Twelfth Night & Epiphany, Malvolio & the Cecils, and Antonio & Essex

[Cologne Cathedral, Altarpiece of the Magi]

Some may wonder why Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was named after the twelfth night of Christmas, eve of the Epiphany. The gospel tale is about wise men or Magi from the East who follow a star to pay homage to a new king of Israel, Jesus. The play has none of that stuff in it.



But consider:

In the gospel story, there is anticipation of a new king. This is why the Magi follow the star.

In Shakespeare's England, there had long been hope and anticipation by many of an heir if Elizabeth would only have wed and given birth to a child. Today we might celebrate her independence and assertiveness to remain single, but many during her reign felt otherwise.

In the play, Olivia is like Elizabeth (both three-syllable names): She is mourning the death of a father, and more recently, a brother (like Elizabeth, whose father Henry and brother Edward were kings of Protestant England before her and had both died before she assumed the throne). Olivia is like Elizabeth in her reluctance to marry.

Viola says to Olivia of her beauty,
'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on.
Lady, you are the cruel'st she alive
If you will lead these graces to the grave,
And leave the world no copy. (1.5.530-534)

Elizabeth was famous for her red hair and white makeup. Her reluctance to marry is an impediment to a new king, a new presence of divine grace (kings supposedly ruling by divine right).

So in the minds of some, grace was needed to move the virgin queen to be with child, to transcend what holds her back from love and fruitfulness, from participation in God's creation by which she herself was made in the image of God, and by which she could make an image of herself to live after her, as the play suggests, echoing a theme in Shakespeare's sonnets.

In the gospel story, the expected new king that the Magi seek is found in a lowly and unexpected place, as the child of a carpenter, not a prince in a palace. In this way, the Christian story turns some expectations on their head, but very much in harmony with the biblical idea of a God who raises up the lowly and often brings low the proud and mighty who use their power in selfish ways.

In the play, Olivia and Orsino of Illyria find love in Sebastian and Viola of Messaline, people who would be considered their enemies. Olivia and Orsino both might be viewed as a bit proud and stubborn: Olivia proud and stubborn in her reluctance to marry, and Orsino proud and stubborn in his insistence that Olivia be open to his offer. Sir Toby Belch is a (usually drunken) gentleman, and Maria is one of Olivia's servants. But Sir Toby marries Maria in the end. Olivia and Orsino overcome their pride, and they all find love in unexpected places, as do the Magi.

In the gospel story, the arrival of the Magi, known also by Shakespeare's day as "kings," was a foreshadowing of the biblical prophecy that God's grace would be known by all nations, and that all might be enlightened by the new law of love revealed through Jesus, who bid humanity to love one another, even to love their enemies.

In Shakespeare's time, Protestant England and the Catholic nations of Europe were enemies, though all were Christian nations. Something was out of joint on both sides, a lack of openness to grace and love, a failing for Christian nations that judged each other harshly as heretics.

In the play, Viola and Sebastian are from Messaline, shipwrecked off the coast of Illyria, enemy to Messaline, as previously mentioned. So in Shakespeare's England and in the Catholic nations of Europe, an Epiphany was needed like the epiphany needed by Messaline and Illyria: for Christians to reconcile with their enemies through love, if only to respect their differences and learn from one another.

England's theater world didn't need another biblical Epiphany with wise men, or three kings, a virgin mother and a child. They already had that story in the bible and heard it regularly each year in church (which they were required by law to attend each week, or risk being fined and perhaps suspected of treason). They had a supposedly virgin queen who was reluctant to marry or designate an heir (perhaps for many good reasons).

I don't mean to suggest by any of this that Shakespeare was a Catholic who wanted Elizabethan England to become Roman Catholic again. I think it more likely that Shakespeare wanted all of the Christians of his time, Protestant and Catholic, to be more tolerant and act more Christian. This is the same playwright who had a character in Romeo & Juliet say, "A plague o' both your houses!" This seems an appropriate curse for both Protestants and Catholics who care more about avenging wrongs to their side than about acting more Christian, or allowing love to unite former enemies. So in this way, my thinking is closer to that of Jeffrey Knapp, author of Shakespeare's Tribe.

