Magpie 60

This week’s Magpie prompt got me to thinking of Feste.

In Shakespeare’s play “Twelfth Night,” there’s a jester of that name who sings, dances, plays instruments, tells jokes, etc. His most famous song is about rain.
“When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain…”
Feste is attached to the household of the Countess Olivia. In those days, if you had a lot of money – and Olivia did – you had a permanent staff to provide entertainment. The television programs of the Elizabethan era were fairly primitive, to say the least, so after the evening meal all hands would sit back and enjoy whatever the staff tummlers could come up with in the way of amusement and distraction. The master – in this case the mistress – of the house would usually have a jester, fool, clown, whatever, on permanent call.
It was a tough gig. One wisecrack too many, one step over whatever imaginary line had been set up, and the joker would be out on the street. And he had to be prepared, no matter how he felt at the moment, to be funny.
“Here’s a man of jollity,
Jibe, joke, jollify!
Give us of your quality,
Come, Fool, follify!”

It’s understandable that the Jester of that era, a chap seemingly of such a playful and frivolous nature, occasionally had his moments of melancholy. Many artists, writers, operatic composers (“Rigoletto,” anyone?) have used this theme in their works.
And Will S. was no exception.
With all of Feste’s amusing shaggy-dog stories and pranks, the play’s audience realizes that there’s a darker and mysterious side to him. When he sings the famous line “The rain it raineth every day,” he’s saying that every day can bring some kind of misery. At the end of the play he sums it all up in a famous closing song:
“When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain.
The rain it raineth every day.
But when I came to man's estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain, it raineth every day.”

He then comes right out and in effect makes a plea for applause:
“A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain.
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.”

Magpie 25

“I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you!”
Let’s go back a few decades. Young Berowne, 18 years of age, is having trouble in school. He has asked his friend Connie to have a cup of coffee with him.
Connie: “Look, Berowne. I like you; you’re okay. But as I told you before, we could never be a couple. To be real blunt about it, I prefer someone, well, physically attractive, and maybe a bit higher in the intelligence department.”
Berowne: “No, no, this isn’t about that. When I asked you to have coffee with me it was to talk about something entirely different.”
C: “Good. Glad to hear it. So what’s this about?”
B: “Well, I’ve got an English exam this Friday. It’s about the play ‘Twelfth Night.’ If I flunk it, I probably won’t graduate. You can guess how well this would go over at home, me not even able to graduate from high school. Now you, you’re already in college and an English major, so I thought we might just discuss my assignment so I could have a clearer understanding of it.
C: “What? You want me to do your homework.?”
B: “Not at all. Just a discussion. So I’d get to know the play better.”
C: “I’ll bet you never even read the dam’ play, did you Berowne?”
B: “Of course I read it! Some of it. The first parts.”
C: “I know I shouldn’t be doing this. I’ll hate myself in the morning.”
B: “Think of yourself as a good Samaritan. Helping a friend who’s truly in need.”
C: “Okay, maybe I can give you a little help. You say you’ve got a picture? Let’s see it.”

B: “Here. See, it’s a crummy old lock. The assignment is to describe what this has to do with Malvolio of ‘Twelfth Night’.”
C: “Of course. I get it. Malvolio’s locked up in a dark room.”
B: “Yes, of course. He’s locked up. Dark room…”
C: “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
B: “No, but I sure hope you’re going to tell me.”

C: “Okay, here’s the scoop. First off, you should know about Olivia, the Lady Olivia. She’s a countess, lots of dough, owner of a huge estate. She’s got a steward, a caretaker, named Malvolio. As far as Olivia is concerned, Malvolio is of course way down on the social totem pole.”
B: “Olivia. Malvolio. I got it.”

C: “Malvolio has been performed in different ways during the past couple of centuries. Sometimes he’s in traditional dress…”

C: “Sometimes in modern. He may be just the steward but he acts like he’s in charge of everything and everybody; he’s pompous, bosses people around. So a group of characters on the estate get together and decide to have a little fun with him.”
B: “This actually sounds quite modern.”
C: “As Shakespeare often does. Anyway. The wise guys write a letter to Malvolio that seems to have come from Olivia: in it she implies that she is deeply in love with him and she’s sad that their social situation won’t allow her to show it. She asks him to show his love for her by wearing special clothing. Crazy stuff – bright yellow stockings, garters worn outside in a criss-cross way – and the poor guy falls for all this.

B: “He’s been pranked.”
C: “Exactly. When he learns that Lady Olivia is secretly crazy for him, he goes a bit nuts. He wears the yellow stockings, the garters, the whole deal.”
B: “I suppose the pranksters have a huge laugh.”
C: “Of course. As for Olivia, she thinks Malvolio must have lost his mind. So the poor guy is locked up.”

B: “And that’s where our lock comes in.”

C: “Right. Poor Malvolio, stuck away in a dark room, trying to convince everyone that he isn’t crazy at all.”
B: “How does it all end?”

C: “Well, since it’s a Shakespeare comedy, the problems are all solved at the end and everyone has a high old time. Except for Malvolio. When they finally let him out, he sums it all up by saying, ‘I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you!’”
B: “And as for Olivia?”

C: “Well, she had a few chuckles about Malvolio with everyone else, but at the end she feels sympathetic toward him.”
B: “All’s well that ends well, in other words.”
C: “Right. Not quite the right play, but the right sentiment.”