In Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4, in response’s to Orsino’s arrogant assertions that a woman’s love cannot be as great as the love of a man’s, Viola tries conveying the unrequited love a woman might have for a man. The mention of “patience on a monument” deserves some visual cues, so I’d zoom in directly on the line that mentions this motif in context (you can see the rest of my analysis of Viola’s lines to Orsino in Scene 4 here).

A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

The mention of “patience on a monument” seems as out of place as the “worm i’the bud”, so it seems natural that Viola’s character might have “taken inspiration” via an item on the set.

“Patience on a Monument” is often a sculpture on the tombs of kings, most famously seen in Louis XII’s tomb (as noted in Heckscher, William S. “Shakespeare in His Relationship to the Visual Arts: A Study in Paradox”. Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama. 13-14 (1970-71). Eds. Schoenbaum, S. pp 40). The two images cited here both show a seated woman in “patient grief” (for the lack of a better phrase). A woman chained, whether to a windowsill (to pine forever, for the rest of her life), or a woman chained to a pole–as more poignantly shown in that St. Denis tomb of Louis XII’s, whose figure is also turned in a pose that shows both strain from and desire to leave this post, and yet, she cannot.

More imagery of Louis XII’s tomb is available here and here and here and here, specifically on that sculpture of the cardinal virtue of Patience here and here. A closeup showing sculpture texture is here.

As mentioned in my director’s notes, it might be because the Duke has a statue reminiscent of such imagery, in his court. Or, it might be because Viola had just sauntered through Olivia’s Garden, as emissary to Olivia from Orsiino (and back again)–having seen the stylized “guardian sculpture” on the grave of Olivia’s late brother.

Tags: monument, motifs, patience, sculptures

This is Part III of my Director’s Notes to Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4.

After Feste’s exit, Orsino decides that he’s had enough of everyone, dismisses everyone but the main nuncio of the theme–

Orsino: Let all the rest give place: Once more, Cesario,
Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty:
Tell her my love more noble than the world
Prizes not quantity of dirty lands–
The parts that fortune hath bestow’d upon her:
Tell her I hold as giddily as Fortune–
But ’tis that miracle, and Queen of Gems
That nature ‘dorns her in, attracts my soul.

Orsino, having caught onto the money-blunder fault with Feste earlier, basically instructs Cesario to get back to Olivia to tell her that he doesn’t want her for her money (”prizes not quantity of dirty lands”), and in fact, he views those “parts that fortune hath bestow’d upon her… as giddily as Fortune” (in other words, he’s too rich to care about more money). Rather, Orsino’s soul loves her for the miracle of her beauty, “adorned her by nature”.

Viola, fearing the worst, asks:

Viola: But, if she cannot love you sir.

Orsino can’t take that:

Orsino: It cannot be so answer’d.

Viola, completing Orsino’s pentameter, tries to reason with him, so what if some lady loves you with as much love as you do Olivia, and you cannot love her. She’d have to take that:

Viola:
      Sooth but you must.
Say that some Lady, as perhaps there is,
Hath for your love as great a pang of heart
As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her –
You tell her so — Must she not then be answer’d?

Orsino then gives a rather misogynistic worldview, of no woman’s body being able to withstand the “beating of so strong a passion / as love doth give [his] heart.” Moreover, he claims a woman’s heart can’t be “so big, to hold so much, [because] they lack retention.” It’s curious how Orsino opened the play wishing to have his love quenched by a gluttony of it, and now his view on love has it such that his is “as hungry as the Sea, / and can digest as much.” Basically, “mak no compare / between that love a woman can bear me.”

Orsino:
      There is no woman’s sides.
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion,
As love doth give my heart: no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much, they lack retention.
Alas, their love may be call’d appetite,
No motion of the Liver, but the Pallate,
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt,
But mine is all as hungry as the Sea,
And can digest as much, make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me,
And that I owe Olivia.

Viola replies immediately, with melancholy:

Viola:    Aye, but I know.

Orsino is surprised at Viola’s quick response, pauses, perhaps cocks an eyebrow, before curiosity takes over at this young page’s impertinence:

Orsino:    What dost thou know?

Viola admits she knows “too well,” the kind of love women have for men, and that this love is “as true of heart” as “ours (men’s).” She then goes on to mention her father’s daughter, who’d loved a man, the same way that Cesario might love his Lord–were Cesario a woman, that is!

