Carnival in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Our speaker has not yet arrived. What I would like to do

is to draft James O’LOGHLIN into saying a little bit about the historical

provenance of the play and something about wondeul. Well,

goodness. And so I wasn’t expecting to v to be speaking today,

but I will. Oh, here’s when I will happily hand it off guard.

He’s getting miked up. And so I’ll just say a little about the performances coming

up. Actors from London Stage is a company that has been visiting

U.T. Austin for 20 years or so. Alan Friedman was in

charge of the residency for many years, and now David Corn Haber’s has ably

taken over. And it’s a group of five British actors

who tour around American university campuses. They’re based out of Notre Dame

University. And they come to university campuses and perform an entire

Shakespeare play with just five actors, which is a feat of great skill

and adroitness, which is always entertaining to observe. Twelfth

Night works particularly well for this because it’s one of the smaller casts of

any of Shakespeare’s plays. But one thing that they generally do, and I believe

well with this performance, is that the roles of the identical twins, Violent

and Sebastian are played by the same actor, which is always tend to

to see. So any way it’ll be performed next week on a Wednesday,

Thursday and Friday evenings in the Beit’s Recital Hall at

o’clock out at Windale, at the theater barn at the Window Historical Center.

And I think tickets can be obtained online. But anyway, I would I would

hardly recommend that you come to the play if you can. So

I’ll turn it. Well, should I go straight into an introduction? All right.

It is a great pleasure to introduce my friend and colleague, Wayne Renbourn,

who is heroically coming straight out of class to speak

to us today about Carnival in Twelfth Night.

And Wayne’s level of distinction can be surmised

from the fact that we have only one chair in the English department

and Wayne occupies it. The Vacek chair in

English literature, he is a renaissance scholar of

great international reputation, has published some

ten books and translations and as well as dozens of articles,

and is a particular expert on the literature of the Italian Renaissance

has done additions and translations of Machiavelli, Castiglione

and maybe most influentially by-catch goes to Kameron,

which he produced a lovely and very handsome, very heavy

volume of a few years ago, which won the PEN award

for translation in 2014. So

anyway, it’s great to be able to introduce Wayne. And I also want to say he is

someone who has done a great deal for his junior colleagues in the English department.

He’s a fount of wisdom on matters like revising manuscripts, getting grants

and fellowships, and many of us, myself included, have benefited

from his expertise and guidance and friendship. So it’s a great pleasure

to introduce Weinreb or.

Huh. Well, thank you for that. My reputation, as

they say, exceeds me, but. And just a little self-publicity.

This is just coming out now. The daughton political edition of Machiavelli, which

will appear within the next couple of weeks. This is an advance copy.

I love the cover. That’s better. That’s the young me.

When my hair was dark and so on. OK.

This is the clicker, I think. Yes. Yes.

OK. Thank you. British

stylish. Thank you, Roger. Thank you, James. Thank you, everyone, for coming in late in the afternoon

for me. Early in the morning, I think my wife would say,

but anyway. Is a very interesting play if you’ve read it, as

I’m sure most of you have, if not all of you. You’ll find it endlessly dark comedy.

It’s the last of the great romantic comedy Shakespeare writes before he writes the series of great tragedies

Hamlet fell and so on. And some work on called problem plays or problem

comedies like almost all that ends well in this measure and so on.

So in that sense, it’s a little unlike much ado about nothing

as you like it. Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s darker than news are and

in various ways it’s not quite exactly what I gonna talk about today. I want to talk about

play more in terms of fun as well as the dark side of Turner. Oh.

Can you hear it? The back. I will speak more loudly. I’ve been accused of having a soft voice

by my wife. Anyway. OK. So the first

thing is the title. Twelfth Night. You all know that’s the night of

Epiphany. The night when the Christ child was presented to you. It

was visited by the three Major Magi, the three wise men. And it was the last

of the Christmas holidays and kind of official way. But in many

courts, the holiday just went on and on and on, I think lasted at least until Mardi Gras,

until Carnival. Anyway, over these festivities and

throughout the year, we are counted and divided into weekdays and weekends. Their calendar

was divided between holy days and holidays with one hand and ordinary days,

work days. And this was one of the

special holidays because was the end of twelve days of celebrating Christmas. I’m sure that

when they went to church on Christmas Eve or whatever, it was very solemn. But otherwise it was time

for games and play and fun and so forth. And often over these holidays, someone was

and there’s a whole collection of them. There was someone who was appointed as kind of like the organizer

known as the Lord of Misrule, not the Lord of Roll, because it’s about breaking the rules of all sorts.

