Twelfth Night Feste Quotes

Misprision in the highest degree! Lady, cucullus non facit monachum; that’s as much to say as I wear not motley in my brain. Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5. Lady Olivia’s clown Feste says this after she brands him a “dry fool” and orders him to be taken away. He is telling Olivia, in Latin, that “the cowl does not make a monk.” In other words appearance isn’t always the reality and she shouldn’t judge a book by the cover. While he may look the part of a fool, it does not make him foolish or without wit. And he will prove she is the fool – Olivia has gone into mourning for seven years for a brother who didn’t die recently. We come to learn that Feste is one of the play’s most intelligent characters.

OLIVIA: Take the Fool away.
FESTE: Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the Lady…
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.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5. Feste may play the role of court fool. But he has enough awareness to see the foolishness of his mistress Lady Olivia’s seven years of mourning for a brother who is in a better place.

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.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3. Feste sings of journeys that end up in lovers meeting. The song foreshadows the happy romantic ending to the play, when Viola and Orsino find love together and Olivia and Sebastian are wed. It is particularly directed towards Feste’s mistress Olivia – “your true love’s coming.”

SIR ANDREW: A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.
SIR TOBY: A contagious breath.
SIR ANDREW: Very sweet and contagious, i’ faith.
SIR TOBY: To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night owl in a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver? Shall we do that?

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3. Tony and Andrew are partying it up with Feste, whom they compliment for his sweet voice and catchy song.

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.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4. Feste the fool sings one of the most depressing love songs in Shakespeare for Orsino and Cesario (Viola). It is about a lover who dies of a broken heart, pining for his uncaring love. The song has particular meaning for Orsino and Viola. It could also be mocking Orsino and his desperate over-the-top passion for Olivia.

Now, the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4. Feste sings a song to Orsino, asking the Roman god Saturn – who ruled melancholy – to protect him. He suggests Orsino is moody and fickle with the mind of an opal, constantly changing. This foreshadows that Orsino will later switch his love from Olivia to Viola. Foreshadowed also in the scene are the two kinds of desire we find in Twelfth Night, the constant faithful love (Viola’s) and the fickle one that switches from one to another (Orsino’s).

VIOLA: Nay, that’s certain. They that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton.
FESTE: I would therefore my sister had had no name, sir.
VIOLA: Why, man?
FESTE: Why, sir, her name’s a word, and to dally with that word might make my sister wanton. But indeed words are very rascals since bonds disgraced them.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 1. Feste shows how words can be twisted and turned inside out like a glove. He picks on Viola’s using the expression “dally nicely” (play around) and jokes about a “wanton” woman and promiscuity.

This is a practice
As full of labour as a wise man’s art,
For folly, that he wisely shows is fit,
But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 1. Viola says that Feste’s wit takes a lot of intelligence and requires as much work as a learned and wise man. The wise, on the other hand, damage their reputation when they try to play the fool. The last line can be read as a reference to Malvolio, who early in the play puts on the airs of an educated scholar but lets himself down badly as he reveals his ambitions to rise above his station.
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