she is always emotionally and intellectually clearly a woman. Attempting to deliver Olivia's message and sensitive to its intention, Viola tries to convince Orsino of its finality, transposing Olivia's words. "But if she cannot love you, sir?" (II.iv.87, emphasis added here and throughout this paragraph). In response, the Duke retains only the original "cannot." "I cannot be so answer'd" (88), he insists. Viola then cites the parallel of an imaginary woman (herself) in love with him. Suppose "You cannot love her" (91). The pronouns have shifted from that first expression by Olivia but the body of the line has been restored. The debate surrounding a woman's right to express or reject love on a plane equal to a man's is given clear expression through Viola as Cesario, the young lad, while the refusal of the man, Orsino, to respect Olivia's wishes resonates through the text.
In this scene, Viola seems torn between revealing her identity and maintaining her disguise. Earlier she had decided, "Time, thou must untangle this, not I" (II.ii.40). But here that resolve weakens, when, in trying to convince the Duke, she says, "My father had a daughter lov'd a man / As it might be perhaps, were I a woman, / I should your lordship" (II.iv.107-9). "And what's her history?" (109) the Duke quickly asks. Surely her answer, "I am all the daughters of my father's house, / And all the brothers too" (120-21), should have led to a full revelation. But the Duke is so self-absorbed in his own feelings that his ear is not keyed to Viola's words. And so she continues in her role as his messenger.
Having chosen her disguise almost whimsically, she finds its advantages quickly fading. First, her success in winning a place with the Duke has led to her appointment as his surrogate wooer although she confesses, in soliloquy: "Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife" (I.iv.42). Then her enchantment of Olivia further intensifies Viola's problem. Next, when she tries to explain the other woman's position to the Duke, he refuses to listen. Later, despite her protests, Sir Andrew challenges her to a duel for Olivia's hand, leading Viola to muse to herself: "A little thing would make me tell them how much I lack of a man" (III.iv.302-3). And finally, she must confront the issue of a dual identity, having become embroiled in the circle of pursued and pursuer. The problems Viola faces caused by her disguise are, if less life threatening, more subtle and emotionally complex than those that confront Shakespeare's other women in breeches: Rosalind of As You Like It, Imogen of Cymbeline, and Jessica of The Merchant of Venice, who choose disguise to evade pursuit; Julia of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, who concealed herself to pursue her lover; or Portia and Nerissa, who dress as lawyer and law clerk to save their husbands' friend.
If, however, Shakespeare were less interested in realistic reasons for the disguise than in the larger concept—the relationship of sexuality to women's economic independence—the silliness of the breeches controversy would be exposed by the similarities between the women's plights. Although differently dressed, both must revise their self-perceptions, modifying them to accommodate erotic urges as these affect women's lives in such a society. Viola's choice of disguise, like Olivia's choice of mourning, tests the limits of self-sovereignty when supported by economic independence.
Thus their new erotic interests conflict with their development of independence. Nevertheless, both women persevere in their chosen direction. Viola remains in service to Orsino, wooing Olivia, while she, in turn, continues her forthright pursuit of Cesario. Two other brief exchanges mark the women's time alone together. In the earlier one (III.i.93-164), Olivia apologizes for sending the false message and the ring and quite directly declares her love. In the second (III.iv.201-17), an exchange of less than twenty lines within a much longer scene, she acknowledges having compromised herself:
I have said too much unto a heart of stone,
And laid mine honor too unchary on't.
There's something in me that reproves my fault;
But such a headstrong potent fault it is
That it but mocks reproof.
(201-5)
Recognition but not retraction leads to her next speech, "Here, wear this jewel for me, 'tis my picture" (208), promising Viola, "it hath no tongue to vex you" (209). Olivia is ready to embark on what appears to be a cross-class marriage to a young page. Is she using her wealth to lure a husband, who, in fact has the virtues of a woman and is, perhaps, therefore attractive? In the text, ambiguity then prevails. Does Viola accept the jewel? No hint appears in the language. Her response, like so many of her answers to Olivia, evades the subject, asking instead, "your true love for my master" (213).
Further evasion appears in promptbooks, many of which excise this brief moment between the disguised woman and the lady who openly vows her love. For example, the encounter is crossed out by Charles Kean, who used a Kemble text (TN 14). And the Irving version retains only the last four lines of the women's conversation. Their brief moment is then over: no apologies for having declared her love, and no giving Viola "this jewel" that contains Olivia's picture (TN 15, p. 52). Was Viola's behavior not exemplary enough for the adaptors? Was the intensity of Olivia's passion, directed as it was to a woman, embarrassing? Probably both. In the text, the exchange amplifies their portraits, which have been acquiring dimension with each new scene.