Sometimes that character was called Festus to suggest festivity and so on.

And of course, Shakespeare’s play prominently features a full name fiesty

in case we missed the connection. But but this was not restricted to this

this particular holiday. What do we have in the play that suggests Twelfth Night?

Nobody talks about the fact that it’s snowing and cold outside. No. I have seen productions where

they pretend it’s winter and so forth and so on that the nearest you

get is that there’s some gift giving the rain that Olivia sentence to Violet

when he she thinks she’s a she. Anyway, whatever he or she or he may be

the one place where there is more of a connection and it’s very small

is when Malvolio is confronted the clouds early in the play. And

Sir Toby infest a rebuke him by saying, does

I think because they are virtuous, there should be no more cakes and ale. And

first, yes, ads. Yes. And by CNN and Ginger, she’ll be hot in the mouth, too.

Well, the typical thing you did, I don’t I wish I had more contemporary slide. You had a y

syllable. And the last syllable means I think it’s a Scandinavian virtue to means good

cheer or something like that. And what it contained was hot hudale spiced with ginger.

And now you may say, who knew worlda wondering Cogdill. But you think England

in the middle of the winter any time. Really? And then you, ginger,

of course. Give us some taste. But also generous thought to be an aphrodisiac. And so it’s a two fer. Right

into flavor and make it all sexy. And the cakes

in France apparently about now, well, before the time the flavor written there was attrition

of baking a cake to celebrate the Three Kings night.

The cake would have as it does today. A little something to have like a pebble

or a bean or an nowadays at Central Market, a little tiny little baby

and the one who got the slice with the baby in it. And you’re always wise to try to find out where

that is and give it to the young kid in a group gets to wear a crown. And

all you’ll find more around 12:00. Tough night in Central Market or

Whole Foods or Whole Paycheck or whatever. And you’ll find him also for some bizarre reason around

Mardi Gras, which is not what that’s not about that. But this list was adopted by the English court because

it was very popular in France. But aside from that, there’s really not much

that relates the play to this specific holiday

at all. It’s not about three. It just mentioned the Magi, as far as I can

tell, or the Kings or any of the other stuff. And indeed, at other places in the play,

other holidays are invoked when Malvolio comes in, cross guard and so on. Olivia

says this is very big. So her madness is Midsummer’s Eve, right?

Another one of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was sent Midsummer’s Eve,

and that’s another holiday when all sorts of hijinx and averse behavior took place.

And so it did on May, May 1st, May Day. And so Fabian, same

scene, more matter for a May morning. All right. Both of them are broadening out the concept, too. I

I think that Shakespeare is essentially saying and he does it this another place who does it in Midsummer Night’s Dream,

where it looks, Theseus comes upon the lovers in the woods, and he merely talks

about it being a May morning and he refers to St. Valentine’s Day.

And of course, we know it’s been summer. So what is it? I think the thing is it’s holiday

in general, or as I prefer to call it, Mardi Gras or Carnival.

And carnivals have been pretty well-established concept among historians and literary critics

and so on. I think you go to the next one. Yes. Oh, here’s the

bit from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where Theseus makes a comment about how

lovers rose up early to observe the rights to make their rights to me at the wound to the woods stood to make whippy.

They haven’t. It’s interesting. Mr. Mei’s dream is all about the fact that people went out into

the woods and had a roll in the hay or the role in the heather or whatever it would be.

And they don’t the one the to the airport, you know,

Lysander and Hermia are sort of going to take it, spend the night there. And he was just lie

down next to her and she just over there. Over there. So

disappointing. And then Theseus, of course, that was it with reference

to St. Valentine, another holiday and being these would birds, too

couple. Now, of course, couple of means have sex and they’re birds. Birds are notorious

in their renaissance for being sexual. Right. Lecherous as a sparrow.

And it’s in Chaucer at one point. It’s important for me

to say that because it’s what makes me understand. bird-watching.

Why would you do it? I saw another Robin Thedeal Opeth Robin.

So. So I want to connect the idea of Carnival. Let me just use one for a little bit with Carnival.

Move Emeco. Carnival, of course, comes from the word for meat flesh.

And it was that’s I mean, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras

fits the bill to start eating just about any meat and so on as opposed to eating fish,

which is what you do in divisional Catholic tradition. And it carries over

to some extent, but not officially among Protestants, any fish. And let

me know as a

as a form of. Absence of respect because Christ was going to spend the next

And as I say, sometimes it went as far as

that, whether there’s a connection between Fat Tuesday and Twelfth Night. But I don’t have to emphasize

that in England it was called Shrove type, because at the time when you’re going to be Shravan, you’re gonna be you’re gonna confess.

