Twelfth Night: We await in joyful hope.

oday is Twelfth Night. I love vig­ils of any kind the Church gives us, but this one may be my favorite apart from the East­er Vig­il. In an impor­tant way each is like the oth­er: At the East­er Vig­il we wait for Resurrection—Christ come back to us from the tomb; on Twelfth Night we wait for Incarnation—Christ come to us in the manger and adored by wise men. Christ­mas begins in Nativ­i­ty and cul­mi­nates in Epiphany. We wait for Christ, and we wait, and fol­low, and at last we behold Him, born or risen. We await in joy­ful hope.

Twelfth Night: Blindness and carnival.

Each year on Jan­u­ary 5 I keep an old habit of reread­ing Twelfth Night. I have loved the play ever since I first read it in col­lege; which, at the time, had a lot to do with work­ing through the pain of unre­quit­ed love. Like any drama­tist, Shake­speare is best watched on the stage (or film, if you are lucky), but I’ve not had much luck with Twelfth Night; the BBC ver­sion with Felic­i­ty Kendal is the best. It may be that when you love a piece of lit­er­a­ture as much as I love this play, noth­ing can match the vision of it you car­ry around in your head. You are dis­ap­point­ed every time.

You will search a long time if you try to find any­thing in the play that has to do with Twelfth Night, oth­er than the title. Some schol­ars believe that Shake­speare wrote it to be per­formed on Jan­u­ary 5, but the first per­for­mance we have on record took place on the Feast of Candlemas—February 2, 1602. In Shake­speare’s day, Twelfth Night was an occa­sion of car­ni­val, dur­ing which ser­vants dressed up as their mas­ters and men dressed up as women. It was a sin­gle night of top­sy-turvy inver­sion, the last of the Christ­mas sea­son, before life (and litur­gy) turned ordi­nary again on Jan­u­ary 6.

The plot involves twins—a broth­er and sister—who are ship­wrecked off the coast of Illyr­ia and make their way to land; each of them believes the oth­er has died. Vio­la, the sister—an unknown and soli­tary female in a patri­ar­chal society—decides to dress up as a man and present her­self as a ser­vant to the duke, Orsi­no. It’s her way to assure some pro­tec­tion for her­self. She tells him her name is “Cesario.” (It’s a loose ana­gram of “Orsi­no.”)

The duke, when she meets him, is pre­oc­cu­pied by his infat­u­a­tion with the count­ess Olivia, even though Olivia has refused to requite him since long before the plot begins. Very quick­ly the duke devel­ops a strong bond of affec­tion with “Cesario,” and decides to send “him” to Olivia on his behalf, armed with epis­tles of love. Upon deliv­er­ing them, Vio­la tells her she is “the cru­el’st she alive” if she does not return Orsi­no’s affec­tion; but Olivia is unmoved. “I can­not love him,” she says. “He might have took his answer long ago.” But, under the impres­sion that Vio­la is a man, she prompt­ly falls in love with “him.” As for Vio­la, she has fall­en in love with Orsino—although, dressed up as “Cesario,” she is not able to declare it to him.

Mean­while Vio­la’s twin broth­er, Sebas­t­ian, shows up. Nei­ther he, nor Vio­la, nor any­one else, know of their mutu­al pres­ence in Illyr­ia, and Shake­speare will con­trive to keep it a mys­tery until the last scene of the play. In the log­ic of com­e­dy, the first group of peo­ple Sebas­t­ian comes into con­tact with are the very ser­vants of Olivia who had just met Vio­la when she was there on the duke’s busi­ness. Thus they believe that Sebas­t­ian is “Cesario.” A com­ic sub­plot of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty ensues.

In anoth­er sub­plot, Sir Toby Belch (Olivi­a’s uncle); Maria (her wait­ing-gen­tle­woman); Sir Andrew Aguecheek (a fool­ish syco­phant); and Feste (the court jester), have been enjoy­ing some drunk­en rev­el­ry loud enough to wake Olivi­a’s surly, Puri­tan­i­cal, and self-regard­ing stew­ard, Malvo­lio. After he chides them late one night, they decide to play a prac­ti­cal joke on him.

Maria leaves a let­ter for him to find—he is meant to believe it is from Olivia, since their hand­writ­ing looks the same. The let­ter tells him that she would very much like him to dress in cross-gartered yel­low stock­ings. She wants him to upbraid Toby and the ser­vants in her pres­ence. In return for such insane behav­ior (Olivia in fact detests cross-gartered yel­low stock­ings), she will mar­ry him; after which, he can lord it unchal­lenged over the rest of the ser­vants all his days.

