12th Night : Feste Flashcards
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“Wit and be thy will…”
“put me into good fooling […] for what says quinapalus? Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”
- Feste Act 1, Scene 5
Meta-theatre, Shakespeare creating a link with the audience through Feste
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
Olivia : “Take the fool away.”
“Do you not hear, fellows…”
“take away the lady.”
- Feste 1,5
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“Many a good hanging…”
“prevents a bad marriage.”
1,5 Feste
Love as a cause of suffering
“O mistress mine, where are you roaming…”
“stay and here your true love’s coming […] what is love, tis not hereafter.”
- Feste 2,3
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“No such matter, sir. I do live by the church, for I do…”
“live at my house, and my house doth stand by the church.”
- Feste 3,1
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“A sentence is but a cheverel glove to a good wit…”
“how quickly the wrong side may be turned out.”
- Feste 3,1
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“But indeed words are very rascals…”
“since bonds disgraced them.”
- Feste 3,1
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“I am indeed not her fool…”
“but her corrupter of words.”
- Feste Act 3,1
Love as a cause of suffering
“Come away, come away death, and in sad cypress let me be laid…”
“[…] I am slain by a fair and cruel maid.”
- Feste 2,4
Singing of someone being killed by their love / lover, aligns with Orsino’s melancholy and love-sickness.
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“Now Jove in his next commodity of hair…”
“send thee a beard.”
- Feste 3,1
Perhaps Feste knows Viola’s true identity.
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence [madness - topsy turvy world]
“Nor this is not my nose neither…”
“Nothing that is so is so.”
- Feste 4,1
Disguise and deception - Feste’s cruelty
“Why, it hath bay-windows transparent as barricadoes, and…”
“the clerestories toward the south-north are as lustrous as ebony, and yet complainest thou of darkness?”
- Feste 4,2
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“I say there is no…”
“darkness but ignorance.”
- Feste 4,2
Disguise and Deception - Feste’s cruelty
“My lady is unkind, pardie…”
“[…] she loves another.”
- Feste 4,2
Disguise and Deception - Feste’s cruelty
“But tell me true, are you not mad indeed,…”
“or do you but counterfeit?”
- Feste 4,2
Disguise and Deception - Feste’s cruelty
“Adieu…”
“Goodman devil.”
- Feste 4,2
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“So that by my foes, sir…”
“I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused.”
- Feste 5,1
Disguise and deception - Feste’s cruelty
Olivia : “How now, art thou mad?”
Feste : “No madam,…”
“I do but read madness.”
- Feste 5,1
Disguise and Deception - Feste’s cruelty
“Why, ‘some are born great, some achieve greatness…”
“and some have greatness thrown upon them.’ I was one, sir, in this interlude, one Sir Topas… but do you remember, ‘Madam, why laugh you at such a barran rascal.”
- Feste 5,1
Feste is proud of his actions, Feste’s grudge sort of changes this view of Feste as a detatched spectator.
Wit and Word play - Feste’s intelligence
“But that’s all one, our play is done…”
“And we’ll strive to please you every day.”
- Feste 5,1
It is fitting that the play ends with Feste’s song, which is the bridge between the imaginary possibilities of the world of Illyria, and the time and the realities of the everyday world of the audience.
