"That piece of song,
That old and antique song we heard last night."
The Duke has forgotten that Feste, and not Cesario, was the singer.
Fleay overlooks this touch of nature, and attributes the passage to an
older play or first draught, which appears uncorrected in the present
play. But the Duke is mooning about in his sentimental fashion, and
vaguely recollects that Cesario was presented to him as one that could
sing "and speak to him in many sorts of music." He had done so, no
doubt, so that the mistake was natural to the distraught mind of the
Duke, who seems to allude to it when he says immediately to Cesario,--
"If ever thou shalt love,
In the sweet pangs of it remember me;
For such as I am all true lovers are,
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is belov'd."
His obliviousness is indeed so profound that he blunders in dismissing
Feste when the song is over, saying to him, "Give me now leave to leave
thee." This, so far from being an imperfect reading, is a perfect
touch of his abstruse mood. It amuses Feste, who says aside, "Now the
melancholy god protect thee," &c. Every line and word of this beautiful
scene is unalterably well placed.
We see that the Clown adds a good voice to his other gifts; he does
every thing "dexteriously," and is in high demand for his companionable
spirits. For Sir Andrew and Sir Tobey his songs are blithe and free:
all the ballads and ditties that had vogue in Feste's time are at his
tongue's end, and he is always humming snatches of them. For the Duke
he has cypress sentimentalism, urges death to come away, and forbids a
flower sweet to be strown on the black coffin of the Duke's luxurious
woe. We can imagine what a face Feste pulled over the minor key which
so tickled the Duke, whose love was after all nothing but the spooning
of a professor of rhetoric. He can take off his sighing disguise as
quickly as Viola can transfer herself into woman's weeds. Olivia is
well aware of this, and having just lost her brother is in no mood for
a flirtation. She knows he is a noble and gracious person, but she has
read the first chapter of his heart, and "it is heresy." The Clown,
who is as usual Shakspeare's keenest and most amused observer, knows
this well and puts it into the neatest language: "The tailor make thy
doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal! I would
have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be
everything and their intent everywhere; for that's it that always
makes a good voyage of nothing." And this turns out true enough; for
the Duke with all sail set after Olivia, and a spanking breeze on his
quarter, tacks nimbly in the teeth of it the moment Olivia is married
by mistake, and Cesario becomes a woman. The only serious sentiment in
the play is the one so tenderly concealed in the disguise of Viola.
In Act iii. 7, Viola enters, meeting Feste, who is playing the pipe and
tabor. Her simplest remark he makes the pivot of a jest, and is never
tired of tossing words. He plays with them as a juggler with balls;
they all seem to be in the air at once. There never was such a jaunty
and irrepressible quipster. Yet when Viola says to him, "I warrant thou
art a merry fellow, and carest for nothing," his reply, "Not so, sir, I
do care for something," betrays the serious temper which lies under all
his fooling to furnish the appositeness of his remarks:--
"For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit;
But wise men, folly-fallen, quite taint their wit."
Viola, who says this, might adapt a text of Paul, and apply it to
Shakspeare's people,--"For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves
are wise."
Of all Shakspeare's clowns, he is the best endowed with a many-sided
mirth, as indeed he should be to pass lightly through the mingled
romance and roystering of the play and favor all its moods. The
sentiment of the Duke is as inebriated as the revelling which Malvolio
rebukes. Olivia's protracted grief for her brother is carefully
cosseted by her, as if on purpose to give the Clown an opportunity.
CLO. Good madonna, why mournest thou?
OLIV. Good fool, for my brother's death.
CLO. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
OLIV. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
CLO. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in
heaven.--Take away the fool, gentlemen.
All the characters, noble and common, have some weakness which
he intuitively rallies. The charm of the comedy lies in these
unsubstantial moods of the chief personages which consort with the more
substantial whims and appetites of the others. The only sobriety is
vested in the Clown; for all his freaks have a consistent disposition.
So the lovely poetry of the mock mourners alternates with the tipsy
prose of the genuine fleshly fellows. Their hearty caterwauling
penetrates to Olivia's fond seclusion, and breaks up her brooding.
