Melancholy in Twelfth Night

Twelfth behind is the merriest of Shakespeares amative t aloneydies, it is also the saddest. The Christian associations of the title suggests the carpe diem theme which runs through the play. Epiphany, according to Christian mythology, is the time when the shepherds recognized the accept of Christ. The feast of epiphany is the last festival of the Christmas season, after which death takes over. This cycle of spirit is an extension of the ancient pagan fertility rituals. The mood is similar in Keatss To Autumn, Hedge-crickets sing and now with a treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croftAnd gathering sw everyows twitter in the skies. Only, Keats finds reassurance in the fact that swallows will return, but Shakespeare is concern with the cessation of life which looms over the whole play. Here the recognition is of the transiency of life, unlike in Cymbeline w present the rediscovery of Perdita symbolises the rediscovery of ones soul. Significantly, Twelfth Night is the last of the romantic comedies. After this Shakespeare moves on to the tragedies and the problem plays this is the last play where joy is not alloyed with problems of evil and anti-life.Everything that is subject to time is valueless, this was the medieval conception. indeed during the middle ages all human beings activity was directed towards God. Man was given little importance. Then with Renaissance came yet undiscovered knowledge. The new astronomical discoveries allowed man to explore the beingness independent of the scriptures. With this was born mans pride in being man in the mortal universe. And thus man became conscious of the beauty and transience of life. This removed the concept of life everlasting from the framework of eternity.This introduced the prominence of mortality. The dance of death was now more feared than ever. New questions about human existence took form. clowning seeks to find answers, a meaning of life yet Shakespeare presents a frail shadowy backg round to his actions. One of the main governing thoughts in Twelfth Night is the fragility of life. This is the play of youth, some all the characters are young, and this generates the sadness. Shakespeare asks all to enjoy fleeting life, make the most of the twelve days, scorning the Malvolios.A pattern emerges from all this lot which gives life some meaning. Twelfth Night, despite all its laughter, seems to play upon the keys of loss, affliction and deep bewilderment, which sounds through the gentle beauty of the romance convention and the festive humour. The bonded family words arrest, brformer(a), child signifies absence, loss of security and a longing. It is this sense of irreparable loss, and the mild apprehension that all this might prove to be a dream provides the poignant dream-like contact which pervades the play.The loss is internal as well as external. The recognition of ones self is a dominant theme, and almost all characters are preoccupied by this and hunt for their selves as well as their lost extols. Orsinos languorously insatiable desire for love and food of love in the starting scene presents a parodic statement of the omnipresent sense of want. The hunting pun serves to express the search which is already begun. Nevertheless, Orsinos words set the mood of the play, which, point through all the caterwauling of the kitchen group, never fades. Orsino saysThat strain again, it had a dying deign O, it came oer my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, larceny and giving odour Orsinos appetite is soon satiated. The medication loses its appeal and his love for love becomes evident. Even the hunting image takes on contemporary meaning Diana becomes the naked truth which makes Acteon wild. This is a parody of Petrarchan conceits and it is fittingly given to Orsino, who, like all in Illyria, is in a state of illusion. According to Platos Symposium love is a hole, an absence longing to be filled.So Twelfth Night i s a play of pining Orsino for Olivia, Olivia for genus Viola, Viola for Orsino, and comically Sir Andrew and Malvolio for Olivia. This emphasis on pining invokes the authorized myth of Narcissus and Echo, and makes a narcissistic triad of self enclosed loneliness. Each of them playing simultaneously Narcissus and Echo with respect to others. They seek their own reflections in the others face and own echo in the others voice. But more melancholy than this love-sorrow is the separation of loved ones by real or apparent death. This again can be traced to the sense of romantic lack as embodied in this state of primary loss.Nearly all characters bear traces of such(prenominal) loss from the father- buddy loss which provides similar traumatic experiences for Viola and Olivia, down to the farcical yet nostalgic exclamation of Sir Andrew I was adored once, too. While Violas sorrow is genuine, Olivias vow to keep her face veiled for seven years seems more like a ploy to ward off Orsinos unwanted advances. Otherwise her whole behaviour is comically excessive in place of being melancholy. Seven years in black violates the Elizabethan wo etiquette which prescribed a period of one year for a brother.Olivia closely parallels Orsino both in her reclusiveness more alleged than borne out and as a volition victim of introspective melancholia. Olivias unnamed brother fades from the surface of the play. But his spirit continues to haunt. For no sooner has the theme of brother loss been sounded in the kidskin key than it recurs in the major. The eye-offending brine of tears gives way to the sea. Olivias brother fades into Violas. In a drama greatly concerned with wholeness of identity, the check heroines are each presented as halves of a pairing, cloven away from the male counterpart with whom she started life.In Jungian terms, when Viola assumes the male disguise, it is as if she recapitulates in her own someone the lost other, dressing exactly like Sebastian, and as i f Olivia also locates her own in Viola. Herein lies the fact that both of them are in an illusory world, it is precisely the presence of Sebastian which allows a happy resolution, otherwise the imminent result was definitely tragic. There might be an autobiographical element in this brother-sister separation theme. Shakespeare himself was the father of son-girl twins of whom the boy died before the composition of this play.The twins were eleven and half years old when death separated them. Shakespeare must have felt at heart the wistful sadness in the eyes of Judith the surviving child, which he endowed to viola. Twelfth Night contains a calm, loving elegy, and a myth of rebirth. It feigns that Hamnet, the boy twin, is not dead, but lingers in the unknown, washed up on the shores of Illyria, the land of illusion and lyricism. Prove true, imagination, O prove true This is not only Violas, but also Shakespeares heartfelt cry. Thus Violas sadness resounds with a new meaning. Her excla mation at her entry is,And what should I do in Illyria? My