Feste serves several roles in Twelfth Night. He acts as the traditional fool by making jokes and providing humor, but he also comments on the play and characters like a Greek chorus, providing insight to the audience. As a participant without status or rank, Feste is able to push boundaries and mock others through his witty jokes and wordplay. Both an entertainer and an observer, Feste adds joy but also acknowledges the presence of tragedy in life through his songs.

1. The Role of Feste

2. Feste has several roles
Stereotypical Fool-expect him to be merry,
someone who makes jokes.
Advisor
Replaces the Greek Chorus-comments on the
play and the characters in the play.
Disguised participant
Does he only bring joy to the Twelfth Night?

3. fool (n.) late 13c., "silly or stupid person," from Old French
fol "madman, insane person; idiot; rogue; jester," also
"blacksmith's bellows," also an adjective meaning "mad,
insane" (12c., Modern French fou), from Latin follis
"bellows, leather bag" (see follicle); in Vulgar Latin used with
a sense of "windbag, empty-headed person." Cf. also
Sanskrit vatula- "insane," literally "windy, inflated with
wind." The word has in mod.Eng. a much stronger
sense than it had at an earlier period; it has now an
implication of insulting contempt which does not in the
same degree belong to any of its synonyms, or to the
derivative foolish. [OED] Meaning "jester, court clown" first
attested late 14c., though it is not always possible to tell
whether the reference is to a professional entertainer or an
amusing lunatic on the payroll.

4. clown (n.) 1560s, also cloyne, "rustic, boor, peasant,"
origin uncertain. Perhaps from Scandinavian dialect
(cf. Icelandic klunni "clumsy, boorish fellow;"
Swedish kluns "a hard knob, a clumsy fellow"), or
akin to North Frisian klönne "clumsy person," or, less
likely, from Latin colonus "colonist, farmer." Meaning
"fool, jester" is c.1600. "The pantomime clown
represents a blend of the Shakes[pearean] rustic with
one of the stock types of the It. comedy" [Weekley].
Meaning "contemptible person" is from 1920s.

5. jester (n.) mid-14c., jestour (Anglo-Latin), late
14c., gestour "a minstrel, professional reciter
of romances," agent noun from gesten "recite
a tale," which was a jester's original function
(see jest). Sense of "buffoon in a prince's
court" is from c.1500.

6. Feste as a stock character
"In Illyria therefore the fool is not so
much a critic of his environment as a
ringleader, a merry-companion, a Lord
of Misrule (field of themes.com)”
Link this to the context-Feste symbolises the
Twelfth Night-a time of joy and festivity. The
audience would expect him to be funny and to
provide the humour.

7. As a stock character
Carnival, Bakhtin argues:
absolutises nothing, but rather proclaims the joyful
relativity of everything i.e. the loss of
standards/rules.
And a key means of proclaiming the relativity of
everything in Shakespeare’s comedies is the figure of
the fool.
No such matter, sir. I do live by the church; for I do live
at my house, and my house doth stand by the church.

8. Feste pushes boundaries
• He has no status or rank-He is not bound by rules.
• He makes fun of people whatever their rank.
• He is witty:
• The use of bawdy language: Many a good hanging
prevents a bad marriage, and, for turning away, let
summer bear it out. Double entendres and puns-I
live by the church
• “Take away the fool”. Do you not hear, fellows?
Take away the lady”.

9. Is he Malvolio‟s foil- “Feste calls words „a cheveril
glove…This lays emphasis on his mockery of those
who adopt pious or moralising attitudes to speech.
Malvolio is the immediate target but perhaps he also
has in mind the puritan obsession with straight
talking („let your yea be yea and your nay, nay‟). He
pretends to be a corrupter of words and calls them
wanton. He mocks Sebastian‟s use of „vent‟ thus
drawing attention to the young man‟s over-fancy
vocabulary…Other people‟s fancy phrases are a
regular target for Feste‟s mockery…”

10. The fool creates laughter
The aim of laughter:
Sir Philip Sidney gives a similar suggestion in his
Elizabethan The Defence of Poetry: laughter is
„a scornful tickling‟ in which we laugh either at
„sinful things‟ we should reject, or at „miserable‟
things we should pity. Laughter, as the modernist
French philosopher Henri Bergson put it two
centuries later, is „a corrective‟ which seeks to
remedy behaviour that is out of line..

11. Feste is clever and seems
omniscient
“I wear not motley in my brain”. To be witty requires
intelligence.
• He has no rank-he moves between Orsino‟s household and
Olivia‟s household.
• He tricks Olivia:
Feste: Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.
OLIVIA I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
FOOL The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother‟s
soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.