But what about Malvolio? What's he doing in a play anticipating an epiphany of divine grace?
In the play, Malvolio is the steward of Olivia's household, described by Maria as something of a Puritan (2.3.839).
In Shakespeare's England, William Cecil was Elizabeth's Lord High Treasurer and top advisor, a kind of steward of England under Elizabeth. Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, believed William Cecil and his son Robert were too powerful and attempted a rebellion in February of 1601. Essex was executed by the end of February, 1601. It is believed the play was written in 1601 or 1602, and perhaps performed in 1601 at The Globe Theater, but otherwise first performed for a royal audience in January of 1602 for Twelfth Night.

William and Robert Cecil were seen by some (perhaps especially Essex and Catholics) more as impediments to grace than as vessels of grace.

While the play seems to be light comedy, for it to be performed a year after the Essex rebellion, the confession of Antonio may have reminded more than a few in the audience of the confession of Essex:

ANTONIO: Orsino, noble sir,
Be pleased that I shake off these names you give me.
Antonio never yet was thief, or pirate,
Though I confess, on base and ground enough,
Orsino's enemy. A witchcraft drew me hither:
That most ingrateful boy there by your side
From the rude sea's enraged and foamy mouth
Did I redeem. A wrack past hope he was.
His life I gave him, and did thereto add
My love without retention or restraint,
All his in dedication. For his sake
Did I expose myself, pure for his love,
Into the danger of this adverse town;
Drew to defend him, when he was beset;
Where being apprehended, his false cunning,
Not meaning to partake with me in danger,
Taught him to face me out of his acquaintance,
And grew a twenty years' removèd thing
While one would wink; denied me mine own purse,
Which I had recommended to his use
Not half an hour before. (5.1.2224-2244)

Essex believed he was trying to save Elizabeth from people like the Cecils. Antonio believed he was saving his friend Sebastian, twin brother to Viola, disguised as Cesario. But Cesario doesn't seem to appreciate what Antonio was attempting to do by offering help. To some in England, Elizabeth didn't seem to appreciate what Essex was attempting to do.

William Cecil died in early August of 1598. Essex might have liked to become the next Lord Privy Seal and recognized as Elizabeth's key advisor, but instead, William Cecil's son Robert succeeded him in that post.

In the play, the steward Malvolio is humiliated, locked up in a dark room, treated as a lunatic, and given a mock-exorcism by the fool, Feste. He vows revenge. The play may have expressed the wish of some in England, that the Cecils would be taken down a notch. Parody can accomplish some of this in the theater.


[L-R: William Cecil; Malvolio (Nigel Hawthorne, 1996, dir. Trevor Nunn); Dick Cheney as himself.]

Portraying such things in a play might seem quite bold, like making fun of Dick Cheney in a Saturday Night Live skit during George W. Bush's presidency. (See sample here, a parody depicting Dick Cheney and his wife reading Valentine's Day cards.)



But unlike Saturday Night Live, the Shakespeare play never names the Cecil family or Elizabeth. The political implications are veiled enough that the play could avoid the disapproval of the censors.

If it's true as at least some scholars claim that Polonius in Hamlet was modeled after William Cecil, then I would venture to say that Malvolio may have been the comic version, the killing of Polonius by Hamlet the tragic version.

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For turning my thoughts toward connecting the play to the Feast of the Epiphany, I owe a great debt to Gayle Gaskill who edited the New Kittredge Edition of Twelfth Night, who is among the editors of the variorum edition, and who was kind enough to work with me and Dean Clement on a panel I organized relating to Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer. This was for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference in 2018 in Albuquerque. Gayle connected the play in many interesting ways to the Book of Common Prayer, to the implied catechism, baptism liturgy, and renouncing of the devil. If I am mistaken in the ways I connect the play here to the Epiphany and to Elizabeth, Cecil, and Essex, the mistakes are all mine, not hers.
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For more information on Twelfth Night and its connections to the secular revelry on the eve of the Epiphany, see this good essay by Michael Dobson, who directs the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon and is a Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham:
https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/festivity-dressing-up-and-misrule-in-twelfth-night

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