I. BARBER, SHAKESPEARE'S FESTIVE COMEDY
II. Chapter 1: The Saturnalian Pattern
A. Saturnalian--traditions of popular thater and popoular holidays
B. "Festive" denotes atmosphere as well as structure
C. Saturnalian pattern organizes experience
1. inversion
2. statement and counterstatment
3. movement from release to clarification
D. Interplay between social and artistic form
1. Clown or vice--the cult
a. recognized anarchist
b. carrying release to absurd extremes
2. Holiday
a. morris-dances, sword-dances, wasailings, mock cermonies of summer kins and queens
b. lords of misrule, mummings, disguisings, masques, pageants
c. celebration of marriage, wake, Candlemas, Shrove Tuesday Hocktide May Day Whitsuntide, Midsummer Eve, Harvest home , Halloween, 12 days of xmas ending with 12night
E. Through release to clarification
1. Release: making the whole experience of the play like a revel--holiday humor
a. Holiday may be forced on characters--Rosalind; Toby creates it for everybody
b. Nature vs. culture reigns
c. Invocation and abuse
1. celebration of pleasures of nature; natural pleasure
2. license to flout and fleer at what on ohter days commanded respoect
3. liberty, mirth, wanton vitality
4. energy normally occupied in maintaining inhibition freed for celebration
5. Wit vs. reason
6. butts are killjoys
2. Clarification
a. movement between poles of restraint and and release in everybody's experience
b. celebrants vs. killjoy--outsider
c. pleasure is touchstone for judgment
1. inadequate revellers
d. hostility to pleasure and highflown idealism both mocked--e.g. about love and heroism
e. clarification about love--the season of nature's part
f. Holiday contrasted with everyday--praise of folly
III. Chapter 10: Testing Courtesy and Humanity in TN
A. introd
1. Title connects to Holiday Misrule
2. Viola's sprezzatura--aristocratic free and easy way, spritely language, having fun
a. not there in Nunn or BBC
3. release through clarification
B. Madness
1. extracting frenzy--misapprehensions or delusions taking people out of themselves
a. bringing out what they would keep hidden or didnt know was there
b. Malvolio's madness; midsummer madness; water to wise woman; dark room
c. Sir Toby--speaks nothing but madman
d. Olivia--ourselves we do not owe
e. I am as mad as he 3.4.15-16
f. Sebastian--seeing madness in the fighters--Plautine confusion
g. Orsino
2. madness always leads to "delusions and misapprehension ...resolved"
C. betrothd to maid and man
1. most fundamental distinction play brings home is difference between men and women
a. saturnalian reversal renews the meaning of normal relation
b. normal is secure...so little that is queasy
2. Olivia and Viola infatuation with each other
a. takes them each from one stage of life to another
b. Manly reflex of Sebastian is delightful--almost a relief--after watching Viola absurdly perplexed--
1. "strip sword naked"
2. "A lttle thing would make me tell them how much I lack of a man"
3. Nature toher bias drew in that
3. Orsino and Ces. more complex--feeling common for love of a youth and a woman
a. range of gender roles--Patience on a monument is not Viola
b. moving back and forth from woman to sprightly page show how much sexes have in common
c. unconsciously nature has made Orsino heterosexual
D. Liberty testing Courtesy
1. holiday=liberties gentlemen take with decorum in pursuit of pleasue and love
2. use and abuse of social liberty
3. both Malvolio and Sir Andrew fail at gentlemanly manner
4. Courtesy
a. sir Toby achieves it--values of heritage and housekeeping as merry england
1. he's consanguineous
2. security of good life in households; faith
3. doesnt have to confine himself
4. ease of gentleman; cares an enemy to life
5. playing lord of misrule
6. graciousness of community conveyed by value put on music and song; nostalgia
7. free-wheeling household
8. spokesman and guardian of that merry world
b. Olivia's praise of the fool and condemning of Malvolio
c. Viola's irony--[aristocratic affectation] secure sense of proportion
1. underlying Viola's disguise is essential gentility create by manners
5. Malviolio is antagonist of the merry world
a. he's uptight; he's practising; writing things down
b. not free impusle of love; wants to be count; knowing his place and not knowing
c. deceived into expressing love and festivity--cross gartered...to bed
d. an intruder; lacks freedom and perception
e. lives in a dark house
f. Puritan spirit perverted; man of business; commercial and sober...was revenged on the pack of them
g. Shakespeare was revenged on him