And that would be Wednesday morning after I went past Wednesday at midnight. Whatever. After the fun

was over, Lent begins. And so I want to say, plie, this.

What? It’s kind. There’s so many things I couldn’t. I played a list of them, but it’s like enormous.

Right? Everything. You know, your mother told you not to do. Right. That’s what you

did from Carnival. You drank too much. You eat too much. You sang and danced and made Mary.

You mocked authority and law. You put on disguises even from

plays during Carnival. You played games. There was a

lot of aggression and verbal abuse, physical abuse. And I hope, as I’m saying, these things, you see help.

Well, yeah, they’re all in play. And of course, there’s lots of sex jokes, bawdy

behavior, and sometimes even apparently weddings were celebrated at Carnival. That’s

kind of wild. Weddings are kind of like much more socially approved kind of form of sexuality

than what we’re talking about. We’ve talk about Carnival, both forces of play. It’s more obvious

to everyone during the in the Clown the clown plot

with clowns eating and drinking. Not all of them, but, you know, getting drunk.

Tobey’s drunk all the time. He even initiates Sir Andrew into that practice.

It would seem Mariah doesn’t. I think drinking Fabian is. It’s hard to know.

But they all play tricks. They all give their pleasure from pulling the wool over the eyes, the

Malfoy tricking him with a letter that they leave supposedly for both of you. Says she loves him and so

on. You see me?

One of the shakes with just me for the carnival or Mardi Gras in the play, but he

does have the characters talk repeatedly about madness and folly. These two terms come up

again and again. There’s even a fool, right, the embodiment of folly. And that’s that’s the term,

I think the governs a lot of ways. All this was it’s the it’s the thing that isn’t rational, is it? Normal

isn’t normative. And so on.

In fact, the play itself is something that you

could put on at Carnival. We do not know that it was put on a twelfth night. I think the

first performance was sometime in late January or early February. So it was not

produced when we’d like to think it’s sort of like we’d like to think the place Shakespeare play Prospero in

The Tempest, but there’s not a shred of evidence. But it’s a lovely fantasy. And

they and Fabian so underscores the fact that this is a play. They’re

in a play, of course. And they put on a play. They put on the play of tricking Malvolio in the

play and they watch it and make fun of him. We watch it and laugh at him

and so on. So we’re in cahoots with the with the clowns. At that moment,

when they come together, at one point, festooning makes an allusion

to how nice my heart is. Did you ever see the picture of we three?

Sir Toby, of course, knows what he’s talking about and says, welcome ass,

the picture scores of two fools, one holding a bauble with his image in it,

usually used to make dirty, obscene gestures. It’s a nice long stick.

And another one they have donkey ears and a coxcomb you see

in the top the bells. That’s the standard mottley clothing

made up of different colors and so on, but only to.

Who’s the third for? You’re a fool because

you don’t recognize that you’re the fool. You’re a fool because you recognize you weren’t for the easy

way. You’re the fool. It doesn’t really matter. Malvolio,

when he is tricked into wearing yellow stockings and better cross guarded,

isn’t is made into a fool, right? He’s made to look a little bit like a clown, because otherwise,

in most productions he’s dressed in black. Right. They want to emphasize both the seriousness

and the fact that he’s called a puritan. Whether that man he was really a puritan in the sense of a religious reformer

or just puritanical in our sense of the term, makes no difference. And here is

by you look, Barry, yellow stockings, a color which Olivia detests. We find out.

And cross guarded Costco is great because the Order of the Garter was a big deal and crosscutting

was very much in fashion, but it went out of fashion. And before Malvolio is

tricked into putting his legs into cross, garnering. I like this modern picture.

Gets something of it. He’s a little fat from Marvel. You if you ask me,

but you get the idea. At any rate, what

we see in the plot clown plot is something that is very

familiar from Carnival, namely a battle, as it were, between Carnival

and the land and the great sea. I’m going to skip swimming.

We all know not because here Maria Murai is putting him down.

He’s like most villainous, sweet, low class, like a pedant,

low class teachers. I’m sorry. That keeps a school in the church. Elementary school.

It’s a triple downer. And mama says she has short

possessed. He’s possessed by his fantasy of marrying Olivia and becoming counting on volume and

so on. He’s possessed and possessed. Of course, that means you’re mad, you’re crazy.

