The Work in Performance

When Fabian speaks these lines in Act 3, Scene 4 he is referring to the fact that Malvolio, undeterred by Olivia’s horrified response to his yellow stockings, is behaving as if he was indeed ‘Count Malvolio’. Early modern dramatists often attracted their audiences’ attention to the artificial and constructed quality of theatrical illusion, and Fabian’s remark may therefore suggest how Shakespeare expected his audience to regard the play as a whole. As mentioned above (see Introduction, p. 3 ), Twelfth Night , or the Feast of the Epiphany, celebrates the Wise Men’s arrival in Bethlehem, where they worshipped the Baby Jesus and witnessed the ‘improbable’ spectacle of the word of God turned into flesh and blood. Fabian’s remark may, therefore, apply both to Malvolio’s ‘improbable’ (and farcical) transformation into a smiling fool and to Cesario’s ‘improbable’ (and quasimystical) metamorphosis into two creatures, Viola and Sebastian. However, John Manningham’s diary entry (see Contextual Overview, p. 7 ) suggests that at least one member of the elite audience who watched Twelfth Night in the great hall at the Middle Temple on 2 February 1602 found the farcical improbabilities associated with the gulling of Malvolio more diverting and entertaining than the romantic improbabilities generated by the staggered arrival of Viola and Sebastian in Illyria. Manningham’s response may have been affected by the fact that Twelfth Night was performed at the Middle Temple to celebrate a special holiday called Candlemas. Bruce Smith has usefully evoked its significance as follows: The candle in Candlemas refers to the candles that once had been brought to church to be blessed on this day, just as the Virgin Mary had been brought to the temple to be purified forty days after giving birth to Christ. Protestant theologians may have put an end to what they considered the superstitious practice of blessing candles, but Candlemas in 1602 remained a welcome island of light amid the gloom of early February. Candles were a relatively expensive commodity in Shakespeare’s England: a single wax candle cost as much as three pence – three times the price of a standing place at the Globe. A hall full of candlelight against the dark night outside was a rare and luxurious sight. What Twelfth Night offered John Manningham and his friends was a perfect entertainment for such a splendid occasion: a few golden hours of respite from the grey world of winter. 1