Download TwELFTh NIGhT, OR whAT yOU wILL

T W E LFT H N IG H T,
OR WH AT YO U W I L L
[Music.] Enter orsino , Duke of Illyria, curio and
other Lords.
1.1
ORSINO
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that surfeiting
*F’s ‘Twelfe’ is a variant spelling of ‘twelfth’ (OED twelfth a. 1a)
but may also reflect, in pronunciation,
the loss of ‘t’ before ‘n’ and ‘d’ (see
Kökeritz, 320). The comedy’s second
title, What You Will, is a proverbial
catchphrase, not always benevolent
(Dent, W280.5): cf. 1.5.105, where
Olivia uses it to express her impatience towards Orsino’s courtship.
John Marston’s comedy What You
Will was probably performed slightly
earlier than TN.
1.1 The opening scene – often performed as the second scene because of
its supposed lack of theatricality (see
p. 97) – introduces the important
themes of love, death and the powers
of music, and presents Orsino in his
role as poetic lover. Coleridge observes
of Shakespeare’s opening scenes that
they may ‘strike at once the key-note,
give the predominant spirit of the play,
as in the Twelfth Night’ (Coleridge,
1.38); this is not altogether true, since
this scene is in reality quite unlike much
of the rest of the comedy in its intense
lyricism. Rowe locates this scene in ‘The
Palace’, which Capell further specifies
as ‘A Room in the Duke’s Palace’. The
action shifts in the first act between
Orsino’s palace and Olivia’s house, and
title then (apart from a brief excursion in
3.3) settles in the latter.
0.1 *Music F has no SD in this scene
regarding the use of music, but Enough,
no more (7) suggests that music is playing at the opening of the play. The
music might have been provided by a
single musician on stage, or by a group,
perhaps situated in the gallery.
Illyria On the historical and symbolic
implications of the play’s setting, see
pp. 70–2.
0.2 Lords The size of Orsino’s entourage
is unclear and varies in productions.
1 SP *See List of Roles, 5n.
1 music It is not by chance that this is
the comedy’s opening noun. TN is one
of Shakespeare’s most musical plays,
and music takes on an important metaphorical as well as literal significance,
as a means of expression and persuasion and as a medium for change. See
Appendix 3. Cf. AC 2.5.1–2, ‘music,
moody food / Of us that trade in
love’.
2 excess one of the comedy’s key semantic categories (varied in surfeiting):
cf. e.g. 1.3.7–13, 36–40; 1.5.116–17;
2.3.85–90.
it refers back to music but also to food
of love, which Orsino desires in great
quantities
TITLE] (Twelfe Night, Or what you will), Rowe 1.1] (Actus Primus, Scaena Prima.) 0.1 Music]
Smock Alley; Musick attending. / Capell after Lords 0.2 1 SP] Mahood; Duke. F
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1.1.3
Twelfth Night, or What You Will
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again, it had a dying fall.
5
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour. Enough, no more,
’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
[Music ceases.]
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou
10
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
2–3
Orsino’s conceit is to free himself of desire (appetite) by an overabundance causing nausea (sicken),
i.e. by having too much of a good
thing, with the added optimistic aspiration to achieve freedom through
sexual release (die = end and climax
sexually). Shakespeare is possibly
mixing and varying the proverbs
‘Too much honey cloys the stomach’ (Dent, H560) and ‘Every surfeit
foreruns a fast’ (Dent, S1011).
4 strain . . . fall refers to a musical
cadence (OED fall n.1 10, first occurrence), while continuing the pun on die
– i.e. the strain (= melody and sexual
effort) ends with a diminuendo.
5 *south Pope’s emendation meaning
‘south wind’ (see OED south B 5a),
which bears both sound and odour
(disproving Furness’s prediction that
‘Hunter [1870] will prove to be the last
editor to adopt Pope’s change’). F’s
‘sound’ (as a synonym for strain) makes
5 tautological. Cf. Fenner, Song, ‘com
O South, / And on my garden blowe’
(sig. C2r). On the wind–breath conceit, cf. Sidney, Arcadia, 2: ‘her breath
is more sweete than a gentle Southwest wind, which comes creeping ouer
flowrie fieldes and shadowed waters in
the extreme heate of sommer.’
6 violets a possible ‘hidden’ and prophetic allusion to Viola, whose name
is the original (Latin) form of the
flower (see List of Roles, 1n., and cf.
