St. Paul and Twelfth Night

February 2 is the anniversary of the 1602 first public performance of Twelfth Night.

Consider the influence of St. Paul on the play:

St. Paul was in at least three shipwrecks [1].
- One account from Acts 27 was read at morning prayer on the Sixth Day of Christmas, December 30, every year of Shakespeare’s life [2].
- Although there would be many tales of shipwrecks, these familiar Bible readings would have offered a persistent religious association.
- Twelfth Night begins with a shipwreck.

Every January 21st at morning prayer [3], churchgoers would hear St. Paul’s letter, 1 Cor 3, which reads as if it’s speaking of the fool Feste, and Malvolio’s vanity, in Twelfth Night:

18 …If any man among you seem to be wise in this world, let him be a fool, that he may be wise.
19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God: for it is written, He catcheth the wise in their own craftiness.
20 And again, The Lord knoweth that the thoughts of the wise be vain.

Twelfth Night revelry was like New Orleans Mardi Gras before Lent.
At the play’s end, the fool’s last song [4] has been compared to a famous Pauline text [5]:

FOOL:
When that I was and a little tiny boy [...]
A foolish thing was but a toy [...]
But when I came to man’s estate [...]

1 Corinthians 13:11:
“When I was a child, I spake as a child: I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

1 Cor 13 also famously speaks of how “if I have not love…” “I am nothing.”
This could resemble a judgment about the vain Malvolio: He lacks love?

This reading was proclaimed every year on the last Sunday before Lent ("Quinquagesima Sunday") - associated with pre-Lenten festivities (“Shrovetide”) and feasting [6].

So it is appropriate that, named after a Christmastide festival, a play with a shipwreck – and Pauline talk of wisdom and fools – might end with a song based on a Pauline text for Shrovetide, the next major feast before Lent.


[IN THE PLAY, there are in fact many more allusions to St. Paul and other scripture readings - for more on that point, see Naseeb Shaheen, footnote # 5 below.][7]

INDEX for posts in this series on the TWELVE DAYS of CHRISTMAS in Shakespeare’s time (and possible influences on the plays):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/12/twelve-days-of-christmas-in-churches-of.html

NOTES: All references to Shakespeare plays are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online versions: https://shakespeare.folger.edu

[1] On Sexagesima Sunday every year, not long before Lent, churchgoers in Shakespeare’s England would have heard Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, which includes, “I suffered thrice shipwreck: night and day have I been in the deep sea.” (2 Cor. 11:25).

[2] See previous post for the Sixth Day of Christmas:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/12/sixth-day-of-christmas-pauls-shipwreck.html

[3] See page 36, The 1559 Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer (BCP), ed. John E. Booty, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1976.

[4] Fool’s last song, see especially 5.1.412-16.

[5] Naseeb Shaheen, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays, 1999, U of Delaware Press, p.244.

[6] See Shakespeare & Beyond, “Holiday Festivities and Elizabethan Theater,” Erika T. Lin interviewed by Barbara Bogaev:
LIN: “Christmas we all know, but Shrovetide, which is Mardi Gras, also involves feasting. It was a holiday where people would celebrate by eating pancakes, and that happened on Tuesday. Pancake Day is still what they call it in England.”
https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/holiday-festivities-and-elizabethan-theater/

[7] See also Stephen Hague, “The Wise Fool in Shakespeare and in Life and in Scripture,” July 21, 2017, https://stephenhague.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/the-wise-fool-in-shakespeare-and-in-life-and-in-scriptures/


IMAGES:
Left: Jean Fouquet  (1410–)
Portrait of the court jester Gonella (Pietro Gonnella) 1447
Kunsthistorisches Museum   
Public Domain via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jean_Fouquet,_,_Kunsthistorisches_Museum_Wien,_Gem%C3%A4ldegalerie_-_Der_ferraresische_Hofnarr_Gonella_-_GG_1840_-_Kunsthistorisches_Museum.jpg

Center: Jan Matejko (1838–1893)
Stańczyk, 1862 (cropped)
National Museum in Warsaw
Public Domain via
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Matejko,_Sta%C5%84czyk.jpg

Right: Possibly Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (circa 1472/1477–1533)
Laughing Fool (circa 1500)
Davis Museum and Cultural Center
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laughing_Fool.jpg



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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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