Feste
Character Profile – At a Glance
- Role: Olivia's licensed fool, the household's professional jester and the play's chief singer. He moves freely between Olivia's house and Orsino's court, the only major character welcome in both.
- Key Traits: Quick-witted, melancholy, and musically gifted. He can catechise a countess into laughing at her own grief, and he is fond of being paid. Beneath the comic facility, he is the play's most clear-eyed observer of its follies.
- The Core Conflict: A fool whose wisdom is licensed by his costume, and whose place is precarious. He has been absent from Olivia's household as the play opens, and Maria warns him in A1S5 that he may be "hanged" for it. He must turn his return into a performance to keep his position.
- Key Actions: Re-enters Olivia's service in A1S5 with the catechism that talks her out of mourning. He sings "O mistress mine" in A2S3 and "Come away, death" for Orsino in A2S4, and trades wit with Viola in A3S1. He plays Sir Topas to torment the imprisoned Malvolio in A4S2, and closes the play alone on stage with a song.
- Famous Quote:
"Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit."
(Act 1, Scene 5) - The Outcome: He survives the play unmarried and unattached, apart from the comedy's marriage resolutions. He gets the last word, a closing song that turns the happy ending into one of Shakespeare's most haunting epilogues. He is the figure on whom the play closes its meaning.
The Catechism of Mourning
Feste's first sustained scene is A1S5, and it is one of Shakespeare's most extraordinary demonstrations of the fool's professional method. He has been away from the household – Maria warns him in the opening exchange that he may be hanged for his absence – and the test of his return is whether he can talk Olivia out of dismissing him on sight.
Original
FESTE: Good madonna, why mournest thou?
OLIVIA: Good fool, for my brother's death.
FESTE: I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
OLIVIA: I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
FESTE: The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.
(Act 1, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
FESTE: Madonna, tell me why you are in mourning?
OLIVIA: Because my brother's dead, you fool.
FESTE: I think his soul's in hell, my good madonna.
OLIVIA: I know his soul resides in heaven, fool.
FESTE: Then you're the fool, madonna, for you're mourning your brother's soul in heaven. Take the fool, gents!
The catechism is the play's first demonstration of what the licensed fool can do. Feste opens with deliberate provocation – "I think his soul is in hell" – which forces Olivia to articulate the theological position she actually holds; he then converts her own position into the case for not mourning. The logic is airtight and the affect is light. Olivia can either reject the argument and admit that her seven-year mourning vow is theatrical rather than theological, or accept the argument and stop mourning. She does neither in the moment. What she does is laugh, and the laughter is the proof of Feste's professional skill. Within fifty lines of his return to the household, he has performed the function the fool's costume licenses him to perform: he has spoken a truth to his employer that no other figure could have spoken, and he has done it in a register that allows the employer to accept it without losing face. Malvolio's response – "I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal" – is the play's quietest piece of structural irony. The fool will outwit the steward across the rest of the comedy, and Malvolio's contempt for Feste here is the first move in a quarrel Feste will, in A4S2, win decisively.
The Songs
Feste's two great solo songs in Acts 2 occupy opposite emotional poles, and his ability to occupy both is the play's most direct demonstration of his musical-philosophical range. The first, in A2S3, is the carpe-diem invitation to love.
Original
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...
(Act 2, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
My lover, dear, where are you roaming?
Oh listen here! Your truelove's coming,
That can sing both high and low,
Don't dance away, my little sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son does know.
…
What is love? It's not tomorrow.
Humour now makes laughter follow.
What's to come is still unclear.
The song is one of Shakespeare's most-quoted lyrics, and "Journeys end in lovers meeting" has become a proverbial phrase in English literature – Shirley Jackson uses it as the recurring refrain in The Haunting of Hill House, and it has been quoted across four centuries as the shorthand for Shakespeare's view of romantic comedy. The song is delivered to Sir Toby and Sir Andrew in the midst of their drinking, and the celebratory register is exact for the audience. What is striking is that the same singer, one scene later, will produce the play's most concentrated piece of romantic despair.
Original
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!
(Act 2, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Take me now, take me now death,
In a coffin of cypress wood, lay me to sleep.
Go away, go away, breath,
I died when that beautiful girl made me weep.
My white burial gown, with branches of yew,
Oh, prepare it!