1.3.23–4n.); cf. Lydgate’s ‘Sweetest
viola, that never shall fade’ (Lydgate,
300).
7 Stealing . . . odour i.e. the wind takes
the perfume from the flowers and distributes it. Cf. Son 99.1–3, where the
‘forward violet’ itself, according to the
speaking ‘I’, is the ‘Sweet thief ’ (of his
‘love’s breath’). A sharp sensory shift
from hearing to olfaction.
9–14 *O . . . minute F’s punctuation
renders Orsino’s baroque conceit syntactically ambiguous, especially with
regard to the subject of Receiveth (11):
the full stop after sea makes the subject
the spirit of love which, despite (notwithstanding) its small size (capacity),
receives or contains as much as the
sea. Adams defends this reading. Rowe
emended F’s stop after sea to a comma,
making thy capacity the subject of
Receiveth and therefore equal to that
of the sea. This simplifies the paradox
of Orsino’s conceit – that, despite
the limitless capacity of the spirit of
love, it rapidly devalues whatever it
devours. Orsino thus justifies his own
capriciousness.
9 quick sharp, lively (OED 18c)
fresh hungry (OED 11b)
10 That in that (Blake, Grammar,
5.3.2.1d)
capacity ability to receive or contain
(OED 1a)
5 south] Pope; sound F; Wind Rowe; south-wind Keightley 8 SD] Collier 3; after 7 Capell
9–10 thou / That,] this edn; thou, / That F
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Twelfth Night, or What You Will
1.1.20
Receiveth as the sea, naught 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.
15
CURIO
Will you go hunt, my lord?
ORSINO What, Curio?
CURIO The hart.
ORSINO
Why so I do, the noblest that I have.
O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first
Methought she purged the air of pestilence;
That instant was I turned into a hart,
11 Receiveth . . . sea can swallow unlimited quantities: proverbial (Dent, S181:
‘The sea is never full’). Orsino returns
to the idea of the sea-like capaciousness of his love at 2.4.100–1.
there the sea; love’s capacity
12 what . . . soe’er whatever (split by the
interpolation of other words – a form
of tmesis); cf. TNK 4.3.6.
validity value
pitch height, and thus status: a term
from falconry (OED n.2 18a); cf. R3
3.7.187, ‘Seduc’d the pitch and height
of his degree’.
13 falls . . . price i.e. depreciates; abatement = diminution (OED n.1 2a, giving
this example)
14–15 So . . . fantastical an allusion to
Plato’s doctrine of the divine creative
frenzy (Ion, 533e–534a; Plato, 1.103–17,
107–8) that inspires ‘The lunatic, the
lover, and the poet’, who ‘Are of imagination all compact’ (MND 5.1.7–8).
‘The Platonicks’, says Puttenham of the
poetic variety, ‘call it furor’ (Puttenham,
1). On the erotic ‘furor’ or frenzy,
cf. Olivia at 5.1.277 (see n.); see also
1.5.248n., 2.2.21n., 3.4.14–15n. Cf. LLL
20
2.756–9, ‘As love is . . . Full of strange
shapes, of habits and of forms’.
14 shapes imaginary forms
fancy love (Onions, 2)
15 alone exclusively
high fantastical imaginative in the
highest degree (OED high adv. 10b,
giving this example)
16–17 The pun on hart (stag) and ‘heart’
is an Elizabethan commonplace. Orsino
hunts his own heart, a suggestion of
narcissism confirmed at 20–2.
19 she . . . pestilence Orsino compares
Olivia to one of the air sweeteners used
to cleanse the atmosphere, in times of
visitation by the plague: ‘It is good
also’, advises Lodge in his Treatise of
the Plague, ‘to weare sweet savors and
perfumes about us . . . for such an
odour . . . altereth the pestilence of the
ayre’(Lodge, sigs C4r–C4v). Cf. 1.3.1n.
and 1.5.287n.
20–2 Orsino’s allegory alludes to the
story of Actaeon, who – having seen
Diana naked – was transformed by
her into a stag and then hunted to
death by his own hounds (Ovid, Met.,
3.205–304, fols 33v–34r; on Diana,
11 sea,] Rowe3; Sea. F naught] (Nought), Kittredge 16 SP1] (Cu.), Inchbald
163