brother he is in Elysium. Her brother comes back to her, but Hamnet does not. Unlike Sebastian, Viola controls herself and centres her thoughts on immediate problems. Her wit allows her to obtain a entertain in an alien and unfriendly world. But her wit also has a touch of the autumnal in keeping with the autumnal note of the play. And even in her sorrow she can sympathise with others. She understands Olivias plots instantly in place of scorn, shows tender understanding, she says, Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we, For such as we are made of, such we be.Her identification with Olivia is appropriate in more ways than one not only both of them are lovesick, but also they long for a brother figure. But Violas pathos is more touching. She has to bear messages to her rival from the man she loves. This she does without a murmur and with all sincerity. Her praise of Orsino comes straight from her heart. She is pained to the extreme, and almost reveals herself when Orsino calls women less faithful and lacking in depth of emotion. She tells the Duke My father had a daughter lovd a man, As it might be perhaps, were I a charwoman, I should your captainship.Thus secretly professing her love. But her suppressed agony is felt when she tells Orsino the supposed ending of her non-existent sisters love whose history was, she tells Orsino, A blank, my lord she never told her love For she never expects to have Orsino and she dares not aspire to the impossible. As when her brothers name is mentioned she fears to hope for the best. Shakespeare saves the play from ending in check disaster by bringing in Sebastian and thus allowing Viola to have a happy end, in an union with Orsino. In the first scene orsino begins with an tomography of flowers.And the scene ends with flowers Away before me to sweet beds of flowers Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers. The image of flowers comes again and again throug hout the play. Flowers symbolise transience momentary beauty, something that does not last. So Feste tells Olivia As on that point is no true cuckold but calamity, so beautys a flower. Reminding her that times are never incessantly bad, thus to keep on mourning for something that is past is to waste precious time and no one has world enough and time. Orsino talks about womans beauty, asking Cesario to fall in love with some woman younger than he,For women are as roses, whose fair flower Being once displayd, doth fall that very hour. Viola has to agree. She admits that death comes when one has just reached perfection. Speaking not only for women but for all mankind. The flower imagery stresses the carpe-diem theme of the play block up the day before it ends. This theme is also propagated through the music of the play. In Twelfth Night music plays a vital role, establishing the tone of the play. Through music the emotive basis of human existence is emphasised, which is to be felt rather than perceived cerebrally.There is rare music in Viola. She does not sing, but her words enthrall poetic inspiration. She echoes Shakespeares sonnets when she tells Olivia Lady, you are the cruellst she alive If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy. Like the early marriage sonnets the theme here is of beauty perpetuated through marriage. But the character who is full of music and is truly melancholy, though not in his attitude or expression, is Feste. Feste is the first true spread out of Shakespeares plays. One of the functions of the clown is to sing. He sings to Toby and AndrewWhat is love? Tis not hereafter, Present mirth hath present laughter Whats to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty, Then come kiss me sweet and twenty Youths a stuff will not endure. The fragility of youth and shadow of death this is in line with the plays theme and mood and also Festes character. His other form, which he sings to please Orsino, is e qually sad, 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. This song continues to reveal Festes own bleak future.He is outside the action, an objective onlooker. There is no involvement. He is poor, has no security. He begs to acquire money. For a man of his capable capacities this must be disgusting. He has no past, no future and no considerable present. He is a relic of the past, from Olivias fathers time. He is constantly threatened with discharge which is as bad as hanging for him. But he lets summer bear it out. Only his song betray his state. Thus in his songs the thought of hereafter is subordinated. In the final scene everyone leaves except Feste, who stays to give the audience a song.A song in which he is modify from the character to the actor. His final song marks the ending of the play, the ending of the twelfth night. Deaths reign starts from the next day. Festes song is nostalgic, he recalls w hen foolery was not as unacceptable or threatening. He also gives a cynical view of marriage as an unwanted responsibility. This casts an oblique perspective on the centrality of marriage in the play as a symbol of concord and resolution. A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, But thats all one, our play is done, And well strive to please you everyday. Thats all one signifies from one perspective that since nothing is really important enough to worry about, pleasure and insaneness are the only activities cost undertaking. From another, similar, perspective the phrase can be read as hopeless, despairing resignation, pleasure and folly are doomed attempts to scat from an intolerable consciousness of futility. In our play is done, it is more about the innocent activities than about the play itself. It is a nostalgic recognition of the post sinlessness state. Festes song probably takes place on a dark, empty, silent stage, encapsulating Festes lonel iness.His life is really as empty. He is as much an shipwreck survivor as Malvolio, only he is not embittered. He is the artist. Isolated, presenting life, but not belonging to it. His song is a very cynical comment on human existence. To Feste the world does seem like a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. The song is a reminder of the theme of the play youth and its loyalty to time. The question which arises is whether this kind of existence is worth the strife. With this question the curtain descends on Shakespeares romantic world.The final song, which brings together all the melancholy passages in the play, leaves a yearning in the readers mind. A tinge of sadness which fills the heart and leaves a deep impression, is given to the whole play. This song marks a turning point in the world of Shakespearean drama. The playful attitude is done, now it is time for serious businesses of life, which involves the greatest of calamities. Perhaps at the mo ment Shakespeare himself identify with Feste. He who even with his immeasurable height of mind had to be the publics jester and servant. Perhaps for an idle moment he wondered, if all this is worth the complications or not.