Twelfth Night: A User's Guide E-Book

Michael Pennington

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

'As good a guide to Twelfth Night as you can get' Richard Eyre This serious yet lively book offers an intensely practical account of the way Twelfth Night actually works on stage. Drawing both on his inside knowledge as a director of the play and on his lifelong experience as a Shakespearian actor, Pennington takes the reader through Twelfth Night scene by detailed scene. 'He is sharply intelligent, scrupulously careful, hugely knowledgeable and above all, wonderfully readable'Peter Holland, The Shakespeare Institute

Leseprobe

Michael Pennington

TWELFTHNIGHT

A User’s Guide

London

NICK HERN BOOKS

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

English Shakespeare Company, 1991

Part One

Act One

Act Two

Entr’Acte

Haiyuza Company, Tokyo, 1993

Part Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

Conclusion

Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 1995

About the Author

Copyright Information

INTRODUCTION

English Shakespeare Company, 1991

INTRODUCTION

English Shakespeare Company, 1991

Duke Orsino’s appetites are all taken up by Countess Olivia, to whom he seems barely to have spoken. He used to be a powerful and aggressive prince, knocking pirates about on the high seas; now he listens to the same few bars of music all night and uses the channels of government for sending love-letters. His misappropriation of bureaucracy is a running joke: in this story, noble characters will make proud speeches to each other as if discussing the partition of kingdoms, but in fact they are debating erotic fancy.

Orsino is so deafened by his own obsessive verbalisations that he overlooks everything that is really happening to him. He thinks he loves Olivia and must have her, but his real need is for friendship, which he finds in the unexpected form of a woman dressed as a pageboy. He doesn’t exactly desire the pageboy, but what he feels for him turns out to be the basis for marriage. It is in fact Viola, an aristocrat from another country: under the aphrodisiac influence of grief, she has fallen for Orsino and is prepared to wait an eternity for him. Meanwhile she models herself on her lost twin brother Sebastian, who is ‘yet living in my glass’: she imitates his ‘fashion, colour, ornament’. So her male costume is not a joke, but shows her need both to feel like her brother and to fool Orsino’s establishment, who would not take her seriously otherwise. She succeeds in this until she has to duel with a foolish and intemperate wooer of Olivia, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, at which point her manliness deserts her; nothing comes of it, but Andrew is punished for his challenge later when he mistakes Sebastian for her, and is thoroughly beaten.

The duel has been set up by Sir Toby Belch, Olivia’s uncle, who is witty and unkind. Since accidents can happen, to make two incompetent fighters face each other in this way is a very dangerous thing to do. But Toby’s continuous drinking has sharpened his instinct for meaningless revenge – even on Andrew, who has more money than sense and believes anything he is told. The sour military joke might have gone badly wrong had not a friend of Sebastian’s, the brave Antonio, turned up to interrupt it. Antonio eventually realises he has made the opposite mistake to Andrew’s and taken Viola for Sebastian. He is reunited with his friend, who marries Olivia, who has previously fallen for Viola in disguise; Orsino discovers who his pageboy has been and marries her; and Andrew, left out of the generally happy ending, must return home with a sore head in more ways than one.

Andrew says that he has been adored by someone in the past: but it is a long time ago and no use to him now. His life is cold and unloved, and he has developed a dangerous fantasy about Olivia. So of course has Orsino, whose problem, Viola sees, is that he lacks the stability of real affection, even though he is the Duke. She offers him this quieter devotion, but it takes him a long time to recognise it. Throughout, emotional security is most unfairly distributed – Toby Belch, who seems completely selfish, has inspired the devotion of Maria. All the unloved people yearn for someone, as do those who have lost part of their families; even Olivia’s Fool Feste, a great loner, cares for something, though it may only be his dog.

Olivia is proud, vulnerable and perhaps rather spoilt. Too much has descended on her too suddenly: her father and brother have recently died, and an ambitious steward, Malvolio, is hastening to fill the power vacuum in her household. Like Orsino and Andrew, he dreams of Olivia’s favour. He stands, apparently protectively, between her and the people who need to get in touch with her: Feste, with whom she has a confused relationship based on childhood affection; her lady’s maid Maria and her Gentlewoman; and Fabian, another member of her staff, who perhaps works in the stables, fuming at Malvolio and in awe of Toby. Fabian is easy to bring into a plot to humiliate Malvolio by exploiting his secret desire for Olivia.

The Elizabethans would have understood that, for many of these people, the alternative to service was blank destitution – and perhaps we new Elizabethans have an inkling of it too. The difficulty is not confined to working people: Toby, who must have drunk away several pensions, is hanging on by his fingertips to his niece’s protection and, currently, to Sir Andrew’s profligate purse. He risks the former and brings Olivia’s wrath down on himself, but then somehow survives by marrying Maria. She has been throughout in the most delicate position, but Fabian saves her from disgrace by pretending that the joke against Malvolio was his and Toby’s idea, not hers.