The song is so complete a piece of lyric darkness that it cannot be dismissed as a comic figure's casual production; it is the clearest evidence in the play that Shakespeare's gift was not only for comedy. Feste sings it for Orsino, who has asked for the song he heard the previous night; Orsino listens, pays Feste for the song, and asks him to leave. The exchange is the play's quietest acknowledgement of what Feste's range allows. The same musical-philosophical voice that can produce "Present mirth hath present laughter" for Sir Toby can produce "I am slain by a fair cruel maid" for Orsino, and both songs are equally authentic. The songs are the proof of how Feste carries his weariness: with verve and wit, and an air of knowing more than he says.
The Wise-Fool Exchange with Viola
A3S1 contains the play's most philosophically sustained exchange between two of its sharpest minds. Viola, disguised as Cesario, arrives at Olivia's house and encounters Feste on the way in. The exchange that follows is the play's clearest demonstration of why the licensed fool is the household's most professional figure.
Original
FESTE: Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines every where.
…
VIOLA: This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time…
This is a practise
As full of labour as a wise man's art...
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
FESTE: My foolery goes round the earth, like sun shines everywhere.
…
VIOLA: This chap is smart enough to act the fool,
And acting well requires intelligence.
He must assess the mood of those he mocks,
The type of person, and the time of day…
This skill
Is just as hard as every wise man's job...
The exchange is the play's most direct articulation of what the licensed fool actually does. Feste's "foolery walks about the orb like the sun" is one of Shakespeare's most-quoted definitions of his own comic profession – foolishness is everywhere, the line argues, and the licensed fool simply makes it visible. Viola's soliloquy in response, delivered after Feste exits, is one of the play's most generous tributes to the fool's craft. She names the technique exactly: the fool must "observe their mood on whom he jests, / The quality of persons, and the time." The work, she concludes, is "as full of labour as a wise man's art." The exchange has functioned for four centuries as the play's internal commentary on its own fool, and the framing has been widely accepted since. Feste is not a foolish figure; he is a professional performing a craft that requires more wit, not less, than the wise figures around him.
Sir Topas and the Dark Room
A4S2 is Feste's most morally complicated scene. Maria has produced a gown and beard; Feste is to dress as "Sir Topas the curate" and visit Malvolio in the dark room where he has been imprisoned as a madman. The scene's whole effect depends on whether the audience reads it as comic vengeance or as something darker.
Original
MARIA: Make him believe thou art Sir Topas the curate.
FESTE: Well, I'll put it on, and I will dissemble myself in't; and I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown. I am not tall enough to become the function well, nor lean enough to be thought a good student...
(Act 4, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
MARIA: Make him think you're Sir Topas the priest.
FESTE: I'll wear it and disguise myself completely, I wish I were the first fraudster to wear a gown like this. I'm hardly fat enough to look the part, nor thin enough to be thought a good student...
The scene is the play's darkest comic moment, and it works in two directions at once. From Sir Toby's and Maria's perspective, Feste is the perfect choice – a professional performer who can sustain the disguise convincingly enough to torment Malvolio in his dark cell. From the audience's perspective, the scene's longer-form cruelty has begun to exceed what comic vengeance reasonably requires. The scene sits at the boundary between festive comedy and something darker. The gulling has crossed a threshold from licensed misrule into something approaching abuse, and Feste – the licensed fool – is now operating not as the household's wit but as the agent of Sir Toby's malice. The play allows the comic register to dominate. Feste's "Sir Topas" Latin and his ventriloquised dialogue with himself are skilfully performed; Malvolio's pleas for paper and ink are answered with mock-theological wordplay. But the scene also contains the moment Feste does, briefly, take pity. He agrees, in his own voice this time, to bring Malvolio the materials to write to Olivia. The pity is small and inconsistent; the cruelty is sustained; the play does not resolve the tension. By A5S1 Feste will deliver Malvolio's letter and contribute, when the gulling is exposed, the line that explicitly names his own role: "thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges."
The Closing Song
The play ends with Feste alone on stage, the other characters all exited to their marriages and quarrels, and the song he sings is one of Shakespeare's most extraordinary epilogues.
Original
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.
…
A great while ago the world begun,
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.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
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.
…
A great while ago the world begun,
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.