But of course, so are the clowns. When marías says I am all right,

says I’ve got a plot to teach. Just possess us, possess us. It’s like diabolical

possession. Certainly bandits. It’ll take him over anyway. The central

thing that happens in Carnival is a wonderful painting. Painting by Peter Bruegel. The elder shows

us the fight between Carnival and Lente, and you can see it here in the foreground of the

show to you right there. But it’s like what? The Burkle’s pictures are full of stuff.

They’re enormously crowded and confused. And it’s a little hard to figure out like

where is this where you supposed to look, you know? And so here’s where you’re supposed to look, right?

And there’s Carnival. The guy, right. Wearing a very phallic

knife, carrying a spit with a pig on it, wearing a cape or something

as a headpiece and so on. And straddling the barrel of

ale or whatever. And there’s lint. The thin old woman with a

thick I think he used to get bread out of the oven with a couple of fish, stock, fish,

cod, dried cod, because that’s what they they they lived on dried cod. And in a way,

the Portuguese apparently you have more than 365 ways of preparing dried cod, turning it into

codfish cakes and so on, because that’s what they could store over the winter and forever

and didn’t just pump it in water again and again and again and again to get the salt out and then they could eat it.

She’s a little bit of bread and some pretzels. I guess that’s a. I know what that means. But at any rate, and

she’s pulled by a couple of figures who look rather saintly,

the idea that there’s an opposition between Carnival and Lent. Isn’t

something that’s Shakespeare never talks about directly, but in the fourth part 1,

when, how and Falstaff. Slim how fat

Falstaff, right lente kinda carnival, certainly

when they trade insults, as they do frequently, they talk in terms of evoke.

Prince white clay brain guts thou not a painted fool thing is spelled sorry now horse an

obscene greasy talo kitsch mess of talo and prince again

this sanguine cowardness bed presser this horse Brinker’s this huge hill of flesh over and over again.

It’s about flesh. Falstaff gives him as good as he gets. It’s blood. You, Starlee, you eel skin.

You dry each tongue, you Bulls pistol. That was a penis. You stock fish,

dried cod. And again, there is a devil you see like likeness, a little sandman,

a ton of man is I companion probably know this wonderful exchange in the fourth

season of the second act. Why just duck and respect trunk of they

piled on, right? They loved and so on. They’re now want us to converse with that. He’s talking to

Falstaff as a Falstaff or him because he’s saying play, play, play offense and

why you spent a lot of time with Falstaff. Why does so converse with a trunk of humans? That boulding hutch of beastliness that’s swollen

pross partial of Ralphie’s that euge bombard a sack that’s stuffed cloke bag of guts that lost

in manand ox with the putting in his belly. Well, that’s what you might well find. One

on Carnival and Mardi Gras. A whole ox roasted with a putting in his belly was putting

my stuff. Got it. Anyway, his guts for stuffed inside for his guts would have been.

And so there they are again, the two arch enemies. And

in typical fashion in this contest, which is at the center of Carnival, symbolically,

if not literally, Carnival wins. Carnival wins this

year celebrating Carnival. But then inevitably, you

know, it’s it’s it’s placed in the grace of pleasures and it’s exuberance, it’s your reverence

and so on, triumphs over Lenten restriction and so on. But

it’s a Pyrrhic victory because Carnival always loses.

Carnival. Mardi Gras. Then Ash Wednesday.

January 6th and January 7th. Which is. I don’t think holiday

at all. And so it’s going. You’re not going to win, in a sense, permanently.

The triumph is is temporary. And of course, what? Considering the anti-authoritarian

nature of love, carnival colonel celebrations. That’s one of the reasons why it was kind

of tolerated by the authorities, because next they will go back to work.

If they get over their hangover, to be sure, I’ll see this plane. Not

only are they I mean, going from Carnival to a more Lenton world.

But some of the principal clowns are actually punished, beaten up. Toby and Andrew, particular by Sebastian,

who they think is a US-South, slashed his Oreo, but he’s a real man and he knocks them

around. When we go when we enter the world

of Carnival, you see if I get this one back here. We’re entering a world

where it falls to talk about it as a limited space, a space and betwixt and between the real world. The real

world. Carnival in between wheels suspended, anything goes, pleasure is the norm.

And so on. It it offers release for the participants in the

end. And Carlos, talk about how the participants, including the audience, because

you were sort of watching, but then you became part of and then you were watching again and that became part of and so on.

So you had a release from the normal restraints and restrictions of societal rules and regs and so on.

So at the same time, anthropologists say, well, how do you know it’s a rule?