Like a juggler, Shakespeare keeps aloft the atmosphere of romance as well as the realities of drunks and duels and always, whether directly or through hearsay, he illuminates the challenges facing the two women. Perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the middle section of the play are we witness to this balancing act. Act 3, scene 2 includes the conning of Sir Andrew (into penning a challenge to Cesario) and the report on Malvolio's appearance (wearing yellow cross-garters)—both men wishing to win Olivia through their actions.
Opening in her garden, scene 4 of act 3 shows the Countess ranging from one interest to another in quick succession.
I have sent after him; he says he'll come.
How shall I feast him? What bestow of him?
For youth is bought more oft than begg'd or borrow'd.
I speak too loud.
(1-4)
The excitement generated within this speech, even including the suggestion that it is spoken in a whisper reveals an altered Olivia—one neither disinterested nor in mourning. The Bell edition contains a footnote on her appearance: "Olivia should possess beauty of countenance, elegance of figure, grace of deportment, and sensibility of speech" [bottom, p. 357, vol. 5, of Bell edition]. The edition also records a seemingly slight alteration in the opening line, but one which changes the idea. It reads: "I have sent after him; say he will come, / How shall I feast him? What bestow on him?" (emphasis added, p. 357). The conditional here contradicts the straight assertion in the Folio. Her lines reflect her excitement.
She then changes the subject, "Where's Malvolio?" (5).20 Asking for him and commenting that his sad state suits her well, Olivia learns from Maria that he is as one "possessed." When he appears before her in yellow garters and smiling, she attempts to understand this sudden change, but the arrival of Cesario cuts short the interview, leading Olivia to assign Malvolio to Maria and Sir Toby—thus asking his gullers to be his handlers. After the steward's triumphant soliloquy celebrating what he believes to be his new status—the prospective husband to Olivia—the scene moves without a pause to Sir Andrew's timidly worded letter of challenge to Cesario. Here both Viola and Olivia are the subjects—the one's problems created by her disguise, the other's by her lack of disguise, but clearly her marriageability. Thus both illuminate challenges to the women's pursuit of their own independence. The brief interlude between the two women follows.
The focus then shifts to Viola. Suddenly her resemblance to her brother fades as she faces the "terror," Sir Andrew, an equally reluctant adversary. Their swords at the ready, both participants back off from one another, even as Antonio, mistaking Viola for Sebastian, interrupts their duel, finds himself under arrest by officers, requests his purse of "Sebastian," and denied, offers Viola her first inkling that her brother lives.
He nam'd Sebastian. I my brother know
Yet living in my glass; even such and so
In favor was my brother, and he went
Still in this fashion, color, ornament,
For him I imitate.
(379-83)
We discover how completely Viola has mimicked her brother and are prepared for the confusion that will result.
The dramatist next adds depth and shading to the design, for the following scene has the cinematic quality of a "double take." "Will you make me believe that I am not sent for you?" (IV.i.1-2), challenges the Clown to Cesario's double, Sebastian. But we have already witnessed the interview between Viola and Olivia. Replaying an earlier moment, the Clown's confrontational attack seems to precede the previous scene. But the take is skewed. The line is addressed to Sebastian, not Viola/Cesario, and the outcome differs from the expected. We are caught in Shakespeare's double time as he confirms, through witnesses, the extraordinary resemblance between the twins. Sir Andrew and Sir Toby provide the next testimony. Again challenging the character they assume to be Orsino's page, they little realize they are encountering a different adversary. Finally, Olivia rushes out to save one she believes to be Cesario, but instead overwhelms Sebastian: "Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep; / If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!" (IV.i.62-63). Brother, like sister, uses a classical allusion. Just as a painter places small dabs of similar colors strategically throughout his painting to orchestrate its parts and help unify it, the writer paints resemblances through language and literary references.
Culminating in Olivia's "Would thou'dst be rul'd by me!" (64), this scene has carried the accidental disguise motif to its climax, when Sebastian replies, "Madam, I will," and Olivia joyously exclaims, "O, say so, and so be!" (65) and departs to plan a wedding. In contrast, a scene of intentional disguise follows, its darkness contrasting with the light of the previous scene as well as the subsequent one. Both literally and figuratively, darkness prevails as Sir Toby, Maria, and the Clown seek to frustrate Malvolio and convince him he is mad while keeping him imprisoned in darkness and calling it light. Again, Olivia, though absent is present: hearsay and hope, Malvolio's hope of marriage, keep her in the audience's consciousness.