Feste is everywhere at home. When he plays the curate's part, Malvolio
beseechingly cries, "Sir Topas, Sir Topas!" The Clown says aside, "Nay,
I am for all waters,"--that is, for topaz, diamond, gems of the first
water, all many-colored facets I'll reflect. And he does so in this
conversation which he holds with Malvolio, who says, "I am no more mad
than you are: make the trial of it in any constant question." Then
Feste airs his learning: "What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning
wild-fowl?" and makes his question lead up to a sharp retort, when
Malvolio answers, "That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a
bird;" for then Feste says, "Thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras
ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou
dispossess the soul of thy grandam." For it was a country notion that
the woodcock was the foolishest of birds; so he translates Malvolio's
grandam into one, and leaves him to inherit her absence of wits. And
Malvolio was so devoured by mortification and anxiety that he does not
notice when Feste cannot restrain his burlesquing knack, but makes
the pretended curate say that Malvolio's cell "hath bay-windows,
transparent as barricadoes, and the clearstores toward the south-north
are as lustrous as ebony."
The Clown is not only quaint, droll, full of banter, sly with sense,
like clowns in the other plays, but he is the most ebullient with
spirits of them all, ready for the next freak, to dissemble himself
in the curate's gown and carry on two voices with Malvolio in the
prison, keeping him on the rack the while, or to carouse with the two
knights till daybreak, and delight them with manufacturing burlesques.
"Thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou spokest of
Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus: 'twas
very good, i' faith. I sent thee sixpence for thy leman: hadst it?"
Feste resumes the burlesquing humor: "I did impeticos thy gratillity;
for Malvolio's nose is no whipstock: my lady has a white hand, and
the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses." As for "bottle-ale," the
phrase occurs once more in Shakspeare, 2 "Henry IV.," ii. 4, to
express contempt,--"Away, you bottle-ale rascal!" So Feste does not
think small-beer of the Myrmidons, or retainers of Olivia, who might
scent out his sixpence as quickly as Malvolio. Was the bottling of
ale just coming in, to the immense disgust of the loyal Briton, who
thought nobly of the ancient brew and would not have it save mightily
on tap? The words, "Pigrogromitus," "Vapians," "Queubus," sound like
the names which Rabelais manufactured to cover his sly allusions to
public personages; but they cannot be traced. It is just possible
that Shakspeare invented them to burlesque the words and style which
mariners and travellers brought home to vapor with to eager listeners
in the taverns: marvels of the East that would not stay in Damascus,
but came by caravan,--of Virginia, Guiana, and the "still-vex'd
Bermoothes," the "Anthropophaginian,"[9] men "whose heads do grow
beneath their shoulders," not positively discredited by Sir Walter
Raleigh; one-leg and one-foot savages, seen by early sailors to the
coast of Maine,--all the misunderstanding and exaggeration of a new
period of adventure and discovery of new lands were bountifully
nourished upon sack and canary in the London taverns. What legends
were fabricated at the Mitre in Cheapside, the Swan at Dowgate, the
Boar's Head near London Stone, the Ship at the Exchange, the Red Lion
in the Strand! These were haunts of Frobisher's and Drake's men; of
Sir Humphrey Gilbert's, fresh from Newfoundland in the only ship that
was saved; of Barbour's expedition to Roanoake in 1584; of Gosnold's,
in 1602, to Cape Cod and the islands in Buzzard's Bay. The sack grew
apprehensive and forgetive, and justified Falstaff's eulogy. Bermoothes
was not the only region vexed by devils and spirits, but every tavern
from Plymouth to London. A trace of Shakspeare's interest in these
London entertainments is found in the "Tempest," where Trinculo wishes
that he had Caliban in England for a show. "There would this monster
make a man: any strange beast there makes a man; when they will not
give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see
a dead Indian." Captain Weymouth was sent by Sir Ferdinando Gorges
and Chief Justice Popham, in 1605, to found a colony upon the coast
of Maine. He kidnapped five Abenaki Indians near the mouth of the
Sagadahoc, and carried them home. Three of these were kept by Gorges at
Plymouth, and the other two were sent up to London to the care of the
Chief Justice. One of these died there. The passage in the "Tempest" is
strong confirmation that Shakspeare went with the other cockneys to see
him.