The song is the play's final word, and the four-century critical tradition has not exhausted its meaning. Structurally, the song is a life-stages allegory – childhood, manhood, marriage, drunken middle-age, old age – set against the unchanging refrain of the rain. The refrain is what makes the song unsettling. The cheerful melody of "With hey, ho, the wind and the rain" runs through every verse, but the verses themselves track the disappointments of an ordinary life: the boy's toys give way to the man's locked gates, the marriage gives way to the drunkard's beds, the old man gives way to the world's indifference. The line "For the rain it raineth every day" is one of Shakespeare's most concentrated images of routine human disappointment, and the placement of the song at the end of a comedy that has just produced three marriages is structurally extraordinary. Comic resolutions, the song quietly suggests, do not abolish the rain. They are exceptions, not rules; the rain raineth every day before the comedy and will raineth every day after it. The final song has been read as the play's deepest acknowledgement of what comic resolution cannot do. The marriages of A5S1 are real; they are also small islands in a much longer weather system. Feste, alone on stage, is the figure who knows this.
"He carries his exhaustion with verve and wit, and always with the air of knowing all there is to know, not in a superior way but with a sweet melancholy."
— Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, 1998
Key Quotes by Feste
Quote 1
Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage...
(Act 1, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Many bad marriages are saved by hanging...
Quote Analysis: Feste's answer to Maria's warning that he will be "hanged" for his absence from the household. Instead of pleading, he turns the threat into a joke: hanging, at least, would spare a man a bad marriage. The gallows wit is characteristic. Feste meets every threat by reframing it, converting his own precarious position into material for performance, and the line is the play's first sign that his security depends entirely on being funnier than the people who could dismiss him.
A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit: how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
A funny sentence is just like a glove; one can invert it quickly inside-out.
Quote Analysis: Feste's theory of language, delivered to Viola in A3S1. A "cheveril" glove is made of soft kid leather that turns inside out with ease, and the image is exact for what Feste does with words: any sentence can be reversed, its meaning flipped, by a quick enough wit. The line is the fool's professional credo about language itself. Words have no fixed side; the skilled fool simply shows the audience the side they were not expecting, and the showing is the whole of his art.
I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words.
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I'm not her fool, but I corrupt her words.
Quote Analysis: Feste's sharpest piece of self-definition. He rejects the simple label "fool" and replaces it with something more precise and more unsettling: he is a "corrupter of words", a professional who works by twisting language until it yields the truth its speaker did not intend. The line distinguishes Feste from the household's other comic figures. Sir Andrew is a fool without knowing it; Feste is the opposite, a man who knows exactly what he is doing to language and does it on purpose.
I was one, sir, in this interlude; one Sir Topas, sir; but that's all one.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I was involved as well, sir, as Sir Topas, but that was all.
Quote Analysis: Feste revealing, in the final scene, that he was the "Sir Topas" who tormented Malvolio in the dark room. The admission is unforced and unrepentant – "but that's all one", a phrase he uses elsewhere to wave away what others might dwell on. It is the moment Feste claims his part in the gulling openly, and it leads directly into his "whirligig of time" line, in which he frames the whole episode as Malvolio's deserved comeuppance for the "barren rascal" insult of A1S5.
Key Takeaways
- The Licensed Fool: Feste's costume licenses him to speak truths no one else in the household can. He is the wisest figure in the play precisely because he is the one dressed as a fool.
- The Two Songs: "O mistress mine" and "Come away, death" sit at opposite emotional poles. Feste's ability to inhabit both, the carpe-diem and the lament, is the play's clearest demonstration of his range.
- The Wise-Fool Theory: The A3S1 exchange with Viola, "Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun", is the play's foundational statement of the wise-fool tradition.
- The Closing Song: The final song, "When that I was and a little tiny boy", is the play's most haunting epilogue. It quietly insists that comic resolution does not abolish the weather.
Study Questions and Analysis
What is the role of the licensed fool in Twelfth Night?
The "licensed fool" – also called the "all-licensed fool", in the phrase from King Lear – is a particular kind of dramatic figure in Renaissance comedy and tragedy: a household entertainer whose comic costume gives him the legal and social right to speak truths the household's other figures cannot. Olivia's own definition of the role in A1S5 is exact:
There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail...
(Act 1, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The words are not offensive from a fool, although he prattles on...
The "allowed" – licensed – is the operative word. The fool's costume is, in effect, a contract: he is permitted to say the otherwise unsayable, and in exchange he is paid a small wage and given a small social position. Feste is one of the most fully realised examples of the type in Shakespeare. He is welcome in both Olivia's house and Orsino's court; he moves between the two at will; he is paid by both. His function across the play is to articulate truths the principals cannot quite hear from each other. He catechises Olivia out of her mourning; he sings to Orsino the song that names his romantic melancholy as performance; he diagnoses Viola's disguise indirectly in A3S1; he plays Sir Topas in the dark room. The licensed fool is the only figure in the comedy with the social grammar to do these things, and Feste is the play's most consequential portrait of how the role operates.