Darkness then gives way to light. "This is the air, that is the glorious sun" (IV.iii.l), Sebastian marvels in soliloquy at Olivia's gifts, then later follows her to church to exchange vows. The soliloquy wanders over several topics, but always with Olivia at its core. Wondering what has happened to Antonio and wishing for his advice, the youth speculates,
For though my soul disputes well with my sense,
That this may be some error, but no madness,
Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes,
And wrangle with my reason that persuades me
To any other trust but that I am mad,
Or else the lady's mad.
(9-16)
Debating with himself as to whether she is mad, he concludes this to be impossible—else she could not run her house, command her followers, and manage her affairs with such skill and "stable bearing" (19). Here in the testimony of a stranger who has observed the lady in action we are told of her ability.
But again the glorification of Olivia falls before the actor-manager's or director's pen. Since she is here challenging patterns of patriarchy, these producers of the play seem to assert that her more positive features need not be emphasized. Cuts in Sebastian's soliloquy appear in early promptbooks or acting versions and continue well into the twentieth century although they outline her skills. Clearly, the lines testify to her never having left this world, but merely having divorced herself from availability to suitors. And so, acting texts excise.21 Kemble omits the lines as do the Oxberry and the French texts (TN 9). By the time we reach the Sothern-Marlowe version the soliloquy has been reduced to its first four lines, followed by its last two. With only its skeleton remaining, this abbreviated scene is then attached to the beginning of the closing scene (V.i) without a break.
Meanwhile, Viola is confronting the clear possibility that her brother lives. Although a joyous prospect, it will end her adventure into independence just as Olivia's decision to marry will end hers. In the single scene in act 5, Shakespeare, for the last time, presents the challenges the two single young women face and weaves together fact and fantasy, for this is Illyria.
Maria, too, has won her objective. Although she does not appear in the scene, we learn that through her successful plot to ensnare Malvolio "at Sir Toby's" wish, he hath "In recompense . . . married her" (363-64). A strong character, Maria differs from the other two women, having persistently sought marriage. Viola and Olivia, however, have had a momentary chance at self-ownership.
The conflict between the qualities referred to by de Beauvoir—the sense of the self being primary, and the "erotic urges and social pressures" to conform—is dramatized. By refusing to sacrifice the sense of self being primary, Olivia wins a husband; but he is only a facsimile of the "man" she pursued. However, because Sebastian's easy compliance to Olivia's proposal of marriage sharply contrasts with the passion of his rejection of Antonio earlier, one must question its reality. It is almost as if the dramatist were sending a signal to the audience to observe the character of the twin so as to realize the challenge to realism in the ending.
Critics have noted the weakness of this ending—its basic disregard for logic.22 Anne Barton, for example, observes that in Twelfth Night "Shakespeare began to unbuild his own comic form at its point of greatest vulnerability: the ending" (171). The brief scene between Antonio and Sebastian at the beginning of act 2 contributes to the absence of logic in the ending. In the earlier scene, the youth exhibits qualities clearly out of character with his impulsive actions near the comedy's close. One need only compare the attitude of Bertram to Helena with that of Sebastian to Olivia, a total stranger who asks him to marry her thinking he is Cesario, to see Shakespeare's lack of interest in a realistic ending. Nor do audiences react negatively to this strange and speedy marriage where the characters do not know one another. Because this is a comedy and because the young man himself does not object, we accept the convention of marriage as the outcome and delight that here in Illyria, Viola's twin brother shows up at just the right moment.
We also realize that the relationship between the two people to be married is inconsequential in this play, as is the need for a realistic reason for Viola's decision to disguise. Rather, the comedy seems to concentrate more closely on the changes in the women's self-perception from "primary" to "other" as they accept their identities as sexual beings in a male-dominated world. Attire, whether breeches or skirts, fades in importance as the dramatist explores the potential for independence by single women with wealth when unhampered by brothers or fathers.
