bastard in valour, in everything illegitimate. One bear
10
will not bite another, and wherefore should one
bastard? Take heed, the quarrel’s most ominous to us.
If the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts
judgement. Farewell, bastard.
Exit.
MARGARETON The devil take thee, coward! Exit.
15
5.9 Enter HECTOR dragging the Greek in armour.
HECTOR Most putrefied core, so fair without,
Thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life.
Now is my day’s work done. I’ll take good breath.
Rest, sword; thou hast thy fill of blood and death.
[Starts to disarm.]
Enter ACHILLES and his Myrmidons.
ACHILLES Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set,
5
How ugly night comes breathing at his heels.
Even with the vail and dark’ning of the sun
To close the day up, Hector’s life is done.
HECTOR I am unarmed. Forgo this vantage, Greek.
ACHILLES
Strike, fellows, strike! This is the man I seek.
10
[They fall upon Hector and kill him.]
So, Ilium, fall thou! Now, Troy, sink down!
Here lies thy heart, thy sinews and thy bone. –
On, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain,
‘Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain’.
[Retreat sounded from both sides.]
Hark! A retire upon our Grecian part.
15
MYRMIDON
The Trojan trumpets sound the like, my lord.
ACHILLES
The dragon wing of night o’erspreads the earth
And, stickler-like, the armies separates.
My half-supped sword, that frankly would have fed,
Pleased with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed.
20
[Sheathes his sword.]
Come, tie his body to my horse’s tail;
Along the field I will the Trojan trail.
Exeunt with the bodies.
5.10 Sound retreat. Enter AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS, NESTOR, DIOMEDES and the rest, marching to the sound of drums. Shout within.
AGAMEMNON Hark, hark, what shout is that?
NESTOR Peace, drums! [Drums cease.]
SOLDIERS [within]
ACHILLES! Achilles! Hector’s slain! Achilles!
DIOMEDES
The bruit is, Hector’s slain, and by Achilles.
AJAX If it be so, yet bragless let it be;
5
Great Hector was as good a man as he.
AGAMEMNON March patiently along. Let one be sent
To pray Achilles see us at our tent.
If in his death the gods have us befriended,
Great Troy is ours, and our sharp wars are ended.
10
Exeunt marching.
5.11 Enter AENEAS, PARIS, Antenor and DEIPHOBUS.
AENEAS Stand, ho! Yet are we masters of the field.
Never go home; here starve we out the night.
Enter TROILUS.
TROILUS Hector is slain.
ALL Hector! The gods forbid!
TROILUS He’s dead, and at the murderer’s horse’s tail,
In beastly sort, dragged through the shameful field.
5
Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed!
Sit, gods, upon your thrones and smite at Troy!
I say at once: let your brief plagues be mercy,
And linger not our sure destructions on!
AENEAS My lord, you do discomfort all the host.
10
TROILUS You understand me not that tell me so.
I do not speak of flight, of fear, of death,
But dare all imminence that gods and men
Address their dangers in. Hector is gone.
Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba?
15
Let him that will a screech-owl aye be called
Go into Troy, and say their Hector’s dead.
There is a word will Priam turn to stone,
Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,
Cold statues of the youth, and, in a word,
20
Scare Troy out of itself. But march away.
HECTOR is dead. There is no more to say.
Stay yet. – You vile abominable tents,
Thus proudly pitched upon our Phrygian plains,
Let Titan rise as early as he dare,
25
I’ll through and through you! And, thou great-sized coward,
No space of earth shall sunder our two hates.
I’ll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still,
That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy’s thoughts.
Strike a free march to Troy! With comfort go.
30
Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.
Enter PANDARUS.
PANDARUS But hear you, hear you!
TROILUS Hence, broker-lackey! Ignomy and shame
Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name!
Exeunt all but Pandarus.
PANDARUS A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O
35
world, world, world! Thus is the poor agent despised.
O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work
and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so
desired and the performance so loathed? What verse
for it? What instance for it? Let me see:
40
Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,
Till he hath lost his honey and his sting;
And being once subdued in armed tail,
Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.
Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted
45
cloths:
As many as be here of Panders’ hall,
Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar’s fall;
Or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans,
Though not for me, yet for your aching bones.
50
Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,
Some two months hence my will shall here be made.
It should be now, but that my fear is this:
Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss.
Till then I’ll sweat and seek about for eases,
55
And at that time bequeath you my diseases.
Exit.
Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night, or What You Will was first printed in 1623 as the thirteenth of the comedies in the First Folio. Probably written in 1601, it was acted in the hall of the Middle Temple on 2 February 1602, Candlemas Day, the end of the Christmas season of revels. A law student, John Manningham, noted approvingly in his diary that it was ‘much like the Comedy of Errors, or Menaechmi in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called Inganni’. Gl’Ingannati (The Deceived Ones), an Italian comedy acted in Siena (1531) and printed in Venice (1537), provides the main lines of the love plot, whether directly or through sixteenth-century imitations and rewritings, one of which, the tale of Apolonius and Silla in Barnaby Rich’s Rich his Farewell to Military Profession (1581), Shakespeare knew. Manningham applauded the gulling of the steward Malvolio into believing his mistress, the countess Olivia, to be in love with him as ‘a good practice’. No source for this element in the plot has been identified, but its intrigue resembles the comic method of Ben Jonson. The play was revived at Court, under the title of ‘Malvolio’, on Candlemas Day 1623 and has that title substituted by hand in a copy of the Second Folio once in the library of Charles I.
Twelfth Night everywhere recalls Shakespeare’s own earlier comedies: if the twins recall The Comedy of Errors, then the plight of ‘Cesario’ (the only name by which Viola is known until the final scene) echoes the disguise of Julia as ‘Sebasti
an’, and her predicament as servant to the man she loves, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The love of Antonio for Sebastian parallels the equally self-sacrificing love of another Antonio for Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. The gulling of Malvolio resembles that of Ajax in Troilus and Cressida, while Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are models for the more lethal relationship between Iago and Roderigo in Othello. The clown, Feste, has a line in logic-chopping and verbal dexterity which links him with Touchstone in As You Like It as well as with the sourer clowning of Thersites in Troilus, of Lavatch in All’s Well That Ends Well and of Lear’s Fool, whose paradoxes about wisdom and folly he anticipates. It is often claimed that these roles were all written for Robert Armin, from 1599 the company’s leading comic actor.
Twelfth Night remains among Shakespeare’s best loved and most frequently revived plays. Its peculiar mood, poised between broad comedy and pathos, has led to a variety of emphasis in performance. The most praised modern productions have endeavoured to ‘sound all the notes that are there’ (to quote the director John Barton). The play pushes its multiple deceptions beyond safe laughter to an awareness of the real pain and damage to which the games could lead. Its ending epitomizes the precariousness of the action’s holiday licence: two couples of near strangers are married or betrothed, while Maria wins a marriage above her station, an aspiration thwarted in Malvolio. Malvolio departs with an impotent threat of future vengeance and he – like Sir Andrew, Antonio and Feste – stands apart from the final celebration, whose focus is on the mutual recognition of Viola and her brother rather than the resolution of tangled loves. Feste’s last song is an epilogue which serves the usual function of returning the audience from the holiday mood of drama to the workaday world – a return doubly unwelcome at the end of the Christmas festivities to which the title alludes.
In the eighteenth century Twelfth Night was enjoyed mainly for its comic scenes, especially those of Malvolio, but the nineteenth century saw the restoration to favour of the romantic side of the play. An influential production was Granville Barker’s at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1912, which simplified the setting in the interests of pace and clarity of performance of the full text and rejected the Victorian practice of scenic elaboration. Among many fine modern productions, John Barton’s for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1969–71, with Judi Dench as Viola and Donald Sinden as Malvolio, was memorable for its strong cast and its sensitivity to the play’s shifting moods and opalescent tones.
The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.
LIST OF ROLES
ORSINO
Duke of Illyria
gentlemen attending on the Duke
in the service of the Duke
VIOLA
later disguised as Cesario
SEBASTIAN
her twin brother
CAPTAIN
of the wrecked ship, befriending Viola
ANTONIO
another sea-captain, befriending Sebastian
OLIVIA
a countess
MARIA
Olivia’s waiting-gentlewoman
SIR TOBY Belch
Olivia’s kinsman
SIR ANDREW Aguecheek
Sir Toby’s companion
MALVOLIO
Olivia’s steward
FABIAN
a member of Olivia’s household
CLOWN (Feste)
jester to Olivia
SERVANT
to Olivia
PRIEST
Musicians, Lords, Sailors, Attendants
Twelfth Night
1.1 Music. Enter ORSINO, Duke of Illyria, CURIO and other lords.
ORSINO If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again, it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
5
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour. Enough, no more;
’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,
That notwithstanding thy capacity
10
Receiveth as the sea, nought 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 purg’d the air of pestilence;
20
That instant was I turn’d into a hart,
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E’er since pursue me.
Enter VALENTINE.
How now? what news from her?
VALENTINE
So please my lord, I might not be admitted,
But from her handmaid do return this answer:
25
The element itself, till seven years’ heat,
Shall not behold her face at ample view;
But like a cloistress she will veiled walk,
And water once a day her chamber round
With eye-offending brine: all this to season
30
A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh
And lasting, in her sad remembrance.
ORSINO O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame
To pay this debt of love but to a brother,
How will she love, when the rich golden shaft
35
Hath kill’d the flock of all affections else
That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart,
These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill’d
Her sweet perfections with one self king!
Away before me to sweet beds of flowers!
40
Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers.
Exeunt.
1.2 Enter VIOLA, a Captain and sailors.
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 522