How does Feste compare to Shakespeare's other fools?
The comparison is structurally illuminating. Shakespeare's licensed fools fall into a recognisable tradition – Touchstone in As You Like It, the Fool in King Lear, the Clown in All's Well That Ends Well – and each of them performs the wise-fool function in a different register. Touchstone is bookish and self-consciously witty; the Fool in Lear is anguished and prophetic; the Clown in All's Well is sharp and clinical. Harold Bloom's 1998 Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human calls Feste "the wisest and most resigned" of the type, combining the wit of Touchstone with a melancholy more sustained than either of the others. The most useful comparison is probably with the Fool in Lear, written two or three years later. The two fools share the function of speaking truth to a household figure in crisis, and both songs they sing carry the weight of philosophical observation. What distinguishes Feste is the comic generosity of his context: he is operating in a romantic comedy where the household's crises are recoverable, and his songs can be melancholy without being terminal. The Fool in Lear operates in a tragedy where the household is collapsing, and his songs carry the weight of impending catastrophe. The two figures share the same dramatic technique; the comedy/tragedy distinction gives them entirely different valences. Feste is also the only Shakespearean licensed fool given the play's closing speech – and the speech he delivers, the "When that I was" song, is the play's most direct acknowledgement of how lightly the comic resolution sits on the world the fool has been observing.
Why does Feste sing two songs of such different tone?
The contrast is one of the play's most-discussed structural choices. "O mistress mine" in A2S3 is the carpe-diem song – present mirth and present laughter, youth's a stuff will not endure, kiss me now while in your prime. "Come away, come away, death" in A2S4 is the most concentrated piece of romantic despair in any of the comedies – slain by a fair cruel maid, a shroud of white stuck all with yew, not a friend to greet the corpse. Two songs, the same singer, the same evening of stage-time. Several explanations operate together. Mechanically, Feste sings each song for a different audience: "O mistress mine" for Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the drinking-scene; "Come away, death" for Orsino, who has specifically requested an old song "silly sooth" that "dallies with the innocence of love." The licensed fool, as Viola's A3S1 soliloquy notes, "must observe their mood on whom he jests" – Feste is performing for each audience the song that fits the mood, and his range is the demonstration of his professional skill. Thematically, the two songs offer the play's two views of love side by side. "O mistress mine" is the comedy's view: love arrives, journeys end in lovers meeting, youth is brief but real. "Come away, death" is the tragedy's view: love is the agent of romantic devastation, the lover dies of the beloved's cruelty, the corpse is unmourned. Both views are present in the world the play depicts. William Hazlitt's 1817 Characters of Shakespeare's Plays reads "Come away, death" as evidence that Shakespeare's genius was "not only fitted for comedy." His gift for tragedy and his gift for comedy are, the two songs argue, the same gift operating at different tempos.
Is Feste cruel to Malvolio in the dark room?
The A4S2 scene is one of the play's most morally contested moments, and modern criticism has increasingly read it as the comedy's point of greatest difficulty. The structural facts are clear. Malvolio has been imprisoned in a dark room as a madman, on the strength of Maria's forged letter and Sir Toby's instigation. Feste arrives disguised as "Sir Topas the curate", speaks Latin and theology over the locked door, and conducts an extended piece of ventriloquised dialogue with himself in which "Sir Topas" tells Malvolio he is mad and "the fool" agrees. The scene is the most concentrated piece of psychological torment in any of Shakespeare's comedies, and Feste – the licensed fool, the voice of household wisdom – is its principal performer. Several readings have been offered. Defenders of the scene point to Malvolio's earlier behaviour: his moralising contempt for the household's pleasures, his unkindness to Feste in A1S5 ("a barren rascal"), his pursuit of Olivia on the strength of his own vanity. Critics point to the disproportion: the original provocation was Malvolio's moralising, and the punishment has escalated to confinement in a dark room with mock-clerical visitation. C. L. Barber's Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (1959) distinguishes the festive (recognisably comic) movement of the gulling from the post-festive (darker) movement, and locates the A4S2 scene at the latter end. The play does, briefly, allow Feste to take pity:
I will help you to't. But tell me true, are you not mad indeed? Or do you but counterfeit?