Viola:
Too well that love women to men may owe:
In faith they are as true of heart, as we.
My Father had a daughter lov’d a man
As it might be perhaps, were I a woman
I should your Lordship.

Intrigued, Orsino immediately asks for her story:

Orsino:  &nbsp And what’s her history?

Viola begins her tale with the classic result of repressed unrequited love, “Nothing happened, because she never told him… She pined away, patiently like a statue, but wasted away, smiling at this bittersweet unrequitedness.” Viola challenges Orsino’s bulimic appetite with this silent death of a love (that’s very real and present to herself), asking if this is love, and concluding that men say a lot, but it’s all “a show of vows,” as the love isn’t really sinecere:

Viola:
A blank, my Lord: she never told her love,
But let concealment like a worm i’th bud
Feed on her damask cheek: she pin’d in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a Monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed
Our shows are more than will: for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love.

Enchanted by this story of a woman with love so strong, that she would waste away, Orsino asks the blunt question–did she actually die:

Orsino: But died thy sister of her love, my Boy?

Viola, also enchanted by her own story, answers too close to the truth, referring herself to herself as her father’s daughter, and all the brothers as well, but she knows not. Then, she makes a quick exit by changing the topic back “on theme”:

Viola:
I am all the daughters of my Father’s house,
And all the brothers too; and yet I know not.
Sir, shall I to this Lady?

Orsino, realizing that they’d greatly digressed from his initial intent, gets back on topic. It seems as if he’s enacting the proof of how men’s vows are more show than anything else, as he gives Cesario a jewel to give Olivia (even though wealth is not the reason for his courting):

Orsino:
      Aye, that’s the Theme,
To her in haste: give her this Jewell: say,
My love can give no place, bid no denay.

Tags: Orsino, Viola

This is Part II of my Director’s Notes to Act 2, Scene 4. The music accompanying this piece will be in another post.

Curio returns with Feste.

Orsino beseeches Feste to sing that song from last night, that tells of old knowledge and simple truth that the spinsters and knitters, and even free maids, know and used to sing, back in the “good old days”:

Orsino:
O fellow come, the song we had last night:
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;
The Spinsters and the Knitters in the Sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,
Do use to chant it: it is simple sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the Old Age.

Feste does not try to complete Orsino’s queer pentameter, instead, wants to get this task done with:

Feste: Are you ready, Sir?

And, Orsino commands him to sing:

I prithee sing.

And, Feste sings a song whose tune is lost to our modern mess (though the variorum mentions “Mistres to the Courtier” has a line that goes like “fie away, fie away, fie, fie, fie), so I will get to compose a new tune just for this (see a forthcoming post):

Feste:
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress, let me be laid.
Fie away, fie away, breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid:
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O prepare it.
My part of death no one so true did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin, let there be strewn:
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpses, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save, lay me where
Sad true lover never find my grave, to weep there.

Orsino offers coin, but what’s curious is that though Feste happily accepted Andrew and Toby’s coin last night, he seems reluctant to accept Orsino’s. He even stammers a bit, saying “sir”, twice.

Orsino: There’s for thy pains.
Feste: No pains, sir, I take pleasure in singing, sir.

Orsino seems rather insistent on paying. Feste apparently does not want to get paid — rather, it’s queer how Orsino can take the music so close to heart, and yet treat its voice like just another hired goon. Though both Olivia and Orsino are more well off (financially) than the person they offer coin to, this contrasts with Act 1, Scene 5, where Viola rejects Olivia’s coin, because Feste takes pleasure in performing, and Viola-Cesario, took the act as an obligation. Both, though, believe coin to be superfluous:

Orsino: I’ll pay thy pleasure then.
Feste: Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid one time, or another.

The idea of a hired voice taking so much to heart, as to reject coin–even politely–is too much for Orsino:

Orsino: Give me now leave, to leave thee.

Feste then comments on Orsino’s fickleness, though in obscure riddle (that a tailor should make his doublet of silk of changing-colors, because his mind is opal-like in fleeting change). Feste would set these inconstant men out to see, so that they could do everything, everywhere, thus making a good trip of nothing (their constitution).

Feste: Now the melancholy God protect thee, and the Tailor make thy doublet of changeable Taffeta, for thy mind is very Opal. I would have men of such constancy put to Sea, that their business might be everything, and their intent everywhere; for that’s it, that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell.

And, Feste exits with a formal Farewell.