Only when you break it, then you know, it’s raw. So it had a cognitive function of reinforcing,

ironically, the rules of every day. And indeed, it’s

also a sense maybe that you get tired after a while

of playing house certainly talks about that in the first, second, second

scene, second scene offending fourth part one out of every Davor playing holidays.

You get tired and they get tired of the play by about two thirds

of the way through the play three quarters of the way. So I thought I wish we were out

of this, you know, the tormenting of Malvolio by putting it in a dark room and

so on. And he says, Besides, I’m really in trouble with my knees. So it would be a good thing if we were

beyond that. I think Shakespeare offers a deeper

critique of Carnival merely than the fact that it’s his temporally limited. I think

what he gives us, the fact

that it’s sort of overdone with Malvolio in a way that by the end, poor

guy’s in a dark room. He’s tormented by Festa who pretends to be stopa, secure

it and then festa and goes back and forth. So it’s a tour de force. Forman’s and Malvolio

sort of suffering in there. And he comes out, he’s he’s miserable. And I think Shakespeare designed

the place that your your sympathies, your sympathies begin to shift and

you begin to see what’s really involved in that. Scientism,

you really want to hurt Malvolio. You really want to of course he deserves it. After a fashion.

Right. But does he deserve it? You know, I think at first you see. Yeah,

it’s really funny, but I don’t what it done. He deserves to and says, well,

maybe they’re taking it a little bit too far. There’s a thin line between just right. And too far.

And they may have crossed it. Maria. Maria talks about

falling around her language. Don’t make a murderer. I’m not seeing such a thing

as I can. Hardly before beer hurling things at him. I know, but maybe it will strike him

all right just because he looks like such a clown and so forth and so on. And so it’s going to make comments to her, which

she finds a little strange and maybe a bit impertinent. Up and see,

which we don’t have time to review when they’re overlooking him being mad. He keeps saying things about

Toby and Andrew and they want to hit him, smack on the lips and so on. And I suppose

in certain sense we do, too. Maybe it’s important to note, by the way, that in the play, Shakespeare

drops a number of hints of analogy for what happens to Malvolio. Bear

baiting. Bear baiting was a sport that was accepted in 6/4 society.

Even the queen went to bear meetings. What is bear baiting? Well, you

set dogs on a bear or a bull bulls or sometimes used and they fought.

And the sport was. You bet. Which dog will survive? Will the dogs get the bear?

Will the bear to get the dogs? Fun, isn’t it? I don’t think so.

Our sensibilities are such that we would not enjoy this. I hope the

Puritans in Shakespeare’s time didn’t like it. Good for them. Did Shakespeare like it?

Oh, no. I’m not so sure. I mean, Sarandos wants to find out

how the slick, sophisticated ones live like Saitoti. Haha,

I just wish I’d spent more time with tons because he’s always confused by language

that I’ve done on such things as bear baiting. And Sir Tobi talks to

Fabian and the other one getting him in on a plot. But what would you do to get even with this guy?

I would insult man. You know, he brought me out of a favorite with my lady about a bear

baiting here, a bear baiting in her house, in the courtyard in front of her house.

Wow. And so I think Shakespeare’s doing this deliberately.

I can’t say for sure what he felt about bear baiting and bull baiting, but it’s pretty negative here.

Whether you’re the bear. No, more importantly, why did you the dogs?

I don’t remember the words with which Malvolio exits to play. I’ll be revenged on

the whole pack of you. Pack a dogs, pack of wolves. Take your pick.

So I think Shakespeare shifts our sympathies by means of this analogy. Watch the beer being

baited and preventing or cheering or whatever we would do

at the end of the play. There is a kind of disillusionment. serrato has been built

for money by Sir Topi, whose promises to get her him in with

Olivia, and they’re both been beaten up by Sebastian. And Standford comes

in. Just watch. We’ll go and get dressed. Treated by the surgeon together.

And Sir Toby turns on him and says, Will you help an ass head and a nay? A coxcomb

and a knave, a thin face nave, a goal.

There’s no stage direction that they leave. What do you feel if your story or Sir Andrew.

It’s pretty disillusioning, isn’t it? It’s like what happens to Malvolio?

I want to switch to the main plot of the play, which is the romantic part is what we start with, what we end with in a way.

And it, too, is marked by basic corner plastic trade, gender confusion.