And so Malvo­lio, who “thanks his stars” at this fic­tion­al promise of an increase in sta­tion over the rab­ble (for so he views them), takes off his exact and cus­tom­ary Puri­tan garb, dress­es up in stock­ings, and preens and tit­ters in front of Olivia. But Olivia, who is unaware of the joke, thinks that he has gone mad and locks him in the stocks. While he is there, Feste comes to him in the guise of “Sir Topas,” an exor­cist who will cast the dev­il from his soul. Feste has his own fun with the poor man. “Fie, thou dis­hon­est Satan!” he cries when Malvo­lio insists he has all his wits about him. “Thou art more puz­zled than the Egyp­tians in their fog.”

The theme of car­ni­val and dis­guise on the final night of Christ­mas hol­i­day is a large part of Shake­speare’s play, and I would not want to min­i­mize it. But in my view, the more impor­tant theme is mad­ness and how poor­ly all the char­ac­ters see. That is why Shake­speare has includ­ed so much mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty in the play, as well as so much mis­placed love and self-delu­sion. His char­ac­ters, though they have eyes, are blind. All of them, not just Malvo­lio, are “puz­zled.”

This is Shake­speare’s dra­mat­ic irony at work: What the play­ers think they see plain­ly is not at all what the audi­ence knows to be the truth. Olivia, who thinks that Sebas­t­ian is “Cesario,” offers him mar­riage. They have just met for the first time, but she thinks she knows him well; while the real object of her “love” is anoth­er woman. Stag­ger­ing­ly, Sebas­t­ian agrees to mar­ry her, even though he knows that she thinks he is some­one else. For aught he does know, she might be insane. Orsi­no, though he has been rebuffed by Olivia count­less times, still insists on court­ing her in the delud­ed hope that sure­ly her heart will change.

These plot ele­ments are not in the play just for the sake of the com­e­dy. Behind all that, Shake­speare is show­ing us how far into mad­ness peo­ple can go when what they think they see is false. We lie to our­selves and are blind; we engage in self-puz­zle­ment. Malvo­lio is sent to the stocks as a joke on him; but Shake­speare’s joke on us is that Malvo­lio real­ly is mad. He is mad because he thinks that to be vir­tu­ous means to be sour. He has to be tricked into being mer­ry, but to be mer­ry he must believe a lie. Malvo­lio can only be mer­ry in dreams of future self-grandeur; he can only be a pompous and insuf­fer­able and ridicu­lous mer­ry.

Though the play does not men­tion the vig­il, it is fit­ting that Shake­speare should name it Twelfth Night. On Epiphany the Magi, who have fol­lowed a star a long way, behold the Christ; and all illu­sions and lies end. They behold the cre­ator and sus­tain­er of all things in the form of a help­less baby in a feed­ing trough. Every­thing depends on giv­ing up our illu­sions and nam­ing Him cor­rect­ly. Who do you say He is? At the end of Twelfth Night, the masks come off and the truth is known. (You’ll have to read it to find out how.) And what­ev­er their illu­sions had been, which they thought would make them hap­py, Shake­speare’s char­ac­ters are bet­ter when they know the truth. They have an epiphany about who they real­ly are, and who every­one else is.

At the end of the play, Vio­la’s mask comes off and Orsi­no mar­ries her. If “Cesario” is an ana­gram of “Orsi­no,” “Vio­la” is an ana­gram of of “Olivia.” Vio­la’s iden­ti­ty, and Orsi­no’s love, have at last been put in right order. Vio­la and Sebas­t­ian are reunit­ed; which is a good thing, too, because the com­e­dy of the play makes it easy to for­get that these are an incred­i­bly close broth­er and sis­ter who have spent the whole play think­ing that the oth­er is dead. They have had to cope with their loss in a strange land where every­one has gone mad. In Shake­speare, com­ic res­o­lu­tion always comes just before, and pre­cludes, the irrev­o­ca­ble descent into chaos and mad­ness. (In Mea­sure for Mea­sure it near­ly fails.)

Only Malvo­lio, who can’t stand to have had a joke played on him, who can’t stand to have been tricked to behave in a way incon­sis­tent with his prop­er Puri­tan dig­ni­ty, refus­es to par­tic­i­pate in the hap­py end­ing and the cast­ing off of dis­guis­es; he storms off the stage and vows revenge on all. Malvo­lio reminds us that some peo­ple do choose to run away from truth. He prefers his own lies and can­not laugh at them; he prefers his own humor­less self-regard.