(It looks like Viola could be Feste’s understudy, with Viola leaving, perhaps to sit in a hidden dept, still within the Duke’s court — so Duke yells out “Mark it, Cesario”. Viola is not present in this exchange–indeed, Viola and Feste might sound so similar, hence the Duke’s voice-confusion, the two might have been played by the same actor!)

Tags: feste, Orsino

This is yet another entry in my “Director’s Notes” category.

Orsino’s Court is gathered, as he enters declaring for yet more music:

Orsino: Give me some Musick! Now good morrow friends.

Orsino then addresses Cesario about the old and clown-like song sung last night, plenty brisk and light…

Orsino:
Now good Cesario, but that piece of song,
That old and Antic song we heard last night;
Methought it did release my passion much,
More than light airs, and recollected terms
Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.
Come, but one verse.

Though it would be Curio who answers:

Curio: He is not here (to please your Lordship) that should sing it?

Orsino, out of his daze, realizes it wasn’t Cesario who sung, but someone else? (This Cesario-Feste song-voice confusion implies that Feste’s voice might be that of an eunuch’s, and thus we’ve cast a girl for Feste.)

Orsino: Who was it?

Curio, ever-reminding Orsino of his advance age, closer to that of Olivia’s father’s:

Curio: Feste the Jester, my Lord, a fool that the Lady Olivia’s Father took much delight in. He is about the house.

I imagine Orsino going into another sort of “fugue” from his lovesickness, thus when he says “Seek him out,” Orsino refers to both Olivia’s father and Feste the Jester.

Orsino: Seek him out, and play the tune the while.

Curio leaves.

Music plays, as Orsino describes to Cesario how skittish a lover is, and that these tremors and ticks can only be quenched to a monogamous standing-still-contentedness in the beloved’s presence — ideally, this would be timed (in a way, as if Orsino is saying lyrics to a song, timing to tune) so that the tune climaxes to a recognizable phrase right when Orsino says “How does thou like this tune”:

Orsino:
Come hither Boy, if ever thou shalt love
In the sweet pangs of it, remember me:
For such as I am, all true Lovers are,
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is belov’d. How does thou like this tune?

Viola reveals much about the tune–it reflects Orsino’s flavor of wild, lyric abandon in love:

Viola:
It gives a very echo to the seat
Where love is thorn’d.

Orsino, after commending Viola’s lines as a sort of wisdom (though she might have meant it, more satirically), basically says, “I’ll bet my life on it — that you’re in love, right, boy?”:

Orsino:
        Thou dost speak masterly,
My life upon’t — young though thou art, thine eye
Hath stay’d upon some favour that it loves:
Hath it not boy?

Viola replies, “Just a bit, and only if you like it…”:

Viola:       A little, by your favour.

It’s curious that Orsino asks “what kind” instead of another question, but this gives Viola a good opportunity to be both obvious, yet general — she completes his pentameter, thus the two lines together, express a full thought:

Orsino: What kind of woman is’t?
Viola:     Of your complexion.

Orsino humble? “I’m not good enough for you, boy?” Or, does he identify himself with “old”, when considering himself with the boy, and, hence his followup “question for clarification”:

Orsino: She is not worth thee then. What years i’faith?

Viola pauses for a few syllables, starting only at the end of her fresh pentameter:

Viola:     About your years, my Lord.

Orsino would begin his line with a sort of incredulous chuckle, and then advise Cesario on the way “things should be”: that the woman should take someone older than herself, and adapt herself to him, to thus “level her place” in her husband’s heart. She’d have to do that because men aren’t constant creatures, however they might praise themselves, but have giddy, more fleeting fancies than women’s.

Orsino:
Too old by heavens: Let still the woman take
An elder than herself, so wears she to him;
So sways the level in her husband’s heart:
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women’s are.

Viola replies, immediately, completing Orsino’s pentameter with, “I think that’s ok, even though”.

Viola:     I think it well, my Lord.

Orsino beseeches Cesario to find a younger love, one younger than even himself, or his affection would not be able to stand the change–for women are like roses, whose fairness falls the moment they are picked.

Orsino:
Then let thy Love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent:
For women are as Roses, whose fair flower
Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour.

Viola agrees, finds it pitiful, summarizes the crux of the problem, lyrically, “To die, even when they to perfection grow.”

Viola:
And so they are: alas, that they are so:
To die, even when they to perfection grow.

Tags: Curio, Orsino, Viola