Who’s the guy? Who’s the gal? So you’re saying the same

actor James sings. Production is going to play, of course, both Sebastian

and Varla. So this is a guy gal. I don’t know who’s the guy

or gal. It’s gonna be a gal. OK, good. Anyway. And it’s very

confusing. I mean, those are seeto like violent slash Sebas since Ariel,

because she’s kind of a he’s kind of a she kind of like

feminine or whatever does she does live you dislike or Sito

a little bear as his name means, because he’s kind of a bear. He’s kind of

a guy guy and she really likes phyla susanville because

she’s like a girl. Oh, my mind is confused

and so forth and so on. But Shakespeare rescues us from that. But when the play is over, if

they’re not, there’s not one, not two, but three perfectly normal heterosexual marriages.

Everything’s straightened out. Sebastian arrives on the scene. They discover he’s a guy, supposedly,

but I guess he is vile, as is is a girl, which is really a guy, too.

Boy playing girl’s part and up and they can be paired off with women.

And even offstage, sir, Toby and Mariah get married as well. So yay

for heterosexual love, for the norms of society. The confusion

is over. And in fact, we can see at

the end there, Sebastian sort of normalizes things for us.

So comes at lady, you’ve been mistook. By taking Vialet as me

or taking a woman as a man. But nature to her bias doing that nature

speaks. She wants one man and one woman. Gotch?

This is a great line for the present administration.

You haven’t. You would have been contracted to a maid. Nor are they there by my life to see

your betrothed, both to a maid and a man. Man Oh, that’s a very confusing

thing to say, to say the very least. And we’re. Sito

Finally realizing that Violet’s Azaria is viola Nazis areall father.

He says says areall come and you expect a big smooch, a hug, whatever

for. So you SHELVEY Well, you’re a man. But what other habits you are seeing?

Oh, c.e.o.’s Mr. Centeredness Fancy’s Queen. Oh, so whether you’re a man or

woman depends on your clothes. He can’t embrace her

while he’s wearing trousers or the equivalent in a home.

So it says something about gender issues. Right. Is gender something attached to your body?

What kind of body you have? Is it attached to how you think about your body? Was it attached

to how you dress, guys for suits? Women wear dresses. That’s all we tell them apart.

Right. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know. I guess I’m not going to speculate about that

one. But the thing is that Shakespeare, again,

does stuff that confuse or complicates the situation because the play

moves from gender confusion like crazy in the middle of gender confusion

really anchored in the fact that boys were playing girls anyway. And then at the end, we have

the normative marriages, heterosexual marriages, everything’s straightened out.

We all go home knowing that the world is still a good place to live in. But

he includes a character who’s not normative. Antonio,

the guy who takes care of Sebastian, who loves Sebastian.

Sorry, Shakespeare. Oh, I’m sorry, miss. Skip this part. There is no.

This is in the very last scene and it kind of gets a little dark note. I thought this dark place,

dark, dark touches and he’s talking about how Sebastian really isn’t recognizing it because he’s in love with

with Olivia and Tony Antonios. It never really wasn’t love with Antonio, as far

as I can tell. But Antonio certainly was with him. He’s just the most ungrateful baby boy there are by your

side from the roots season raging and foaming mouth. Did I redeem a red pass? Hope he was

his life. I gave him. And there, too, did there to add my love without

tension or restraint or justification for his sake. My experience of pure for his love.

He talks about directly big in love with Sebastian. Does this mean you loved

him in a kind of platonic way? I love my male friends, and I love my female friends, I think.

Or is it a little more erotic or emotional attachment

and. Then you

get to try to take over. Yeah, that’s first. This is the last time we see Antonio.

And what they is. Sebastian, are you.

That’s that. That’s that. And we

don’t hear a peep out of Antonio. He doesn’t leave the stage. He’s just there, the forgotten

man, the one who’s excluded. Finally, I’d like to

try to bring these things together in a way that’s.

That is my attempt to answer a question about the play that critics generally I don’t think

answered. I haven’t read everything on cross mind. I’m too old for that.

I’d be dead, but anyway. But critics generally have a trouble with

the location of the play. Why in heaven’s name does Shakespeare pick a Liora

of all places to set it in as opposed to, you know, then in a store,

London or Vienna or whatever? And

I think he gives us a clue as to what we should do with that.

Thiers. Alirio. Just so you know, or the Algerians are over there as the Roman Empire.

And as you can see, it’s sort of like where Yugoslavia used to be, where

all those countries I can’t remember how many there are. But basically in the ancient world, it was

a province of the Roman Empire. And in Shakespeare’s time, it was part of the Ottoman Empire,

the Turkish Empire that controlled most of the Balkans. And nowadays

we’d call it Albania, but that would not have been changed. So it’s really it’s I think, part it’s just like

exotic place far, far away. You know, there’s nothing much about ancient Algeria in the text

at all. New classical ruins or anything? Nothing about the Ottoman Turks or something. They’re

just it’s just Illyria. But why does he choose that? Well, I think

it’s because he wants to encourage us to think of something that sounds like.

