In the Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, the map of Feste the clown appears inconsequential, but in actuality his function has immense significance in the overall educational development of the other characters. During the seasonal vacation revelry in which this drama takes topographic point, the buffoon is used as an independent perceiver that exploits the fatuous actions and the mistakes of the other characters. Shakespeare’s contrast of Feste’s true humor with the unconscious and existent folly of the others is the focal part of his function to the factual penetration of this drama. Feste doesn’t make his visual aspect in the drama until the 5th scene of act I. It is during his conversation with Maria that introduces him to the reader and unveils the sap intent and part to the drama, which is revealed through an aside:
“Wit, an’t be thy will, set me in good fooling! Those marbles that think they have thee, do really frequently turn out saps, and I that am certain deficiency thee may go through for a wise adult male. For what says Quinapalus? Better a witty sap than a foolish humor”
These lines indicate that Feste’s presence is non simply amusing alleviation through inane Acts of the Apostless and show that the function of the sap requires much intelligence. Feste is besides able to acknowledge and knock the saps subject to folly, the self-proclaimed marbless who are non witty at all. Since it is their deficiency of self-knowledge that makes them saps. This topic of self-knowledge or deficiency thereof is permeant throughout the comedy as it contributes to the image of love as folly. Feste’s part to the disclosure of the implicit in subject of love is indispensable to the apprehension of the drama’s messages. The clown’s most profound remarks frequently take the signifier of a vocal:
- kept woman mine, where are you rolling?
- stay and hear, your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no farther, reasonably sweeting,
Journeies end in lovers meeting,
Every wise adult male’s son doth know.
What is love? ‘ Tis non hereinafter,
Present hilarity hath present laughter.
What’s to come is still diffident.
In hold there lies no plentifulness,
Then come snog me, sweet and 20.
Youth’s a material will non digest.
This vocal is performed at the ardent petitions from Sir Toby and Sir Andrew for a “love-song.” The vocal depicts the events of Twelfth Night itself. Feste clearly foreshadows the events that will happen subsequently in the drama. When he speaks of journeys stoping “in lovers meeting,” he hints at the declaration in which several characters are married.
The vocal besides echoes the gaiety of the season and how the uncertainness of “what’s to come” shouldn’t be disquieting, but alternatively a driving force to take life as it comes and to populate life to the fullest possibilities. In the scene with the buffoon’s first vocal, since it involves duologue between Feste and Sir Andrew, is rather dry. It is dry because the accredited sap is really no sap at all and the true sap, Sir Andrew, is the character who provides most of the entertaining comedy through his amentia.
It is this interaction that reveals two sorts of saps, the witting and the unconscious sap. In Twelfth Night it is the ignorant saps that provide the existent comedy, while the wise Feste adds penetration to the greater significance of the drama. It is by his moving like a sap that Feste additions the privilege to talk the truth of the people around him. Through these truths, which are directed jestingly at another, Feste’s lament.
Perception of others emerges. Feste’s intuitions and penetrations are comparable merely to the perceptual experiences of Viola. Both characters are the lone 1s who are involved in both houses, Orsino’s and Olivia’s, they rival each other in their several cognition of the events that are taking topographic point at the two scenes. Queerly, Viola is the lone character who recognizes Feste’s true intelligence:
“This chap is wise plenty to play the sap, and to make that craves a sort of humor. He must detect their temper on whom he jests, the quality of individuals, and the clip, and, like the Haggard, cheque at every plume that comes before his oculus. This is a pattern as full of labour as a wise adult male’s art, for that he sagely shows is fit, but wise work forces, folly-fall’n, rather taint their humor” .
This shows Viola’s consciousness of Feste and his ability to read people in order to state the right thing at the right clip. Through this acute observation by Viola, she is possibly professing the fact that the buffoon might even hold the ability to see through her ain camouflage. Although Feste ne’er openly claims to cognize of Viola’s misrepresentation, it is indicated that he might be on to her: “Now Jove in his following trade good of hair send thee a face fungus”.
It is non merely Feste’s insight on the world of the drama’s events that make him an of import character but his ability to remain detached from the emotional and self-motivated Acts of the Apostles of the others. While most of the other characters are hard-pressed because of their loss of love or privation of love, Feste remains self-contained, apparently driven merely by his fiscal demands. Since he relies on pecuniary compensation from others, he must move in a manner that ensures a benefit. It is because the buffoon is non involved emotionally in the innermost action that he is less of a participant and more of a observer. Therefore it seems suiting that Shakespeare assigns Feste the concluding lines in the comedy.
Feste precedes his vocal by mocking the enraged, mistreated, self-indulged, chesty, and misguided Malvolio. It suggests that because Malvolio is a self-absorbed unsympathetic character that is unwilling to alter that he should be burdened by his ugly qualities. These remarks further enrage Malvolio and alternatively of learning something from the penetrations of Feste he becomes more narcissistic than earlier.
This farther shows the folly of those who hold themselves upon a higher degree than a “sap” but consequently act as such. Along with the disapprobation of Malvolio are other happy terminations in the signifier of matrimonies. Although these events are optimistic, Feste’s concluding vocal lessens the hope of a wholly happy stoping.
The intent of this vocal, which states “the rain it raineth every twenty-four hours,” insinuates that at any clip the felicity that now occupies the characters in Illyria could at any clip be swept off. With this vocal, Feste seems to propose that even as a individual goes through life, with its assorted ups and downs, he or she must retrieve that at any clip one can stop up in an unfamiliar topographic point with a wholly different life.
Feste’s function as a sap, in both Olivia and Orsino’s houses, makes him accessible to all character’s in the drama. But it is his ability to avoid fond regard to other characters and his accredited folly that enables him to go a critic on the actions of others and allows his character to boom. It is through this commentary that Feste can asseverate his true humor over the true folly of the other characters. His insightful duologue provides unfavorable judgment and reading of the cardinal events of the comedy. While Feste’s function as the sap should connote a deficiency of intelligence, it is precisely the antonym.