Though Shakspeare empties all his own love for pure fun into this
clown, he makes of him the only cool and consistent character in the
play, and thus conveys to us his conviction of the superiority of an
observer who has wit, humor, repartee, burlesquing, and buffoonery at
command; for none but wise men can make such fools of themselves. Such
a fine composition is apt to be misunderstood by the single-gifted
and prosaic people; but this only piques the bells to their happiest
jingle; and a man is never more convinced of the divine origin of his
buffooning talent than when the didactic souls reject it as heresy.
All Shakspeare's clowns brandish this fine bauble: their bells swing
in a Sabbath air and summon us to a service of wisdom. Feste has no
passion to fondle, and no chances to lie in wait for except those
which can help his foolery to walk over everybody like the sun. Even
when he seems to be wheedling money out of the Duke and Viola, he is
only in sport with the weakness which purse-holders have to fee, to
conciliate, to enjoy an aspect of grandeur. His perfectly dispassionate
temper is sagacity itself. It discerns the solemn fickleness of the
principal personages. They are all treated with amusing impartiality;
and it is in the spirit of the Kosmos itself which does not stand in
awe of anybody. It seems, indeed, as if the function of fool, and the
striking toleration which has always invested it, was developed by
Nature for protection of those of her creatures who are exposed to
flattery and liable to be damaged by it. Not for shallow amusement have
rich and titled persons harbored jesters, who always play the part of
the slave of Pyrrhus, at proper intervals to remind them that they are
mortal. All men secretly prefer to know the truth; but the pampered
people cannot bear to sit in the full draught of it. Its benefit must,
however, be in some way conveyed to them. Bluff Kent is banished for
saying to Lear, in the plainest Saxon, what the fool kept insinuating
with impunity. Therefore, no genuine court has been complete without
its fool. The most truculent sceptre has only playfully tapped his
liberty. Timur the Terrible had a court-fool, named Ahmed Kermani. One
day, in the bath with a crowd of wits, the conversation fell upon the
individual worth of men, and Timur asked Ahmed, "What price wouldst
thou put on me if I were for sale?" "About five-and-twenty aspers,"
rejoined Ahmed. "Why," said Timur, "that is about the price of the
sheet I have on." "Well, of course, I meant the sheet." When the
business of kingship becomes decayed, the office of fool is obsolete.
Feste bandies words with Viola, and makes her submit to delicate
insolences: her distinguished air cannot abate him. He pretends to wish
to be convinced by Malvolio that the latter is sane, but concludes that
he will never believe a madman till he can see his brains. Feste keeps
his own head on a level keel as the sparkling ripples of his drolleries
go by. Shakspeare's intention is conspicuous in him to make all the
clowns the critics of all the other personages, and kept in the pay of
their creator.
When the play is over, the Duke plighted to his page, Olivia rightly
married to the wrong man, and the whole romantic ravel of sentiment
begins to be attached to the serious conditions of life, Feste is left
alone upon the stage. Then he sings a song which conveys to us his
feeling of the world's impartiality: all things proceed according to
law; nobody is humored; people must abide the consequences of their
actions, "for the rain it raineth every day." A "little tiny boy"
may have his toy; but a man must guard against knavery and thieving:
marriage itself cannot be sweetened by swaggering; whoso drinks with
"toss-pots" will get a "drunken head:" it is a very old world, and
began so long ago that no change in its habits can be looked for. The
grave insinuation of this song is touched with the vague, soft bloom of
the play. As the noises of the land come over sea well-tempered to the
ears of islanders, so the world's fierce, implacable roar reaches us in
the song, sifted through an air that hangs full of the Duke's dreams,
of Viola's pensive love, of the hours which music flattered. The note
is hardly more presageful than the cricket's stir in the late silence
of a summer. How gracious has Shakspeare been to mankind in this play!
He could not do otherwise than leave Feste all alone to pronounce its
benediction; for his heart was a nest of songs whence they rose to
whistle with the air of wisdom. Alas for the poor fool in "Lear" who
sang to drown the cries from a violated nest!