Illyria. Certainly file off

when she’s told by the sea captain and use it brings her ashore, that said,

where am I? And she’s well, you’re in Algeria and she did to responds. I’d much

like to live here. My brother, who supposedly drowned my brother. He was in a

LeSean, Algeria, Alesia. You can see the sort of phonetic connection

in a wonderful study called Puzzling Shakespeare. My former colleague and Marcus

saw him in a chapter about places in Shakespeare, mentions that Algeria.

She has like two sentences about it, he says. Oh, Shakespeare chose it because it would sound

like Elysium or delirium.

And you go on to say, oh, it’s just the it’s a utopian kind of place. Well, it is kind

of, I suppose, all those happy marriages. Right. But, Chris, there a lot of

unhappy things, too. The truth is that that Shakespeare never uses the word

delirium, doesn’t kernis vocabulary. It does, however, exist in his world.

The term enters the medical literature in England around fifteen ninety two

or thereabouts. I’m sure I have not investigated discipline in Latin medical literature long

before that. It had been coined way back in the first century by a fellow

named got his name somewhere here. Doctor Celsius.

I have no idea who he was, but he’s going to term at delirium comes from a Latin word deliberately

alri meaning to go outside the ferral when you’re planting.

So it’s about escaping from the place where you should be, right? Getting outside

the norm in some way. And people, of course, had a lot of trouble

defining what it was because it’s not something. It’s it’s rather though it’s. It’s not something.

It’s not something. It’s not something. What is there not something so

incoherent? Speech, ravings, hallucinations, physical restlessness, like

twitching, I guess frenzied excitement. And there are a bunch of them can talk to about the OED.

All sorts of different definitions. And to this day, from what I gather from the site, psycho psychiatry

history, there’s still not quite what it is. They don’t get it. It’s a

moving outside referral, but what manifestation it has is obscure.

So I think that although Shakespeare said never use the word, he prefers mad, possessed

dream and so on. He kind of knows what this wants, but that that’s what’s going on here.

The strange state where you step outside the bounds, the rules and so on.

And one doctor who is last for my purposes named Thomas.

What’s his name? Thomas Willis wrote he was born in

And look at Sebastien when he has met Livia, who throws

herself at him and doesn’t seem unhappy about it at all, says

what really? Sadness. Runs the stream? Or have I mad? Or is this

a dream? This is a dream. But fancy still, my sense of relief is steep.

If you paid us to dream, still let me sleep.

And I think this is the important moment because delirium was in the medical literature and in a lot

of the comments that you find in non medical literature, it’s negative. Delirium is a sickness.

It’s something you want to cure. It’s not a good thing. It’s a letter to friends. These frantic parents,

the same sentences. Words like that. But I think Shakespeare is anticipating

maybe our sense that, like Francis, when you’re in love,

you’re delirious. Right. There’s even a song. I can’t remember the song, but

I’m delirious or it’s delirious or something like that. Delicious. Delightful, delirious.

We wouldn’t want to think of love as delirium, like like delirium tremens. That’s a later Irishman who

drank too much and I handshake and so on. It could be that it’s borrowed, obviously,

from the idea that, one, you’re in love when you’re engaged emotionally or whatever in something,

you’re delirious. Right. You’re out of your mind if you’re on your gourd. So

Shakespeare’s giving it a positive twist in this play. And.

I think that that’s important because even though no meant no doctor in his

time would have said delirium is a good thing. But he does implicitly,

I have no proof that he’s thinking of delirium. But by gosh, what else does a lottery sound like?

If it’s stopped to designate an actual place, then why not make

it delirium? As Leah Marcus suggested some time ago?

A long time ago, a French critic called J. Quaqua wrote a book about games.

Note No date for different kinds of games. Generally speaking, all of which you choose to play.

All right. There’s A-Gonna competition against the Greek word Aleya

or chance, maybe pre-Roman Basis or gold-plating

and Linx or Vertigo. That’s for some drawing

on my my ancient history here. But I think that that’s interesting because we think of first three

kinds of games all the time masquerading playing bowls, disguising

in one form or another chance. It’s chance to throw Spore Biola

and fate of her brother on that particular C C side and so on. And at one point

I don’t think I have a quote here, but see, no, that’s not true.