Notes
1 Louis B. Wright, 491-507 and passim. Juliet Dusin-berre ascribes the debates on women's rights in the late sixteenth century to the rise of Puritanism, which encouraged mutual respect between husband and wife. See especially the introduction and 231-40. Linda T. Fitz, although less optimistic about women's achieving new rights, believes that the magnitude of the literature dictating what women should do indicates that they were not following prescribed paths: "the irrepressible spirit of those Renaissance English women . . . made sober treatises necessary" (18). Preceding the earliest production of Twelfth Night, works such as Jane Anger's (1589) appeared and, as late as 1620, the John Chamberlain letter records the king's "express commandment . . . to inveigh vehemently against the insolencie of. . . women." See Edward Phillips Statham, 182-83. See also Lisa Jardine, 9-36, where she also discusses the censuring of boys playing women's roles. She also quotes a letter of John Rainoldes in 1592 citing Scripture that says: "a woman shall not weare that which pertaineth to a man, nether shall a man put on womans raiment: for all that do so are abhomination to the lord thy god" (14).
As Linda Woodbridge writes:
In 1620, a controversy about women which had been simmering for nearly fifty years came to a boil in two essays, "Hic Mulier," an attack on women who wear masculine clothing, and "Haec-Vir," an answering defense which attacks male foppishness. In the unpromising context of fashion, the two essays really joined combat on the nature of the sexes. . . . The transvestite controversy began, as nearly as we can tell, in about the 1570s, when some women began adopting masculine attire.
(139)
Woodbridge then cites George Gascoigne's satire The Steele Glas, 1576; Phillip Stubbes's Anatomy of Abuses, 1583; and William Averell's A mervailous combat of contrarieties, 1588 (Woodbridge, 140). She concludes that because the movement received no attention in the 1590s and early 1600s it "was apparently quiescent," comments not arising again until 1606 when Henry Parrot's The Mous Trap and Richard Niccols's The Cuckow appeared. According to Woodbridge, the movement then gained momentum, "climaxing between 1615 and 1620" (141). This supposes that because we have no literature during the intervening years, either none existed or women suddenly gave up this attire only to don it again around 1615 when Swetnam's Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women appeared, followed by the anonymous Hic Mulier; or, The Man-Woman: Being a Medicine to cure the Coltish Disease of the Staggers in the Masculine-Feminines of our Times, 1620, and the anonymous response a week later, Haec-Vir; or, The Womanish Man: Being an Answere to the late Booke intituled Hic-Mulier. Exprest in a briefe Dialogue between Haec-Vir the Womanish Man, and Hic-Mulier the Man-Woman (Woodbridge, 142-46).
2 Although some critics use the terms self and other to describe Shakespeare's relationship to, or perception of, his male and female characters, my reference is to de Beauvoir's use of these terms as they describe the self-perceptions of men and women.
3 See the chapter "Growing Up," on Romeo and Juliet, in Wooing, Wedding, and Power.
4 Aside from the scene transposition, which I discuss later, the following lines are excised in these works: the Bell edition; the Kemble edition and those deriving from it; the Irving edition where the scene is compressed with the later scene 4; the French edition; TN 21 (listed as "Ada Rehan's" but using the French text, not that of Augustin Daly, her manager); and the Southern-Marlowe typescript—among others:
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,
That notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price
Even in a minute. So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
(I.i.9-15)
Also frequently cut are the scene's closing lines also spoken by the Duke:
Away before me to sweet beds of flow'rs,
Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bow'rs.
(39-40)
5 See Stephen Booth's article ("Twelfth Night: 1.1") on the verbal incongruities in this scene and the ways in which these incongruities prepare us for the rest, of the play.
6 Robert Kimbrough, in an excellent article on androgyny, theorizes that Viola adopts male disguise to prevent being sent home immediately by the Duke (her father's friend) if she appear at his palace in her own attire ("Androgyny," 29).
7 Several versions that barely resembled Shakespeare's were presented during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. However, no acting edition of the play appeared before 1750 although Hogan records productions, referring to several of these as "the original" (1:545-57). I suspect, however, that the Bell edition recorded what had been performed during the 1740s, prior to its publication. Odell notes only that: "both the Clown's songs, 'O Mistress mine,' and 'Come away, come away, Death,' with their surrounding context are omitted, more's the pity, but nothing of importance, otherwise, is cast aside" (II.29). Obviously, to Odell, Viola's reference to gold was unimportant; to paraphrase Odell, "more's the pity."