(I should also point out that most peo­ple will be famil­iar with the plot device—a woman dress­es up as a man and falls in love with a man who does­n’t know she’s a woman—because it also shows up in “Shake­speare In Love.” Which is supris­ing­ly good; it might be the only real­ly good ver­sion of Twelfth Night there is. Gwyneth Pal­trow plays a woman named Vio­la.)

A Good Man is Hard to Find: From blidness to epiphany.

Tomor­row is Epiphany. I read this arti­cle in the Atlantic Month­ly ear­li­er today, in which Joe Fassler uses a well-known piece of dia­logue from “A Good Man is Hard to Find” to point out that “epipha­nies aren’t per­ma­nent.” Those who are famil­iar with O’Con­nor will rec­og­nize this line from the sto­ry: “She would of been a good woman, if it’d had been some­body there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

The Mis­fit’s point is that it was only when she came face-to-face with her own death that she stopped being a “hyp­o­crit­i­cal old soul,” as O’Con­nor once called her. Just before her death, The Grand­moth­er’s illu­sions end and she has an epiphany about her spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion to The Mis­fit. “You are one of my own babies,” she says. (The Grand­moth­er and The Mis­fit are the only two char­ac­ters in the sto­ry whom O’Con­nor does not name; which shows how close­ly they are relat­ed as arche­type.) She tries to save him. “If you pray,” she tells him, “Jesus will help you.” It is the one time in the whole sto­ry that she is a good woman. She does­n’t just care about sav­ing her life but about sav­ing The Mis­fit too. Mr. Fassler asks an impor­tant ques­tion: “If human beings can muster star­tling flash­es of self­less­ness and gen­eros­i­ty, why do we revert so quick­ly to our flawed, lim­it­ed selves? And does the fact that we do relapse into old pat­terns dimin­ish what we are in our best moments?”

O’Con­nor would answer by say­ing that, no, our relaps­es do not dimin­ish who we are in our best moments. In a brief talk she gave pri­or to read­ing “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she explained why the sto­ry has to be so vio­lent:

It is the extreme sit­u­a­tion that best reveals what we are essen­tial­ly. … Vio­lence is a force which can be used for good or evil, and among oth­er things tak­en by it is the king­dom of heav­en. But regard­less of what can be tak­en by it, the man in the vio­lent sit­u­a­tion reveals those qual­i­ties least dis­pen­si­ble in his per­son­al­i­ty, those qual­i­ties which are all he will have to take into eter­ni­ty with him; and since the char­ac­ters in this sto­ry are all on the verge of eter­ni­ty, it is appro­pri­ate to think of what they take with them.

The Grand­moth­er, just before she is shot, reveals what is “least dis­pen­si­ble” in her­self. She reveals who she “is essen­tial­ly.” It is her best moment. She is test­ed and shows her­self to be more than just a “hyp­o­crit­i­cal old soul.” Far from our best moments being dimin­ished by our relaps­es, our best moments reveal who we are. They reveal the heart that God knoweth.

So that is what I shall con­sid­er and bring to Mass tomor­row when I cel­e­brate a rare Epiphany Sun­day that falls on Jan­u­ary 6. What do I bring with me when I go to meet Christ? Who am I when I behold the truth in front of my eyes? Who am I when I see the Blessed Sacra­ment held aloft and when I receive it on my tongue at the altar? That is who I am. If my best moment is not then, when I am face to face with Christ, then I need to spend some seri­ous time in prayer and fast­ing and self-exam­i­na­tion.

I know that there will be times when I, like the char­ac­ters in Twelfth Night, suc­cumb to illu­sions and lies. I know that after Epiphany there will be times when my vision of Christ will grow dim. And I know, also, that there will be oth­er times when I will be struck with awe and joy and the best that I am. Of such times we can not know the hour. But on Epiphany we can see Christ, and we can ask our­selves what we bring with us. How clear­ly do we see him?

Christi­na Ros­set­ti, my favorite poet, reminds us what we should think of in our wor­ship tomor­row. We should pon­der that Christ, whom we now behold, ful­fills all that we have wait­ed to see for all our lives. He is the truth we have await­ed in joy­ful hope. It is Christ—not our lies, not our sins—who we real­ly want. And now, at last, we see him.

 

Bow down and wor­ship, right­eous man:

This Infant of a span

Is He man sought for since the world began!