Anyway, she says, I don’t know what to do about this. We’ll just let it just sit with time, decide

what we were. To see decides to change this or metaphors. But I didn’t make do

this on purpose and I’m not going to ever get out of it, which is very peculiar. Think about the play for a second.

Why? Heavens, Davis, you should just tell Casino. Hey, or see you. I’m one.

It’s OK. You just have to protect yourself any more. That’s why she adopted the man’s guys

in the first place. Right? So little woman, short of a strange country. No, that’s a little guy,

right? So she can handle herself? Not really. As we discover in the fight, but

the duel. But nevertheless, the point is that. Anyway, she’s chosen to let things

work, work themselves out. Her chances at stake, their competition.

Oh, my goodness. Everybody is in competition with everybody else, it would seem.

Malvolio, of course, would love to smack Toby, right? He says, I

kiss my ring and genuflect to me as count folio. But they, of course,

do him doing once again back in and make a fool out of him.

The one kind of game we haven’t talked about. One doesn’t talk

about much with his players, it Linx, which means there’s a whirlpool in Greek

vertigo. Where does Roy get vertigo? Congress

as well. You take drugs, hallucinate. Who’s going to Gentex? You

ride roller coasters. You spin. You twirl around.

And that’s something that is in the play, if I’m right. Sir Toby at one point

defending his drunkenness, several hers, though, as a passage in my throat.

And drinking while you’re here was a coward. And of course, Julia will not drink to my knees.

There’s brains. Turn out a toe on the parish pump. Parishes

did have tops, and they would be many people would use whips to move them around.

And it was a good way to get your blood stirring and warm up and so on.

Here’s an example I found in one book. I think it looks later that Renesys. But they’re whipping a top.

You can barely see it at the bottom. But our friend Peter Vogel shows us here

and picture. This is an extra bit of it of children’s games.

Does it take it off and use a whip? No idea how they did this, but he kept going. And I

suspect it was like, I bet my top. You’ve got your top. Let’s see who can keep their tops rolling the longest.

That’s very much. I think this idea of spinning around, it’s.

It’s the game. It’s it’s a kind of game, a spinning game. I think about games, especially

about spitting. Think about how it goes back to our childhoods.

A child, you twirl around and around and around and you fall down cause you’re experiencing

vertigo. Right. And it’s fun, isn’t it? It’s fun.

The laws of gravity don’t matter. Walking in a straight line can’t do that. If you spin around, the world

is going crazy around you. It seems to me that that childhood regressive

experience is in a sense what we experience in both plots in different ways.

And in Twelfth Night we spin around for tortuously until everything. Of

course, this is, as I said, sort of straightened out more or less at the end. Of course, it’s most evident

in inebriation. I suppose you’ve never had that problem, but you can’t get falling

down drunk. I believe as the expression we use. Right. It’s over a little bit like that. Spinning

tops. Down we go. And so it’s also bit like the place. Sooner or later

the spinning stops. Sooner or later the spitting stops. And if he goes back to normal

and in some ways it’s a relief. So my sister’s disappointment,

because it was fun. It was fun until it stopped. And

if we’d look at it, well, what succeeds that? Oh, no, mother reference to the top

life. I mean, you mentioned at the end, FSA sums it up. He’s telling

Malvolio that you’ve got what you deserve. Right. But expresses it in terms

of the whirligig of time, brings in his revenges, really gives another word for top

spinning top. So time swirls round and rolls around revenge

and the play ends when it ends with FSD

epilog. I think if I had a singing voice, but I don’t. What is is is it fair to

call it in the rain? It’s winter again all of a sudden or thought

winter. It’s certainly not my non-allied season. afro’s. He could say the

sun is shining every day, but now it’s the rain. What happens when you grow

up? Because this is a regressive experience. This carnival like

vertigo. We’ve just been through. That child

suffers child stuff, you discover that there are thieves and knaves.

Such a game to steal your stuff. Here in Texas, we shoot him. But now

we get the idea. When you get come to wive, when you get married,

you can’t swagger around and bully your wife. Don’t think that for a second, guys.

Those are not married. Remember that. And when you get to your bed could sleep,

you get up the next morning after you’ve drunk yourself or table.

You have a drunken head. You know, it hurts. It’s painful. It’s a pretty

awful thing the way the doesn’t it at the end. Oh, what I’ve left

out. The last answer was to

a great wall ago the world begun with hey ho the wind and rain, but that’s all one.

Our play is done in the last line changes and we’ll strive to please you

every day. You can come back tomorrow. And you still have

had the pleasure of delirium again and again

and again as often as you like. Thank you.