SCENE 1 The street. The spell is cast. Darkness. Feste walks up out of the audience, humming a tune, and briskly hops up onstage, with a bag slung over his shoulder and a lantern held out in front of him, {PROP: a large bag of instruments and a lantern}, which he lights {PROP: matches}. He has a bauble, a miniature version of his own head on a stick, with him at all times, holstered like a sword (and tied to the scabbard by a long, multicolored cord) when he's not carrying it. Lights up to reveal a bare stage and a few seats in a corner, outside of a high wall. On the other side of the stage is a cluster of risers in black, separated by a gate leading to a trellised garden or gazebo. Feste drops the bag in the center of the cluster of seats and looks out into the audience, singing softly:
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.
For the rain it raineth every day.As he sings, the musicians enter from all corners. Some of them carry instruments; many take instruments from Feste's bag o' tricks. They sit down and begin playing. Interlude: This should build from the silence of Feste's last note to become something joyous and tribal. Digeradoos, drums, recorders, and concertinas all jamming in melodious chaos and not quite a cacophony of noise. Feste capers like a fiend as the band's ringleader. As the Duke and Curio enter (the latter carrying {PROP: two bows and a full quiver}), the music stops, except for Feste, who keeps dancing a little too long before noticing the Duke. Once Feste stops, the bauble keeps moving. Singing "99 Bottles Of Beer." In Latin. Feste then shuts up the bauble, embarrassed.
ORSINO If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.
You LOVE music of all sorts but you've grown fretfully tired of court music (like the other trappings of ceremony and office, it's completely failing to get you anywhere substantial) and just wish they'd jam more when you're around. But no, they were whipped by your predecessors into believing that an audience with the Duke equals only stuffy and proper, and hence:
Interlude: A quick hand gesture from Feste, ("play it like I taught you, gang") and the tribal sound is at once replaced by orderly chamber music. [Something formal and recognizable (Mozart or Beethoven or Bach, perhaps): Drums and digeradoos swapped with recorders and violins, etc.] Almost accidentally, the sound has become tragic and sad, and the disappointment on the Duke's face at missing the funkier beats turns to sighs of longing.
That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound, that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odour!
Interlude: As the music proceeds and builds, FESTE breaks off from the other musicians, "Mahna Mahna"-style, and begins to caterwaul in a fierce headbanging orbit of his own design. The music should suddenly change to something recognizable yet not quite liable. Something cloyingly annoying: "Sunshine Of Your Love," "MMM-Bop," "Livin' La Vida Loca," etc.
Enough; no more: 'tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, that, notwithstanding thy capacity receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, of what validity and pitch soe'er, but falls into abatement and low price, even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy that it alone is high fantastical.
Heaving sigh from the musicians: ain't love grand? Double take from Orsino: are they making fun of me or have they been there too?
CURIO (oiling the bowstring: we doing this, or what?) Will you go hunt, my lord?
ORSINO What, Curio?
CURIO (drawing the bow, visualizing) The hart.
ORSINO Why, so I do, the noblest that I have:Oy. We see where this is going.
O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, methought she purged the air of pestilence! That instant was I turn'd into a hart; and my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, e'er since pursue me. [Enter Valentine, who walks like a man who gets to tell the President that the Soviet Premier hung up on him. This is so not going to go over well.] How now! what news from her?
VALENTINE So please my lord, I might not be admitted;Possibly a heaving whimper from the musicians, followed by a double-take from Orsino and then they quickly return to playing their instruments. A look from Valentine shared with Curio: sucks being the bearer of bad news, eh? Curio starts unstringing the bows. So much for hunting; they get to look forward to yet another afternoon of the Self-pity Death Spiral (and cold mutton for dinner).
but from her handmaid do return this answer: the element itself, till seven years' heat, shall not behold her face at ample view; but, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk and water once a day her chamber round with eye-offending brine: all this to season a brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh and lasting in her sad remembrance.
ORSINO O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame to pay this debt of love but to a brother,This is old news to the attendants, who only join Orsino in wistful contemplation when he's looking at you and go back to just being rather bored with it all when he's not. You're not mocking him, per se; you've just heard this so many times now it utterly fails to captivate you.
how will she love, when the rich golden shaft hath kill'd the flock of all affections else that live in her; when liver, brain and heart, these sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd her sweet perfections with one self king! Away before me to sweet beds of flowers: Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers.
Interlude: the musicians strike up the chamber music, and the Duke and attendants exit. Once the Duke &etc. are off-stage, the music quickly becomes tribal again. Orsino steps back on-stage, peeking, and the music shifts to chamber music. He sighs and walks off, which cues the tribal music to start up again.
--> on to Scene Two Twelfth Night Annotated Script © 2001 Kevin M. Hollenbeck.
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