(Act 4, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I'll help you with it. Tell me first the truth: are you not mad or are you just pretending?
He agrees, in his own voice, to bring Malvolio paper and ink, and he eventually delivers the letter to Olivia in A5S1. But the scene's longer-form cruelty is sustained, and Feste's "thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges" in A5S1 – naming his own role explicitly – is one of the play's most ambivalent lines. The licensed fool has been used by the household for revenge, and the play does not, finally, absolve him.
What does Feste's final song mean?
The closing song is one of Shakespeare's most-discussed epilogues, and the meaning has been read in several ways. Structurally, the song is a life-stages allegory: boyhood, manhood, marriage, drunken middle-age, the world's antiquity, the play's end. Each verse occupies one stage; each verse is followed by the refrain "For the rain it raineth every day." The technique is one of Shakespeare's most economical pieces of philosophical compression. The verses change; the rain does not. Life-stages succeed each other; the weather of disappointment is constant. The placement of the song at the end of a romantic comedy is the structural choice that gives the song its meaning. The play has just produced three marriages – Orsino to Viola, Olivia to Sebastian, Sir Toby to Maria – and Feste's song refuses to celebrate them. The song does not say the marriages are wrong; it says they are exceptions. The rain raineth every day before and after the comic resolution, and the marriages do not change the weather. The song's closing couplet – "But that's all one, our play is done, / And we'll strive to please you every day" – folds the philosophical observation into a routine actor's farewell, but the routine is undercut by the line that has just preceded it. Modern criticism has read the song as the play's quietest acknowledgement of what comic resolution cannot do, and as one of the principal pieces of evidence that Twelfth Night is the darkest of Shakespeare's mature comedies. The marriages are real; the rain is also real; Feste, alone on stage, is the figure who knows both.
Why does Feste move freely between Olivia's and Orsino's households?
Feste's mobility between the two households is one of the play's quietest structural choices, and it is unique among the figures in Illyria. Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria, and Malvolio are confined to Olivia's household; Orsino's attendants (Valentine, Curio) are confined to his court; Viola as Cesario moves between the two only as a messenger. Feste alone visits both for his own purposes, and is paid by both, as his angling for a third coin from Orsino makes clear:
The triplex, sir, is a good tripping measure; or the bells of Saint Bennet, sir, may put you in mind; one, two, three.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The three-step is a splendid dance, or church bells might give you an idea of one, two, three.
The mobility has practical and structural explanations. Practically, the licensed fool was an itinerant professional – a household entertainer who could be loaned to a neighbour's house, paid in coin rather than salary, and welcomed for an evening's performance. Orsino's court contains no resident fool, and Feste fills the gap. Structurally, the mobility allows Feste to function as the play's connective tissue. He observes both households, sings for both, and is the only figure who can speak to Orsino about Olivia and to Olivia about Orsino with equal authority. The licensed fool's costume is, in this reading, the comedy's most efficient passport. Feste does not need a marriage to connect him to either household; he is connected to both by professional credential. The freedom is also what allows him the play's closing song. The other figures end the play in their respective households, paired off with their partners; Feste ends the play alone on stage, belonging to neither household, free to sing the song that the comedy cannot quite contain.
What is the "whirligig of time" line and why does it matter?
The line is Feste's, delivered to Malvolio in A5S1 after Malvolio has been released from the dark room and is demanding to know how the gulling came about:
And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And so, what goes around will come around.
The "whirligig" is a child's spinning toy, and the metaphor is exact – time, the line argues, spins like the toy, and the spinning eventually brings each figure back to a position from which the consequences of his earlier actions can be felt. Feste is naming his own role in the dark-room scene; he is also naming the principle by which all of the play's punishments and rewards have been distributed. Malvolio mocked Feste in A1S5; the whirligig of time has brought him to the dark room. Sir Toby exploited Sir Andrew; the whirligig has brought him a broken head. Olivia swore off men for seven years; the whirligig has brought her Sebastian. The line is also the play's quietest acknowledgement of the comedy's mechanism. The marriages and the punishments of A5S1 are not random; they are the spinning-out of consequences earlier scenes have set in motion. What the line concedes is that this is "revenge" – that the comic mechanism is, in part, retributive. Malvolio's response to the whirligig is the play's most concentrated piece of unaccommodated feeling: "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you." The whirligig has, the line implies, not yet finished spinning.
