Feste

In the Shakespeare comedy Twelfth Night Feste is a jester attached to the household of the Countess Olivia. Apparently he has been there for quite a while, as he was a "fool that the Lady Olivia's father took much delight in" (2.4). Although Olivia's father just died within the last year, it is possible that Feste approaches or has reached middle age, though he still has the wit to carry off good fooling as he needs to, and the voice to sing lustily or plangently as the occasion demands. Not only that, he seems to leave Olivia's house and return at his pleasure, rather too freely for a servant. (At the very least he is doing some free-lance entertaining over at the house of Duke Orsino(2.4).) His peripatetic habits get him into trouble with Lady Olivia: when we first see him (1.5), he must talk his way out of being turned out — a grim fate in those days — for being absent, as it were, without leave. He succeeds,and once back in his lady's good graces, he weaves in and out of the action with the sort of impunity that was reserved for a person nobody took seriously.

Notes

However, despite Feste's playful and outwadly frivolous nature, we see at certain times during the play that he is very capable of taking revenge upon those with whom he is not on good terms. Malvolio's insulting account to Olivia of Feste's defeat in a battle of wits by a village idiot obviously makes Feste angry and he joins in with a plot of revenge against the arrogant steward conducted chiefly by Maria and Sir Toby Belch. Feste's opportunity for revenge comes in his confrontation with Malvolio at the end of the play: he disguises himself as a priest and confuses Malvolio even further: athough he does enable Malvolio to get out of his sorry state.

It is also possible to see Feste as a slightly tragic character, with an underlying sadness to him. At the end of the play, he sings the famous line, "The rain it raineth every day," - suggesting that every day brings some kind of misery - a somewhat melancholy line for a clown.

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Feste, as a fool, has a repertoire of songs:

O MISTRESS MINE

O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear; your true love's coming, That can sing both high and low: Trip no further, pretty sweeting; Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies not plenty; Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure.

~ ~ ~

COME AWAY, DEATH

Come away, come away, death, And in sad cypress let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O prepare it! My part of death, no one so true Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet, On my black coffin let there be strown; Not a friend, not a friend greet My poor corpse, when my bones shall be thrown: A thousand sighs to save, Lay me, O where Sad true lover never find my grave, To weep there!

~ ~ ~

THE RAIN IT RAINETH EVERY DAY

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, 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 began, 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.

References

Twelfth Night, Elizabeth Story Donno, ed. 1985 (w/additional material, 2003). (New Cambridge Shakepeare)