12. Feste knows Viola is in disguise
Feste: “Now Jove in his next commodity of hair, send thee
a beard!”
Viola:By my troth, I‟ll tell thee, I am almost sick for one,
(aside) though I would not have it grow on my chin. (to
fool) Is thy lady within?
The matter, I hope, is not great, sir, begging but a beggar.
Cressida was a beggar. My lady is within, sir. I will construe
to them whence you come. Who you are and what you
would are out of my welkin, I might say “element,” but the
word is overworn.

13. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSRLK7SogvE

14. Does Feste replace the Greek
chorus?
The Greek chorus: A group of around 15 people.
Used to tell a story to the audience – provide
background information or summarise to the
audience. Would often begin and end the play.
Supposed to represent the general population.
Share secrets with the audience that the main
characters cannot – sometimes share with the main
characters too.

15. The Greek Chorus
Uses Rhyme
Sometimes speak their lines in unison.
Actions had to be really exaggerated because Greek
Theatres were so big!
Voices had to be really clear – pronouncing every letter
Often used masks to show emotions.

16. Romeo and Juliet
Modern Version used a
newsreader-what does
this suggest?
Comedy: The Wasps:
Chorus are people
dressed as wasps.
Famous Choruses
Medea-Killed her
children as revenge
against her
husband
Les Miserables: Look Down..
The Prisoners could be The
Chorus.
Do you hear the people sing…

17. For example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
gMYNfQlf1H8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzv4JJOs4w0&lis
t=PLqDRx4dDt_zY87eTSAyY4dqlKc0Jxq1As
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xawp9co17Z
4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6467brmAwrU

18. Feste
is “the comic truth” rather than the comedy.
Comments on characters like the Greek Chorus.
Seems to understand what‟s going on.
The only one that doesn‟t change-comedies are about learning a
lesson-Feste understands life as revealed through his songs.

19. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Nfs7EJZc1l4
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For 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.
But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain.

20. By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain it raineth every day.
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.

21. Feste ends Twelfth Night. His song is the denouement.
When that I was and a little tiny boy.
“This final song runs flippantly through the cycle of a man‟s life
and ultimately through all of human history. If we are intended
to take the words seriously, Feste‟s ditty is quite disturbing. With
the coming of adulthood, we sacrifice any delusions of pride
and eventually a perpetual state of drunkenness. Seems rather
bleak, but “that‟s all one”. The final stanza reminds the audience
that this is merely a play whose intention is purely to
entertain..Once again we are reminded that nothing in Twelfth
Night is to be taken seriously, including Feste‟s pessimistic
prediction for our future as a species of loveless drunkards. Life
goes on, the community will continue, and the rain will
continue to fall everyday. What becomes of each individual
is of very little consequence.

22. Sir Toby may claim that „care is an enemy
to life‟ but as Graham Holderness argues
Feste knows that, in fact care is a
condition of life. Death is never far away
in Feste‟s songs and is the only absolute;
as he tells Orsino „pleasure will be
paid, one time or another‟.

23. But Feste doesn’t just add joy. He is
not only the Greek chorus. Does he go
too far in creating humour and adds
tragedy. Does he go too far?

24. Feste dresses up as Sir Topas
• Is Feste actually switching roles or being
himself: A priest advises, Feste advises
throughout the play.
• Malvolio turns into the fool-wears yellow
tights.
• Feste points out that Malvolio is in darknesshe makes Malvolio confess-Is this to cover up
his own failings as a fool to make Malvolio
realise his fault-Is he an effective fool?

25. “He argues with Malvolio but is absent
when the trick is played; although a
disguised participant in the dark room
cruelty, he is also the steward‟s means of
escape”.
Why does Feste dress as a priest even
though Malvolio can‟t see him?

26. Malvolio is forced to be a fool
• Yellow stockings cross-gartered.
• “smilest thou”.
• Uses bawdy language.
• The irony is Malvolio feels humiliated
and is turned into his enemy-the fool.

27. Are there other fools
“Shakespeare‟s Fools are wildcards: they can mingle wit,
nonsense, wisdom and poetry and their free-range
behaviour permits them to speak like sages and madmen to
kings and madmen with equal ease. Twelfth Night has both
a Fool and a fool. Feste has no property or position and he
begs for coins, but we admire him for his verbal precision
and his steely character. He is no simple-minded fool. Sir
Andrew Aguecheek, though, who has both money and
position, is a fool but we love him for his dancing and
partying, his clumsiness with words and for believing he
has a chance with Olivia…Neither is he the least bit wise,
Sir Andrew is an innocent-which Feste is not-and
innocence is not wise”.