8 As well as productions that used Kemble editions of 1810, 1811, and 1815 into the late 1850s, the Modern Standard Drama edition published by William Taylor and Company with Samuel French as general agent includes many of the same inserts and textual changes as do the Kemble editions. Because the French publications hardly ever bear a date, one must usually date them by the cast list for a particular production, which is printed in the edition. Among the books I have seen are those of William Burton, 1852, and Miss Neilson, dated 2/78. Thomas Hailes Lacy (1867) also followed Kemble's format. Charles Kean altered Kemble's 1811 edition of Twelfth Night, for the performance of 28 September 1850. See also Folger prompts TN 16, TN 17, 73V 4, TN 5, TN 3, TN 18; also Shattuck, 469-89.
9 While Henry Irving's adaptation differs somewhat from Kemble's, it contains many of the same excisions and follows Kemble by beginning at scene 2. Irving, however, does not introduce scene 1 until after I.iv.7. Thus Viola is present during his mooning for Olivia although the scene itself is much abbreviated, containing only lines 1 to 8 and 16 to 38. See Folger promptbooks TN 13, TN 15.
10 See Schochet, 65-66, for a discussion of the hierarchical structure in the patriarchal family in Renaissance England. Obviously the dramatist was drawing on generally accepted patterns in his society. In this play, however, both Viola and Olivia have temporarily been freed from this pattern.
11 Salingar's article has many fine insights, particularly where he compares Shakespeare's play with his sources. As a matter of fact, Salingar may have made this statement because he was transferring the identity of a source character for Olivia to Shakespeare's Olivia.
12 The illustration is taken from Cassell, Petter & Galpin (G. Greatbach, Sculpt, [i.e. engraver]; C. Green, Pinxt [this word means he drew the original illustration]). Greatbach flourished in mid nineteenth century.
13 Daly's illustrations of the performance have a warmer and younger looking Olivia than appears in the designs for the role.
14 Folger prompts: 16, 17 (Kemble); 15 (Irving); 10, 21, 29 (Daly). University of Bristol: HBT 138 (Tree).
15 Excised by Irving (TN 15).
16 Although some critics have read this phrase as an indication that she has formerly been weeping and now her eyes are tearing for joy, I believe that she is referring to the image of Cesario that is creeping into her heart through her eyes. The language is ambiguous.
17Daly, Irving, Tree, and others followed Kemble's lead although often slightly altering the exact sequential revision. Henry Irving, after first adopting Kemble's opening with Viola's I.ii, then moved immediately to "Court-yard of Olivia's house" (11), with Sir Toby's line "What a plague means my niece, to take the death of her brother thus?" Since Irving played Malvolio, the play was reshaped to emphasize the comedic scenes, while yet retaining Viola's role, played by Ellen Terry. Orsino's Palace, the setting of the third scene, opens as does I.iv., where Viola as Cesario has already won her way into the Duke's favor. Only after having established this time sequence, does Irving insert Shakespeare's opening lines, "If music be the food of love, play on" (15), continuing with abbreviated material from that first scene, and then moving on to Orsino's conversation with Cesario and his assignment to her to woo Olivia.
18 It follows the second interlude between Viola and the Duke (H.iv), where she almost discloses her identity (III.ii in Irving's version—TN 15).
19 According to the Concordance, Viola has 13.0 percent of the speeches, 13.0 percent of the lines and 13.2 percent of the words; Olivia has 12.7 percent of the speeches, 12.0 percent of the lines and 11.8 percent of the words. Actually the longest role belongs to Sir Toby who has 16.5 percent of the speeches, 14.0 percent of the lines, and 13.8 percent of the words, whereas Malvolio trails with 9.4 percent of the speeches, 11.0 percent of the lines, and 11.4 percent of the words. However Malvolio's role has frequently been taken by a lead actor since it allows for great antics and hamming. Spevack, Concordance 1:1162-1213.
20 Irving begins his scene here, eliminating the earlier reference to Cesario. Sothern-Marlowe too delete the reference although it clearly anticipates the later intense interview between the two young women. Rather, in the Sothern-Marlowe typescript Maria's description of Malvolio (in the text's III.ii) immediately precedes his actual appearance (in the text's III.iv) without a break.
21 Acknowledging the foolishness of excising the last six lines (16-21), the editor of the Bell edition even comments, "Why omit these lines? to us they seem necessary" (338), then prints them in small type at the bottom of the page. Daly also omits them. The entire soliloquy is crossed out in the Irving prompt, while Charles Kean (TN 14) cuts the entire scene.
22 Several critics have recently written on the impor-tance of the impact of the full text rather than of the ending, noting an overemphasis on closure. See, for example, Belsey, 187-88, and Jensen, 99-117.
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