Free Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare Page B

viewpoint. Prefiguring Shakespeare’s Fool in
King Lear
, his witticisms attempt to awaken various characters to their “irrational” behavior, the affectations that keep them from reality: Olivia from her mourning, Orsino from his romantic delusions. Maria and Sir Toby use him to mock his true function when confronting Malvolio as “Sir Topas” with the converse aim of turning a sane but deluded man into a madman.
    In an innovative reading of the part for Michael Boyd’s 2005 production, Forbes Masson played Feste as an integral part of the play’s action rather than the usual external observer. An extra dimension was given to the subplot by Feste’s obviously hopeless love for Maria. The theme of unrequited love was extended to engulf his world and infiltrate his songs, with the effect that he is commenting as much on himself as on the Orsino–Viola–Olivia love triangle. After the interval we intruded on Feste alone at the piano playing a beautifully pained and sonorous melancholy song, the same he played for Orsino at the start of the play. On Viola’s entry he started, as if caught betraying something of himself that he’d rather not show. Not the usual eager force in the plot to bring about the downfall of Malvolio, he walked off the stage in disgust at Maria’s device, instantly seeing through her prank as a means to Sir Toby’s bed. Painfully aware that he was losing her affection fast, Feste was kept dangling and manipulated by Maria with intimate touches and kisses. Reluctantly he plays the part of “Sir Topas,” hoping that the trick will win her favor. One had the sense that Feste knew the inevitable upshot of the plot but, a victim of fate and his own affections, had to play out the game.
    At the end of the play when Feste lamented that “the whirligig of time brings in his revenges,” he intimated that the revenge was also upon him. Maria had married and carried away the leglessly drunk Sir Toby, and he has incurred the displeasure of Olivia for his part in the deception of Malvolio. His final song was sung with anger and helpless frustration. Starting with a beautifully sung lament, the tone changed after the first verse and he angrily spat out the words “knaves and thieves” and “toss-pots still had drunken heads.” Seeing him used and cast aside by Maria for a particularly vile and drunken Sir Toby, the audience were made painfully aware till the end that the clown who strives to please us every day suffers while we laugh:

    5. Forbes Masson as Feste in Michael Boyd’s 2005 production: “After the interval we intruded on Feste alone at the piano playing a beautifully pained and sonorous melancholy song.”
    In his chequered suit and with every weary mark of distress writ large upon his whited face, Forbes Masson gives as affecting a performance as I can remember. He sings exceptionally well, accompanies himself on a pub piano and gets the balance between pain and redemptive levity exactly right. He perfectly captures the pathos of his rejection by Meg Fraser’s cruelly teasing Maria before magnificently picking up his spirits with “I am gone, sir, and anon, sir.” 92
    Nigel Hess, the composer for the 1994 Ian Judge production, pointed out that the songs contained in the play are hugely emotional and important and that the actor playing Feste has to be a skilled singer. “Every time Feste sings everybody on stage says, ‘What a beautiful voice.’ It has to be like that.” 93 The difficulty of finding an actor talented enough to take on the role of Feste
and
sing has made this phenomenon a rarity. In 1969, though, Ron Pember, in a highly praised performance, “sang his songs with the gritty voice of the modern, unaccompanied folk-singer.” 94 Probably the most vicious Feste on the RSC’s stage, Pember brought in an element of class consciousness, which accounted for the bitter essence at the heart of the character:
    He was a working man among the leisured classes, deeply