How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (15 page)

The Taming of the Shrew
at Shakespeare’s Globe, with Samantha Spiro as Kate and Simon Paisley Day as Petruchio
(photo credit 14.2)

Passage 8
Cakes and Ale

Out o’ tune, sir? You lie. Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

(
Twelfth Night
, Act II, Scene 3, lines 113–15)

M
alvolio, the steward of Olivia’s household in
Twelfth Night
, is one of Shakespeare’s most remarkable comic creations. He’s a starchy stickin-the-mud who has aspirations of “marrying up” but then gets taken down a peg. Olivia tells him that he is
sick with self-love
and
taste[s] with a distempered appetite
. Yet in the end, we identify with his mortification and feel sorry for him.

The passage above is part of an exchange that occurs at a key moment in the play: We have met Orsino, Viola, and Olivia, and their crisscrossed love plot is well under way. The scene now shifts to a room in Olivia’s house after midnight, where Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are having a booze-up with Feste the jester and Maria the housekeeper. They are full of high spirits, drinking, dancing, and singing at the top of their lungs, when suddenly Malvolio storms in wearing his nightshirt and cries:

My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?
[Tinkers, who mended pots and pans for a living, were known for their drinking.]

Do you make an ale-house of my lady’s house …? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?

Ask your children: How do you think a hard-drinking, raucous man named Sir Toby Belch is going to respond to a scolding like that from a servant? We all know the answer: He’s going to give as good as he gets. He sneers back:

Out o’ tune, sir? Ye lie. Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

And here we have the nub of the exchange. “Do you think because
you’re
virtuous—because
you’re
upright and self-righteous—that the rest of us can’t have fun? That the rest of us can’t partake of life’s joys now and then?”

Out o’ tune, sir? Ye lie
.

The meaning of the words
Out o’ tune, sir?
is not entirely clear. It appears to mean that because Malvolio has belittled Sir Toby’s singing ability, Sir Toby is protesting. And now comes the sting:

Art any more than a steward?

Could Sir Toby possibly come up with a more pointed insult? It is clear in the story by this time that Malvolio thinks of himself as more than “just” a servant. He is Olivia’s right-hand man; he runs the household and gives advice; and he believes that Olivia values him as such. So for Sir Toby, a knight and a nobleman, to snap back “Do you think you’re anything more than a servant?!” is instantly degrading to Malvolio. And then of course, comes the remarkable epigram:

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

This is one of those moments when Shakespeare manages to crystallize an entire worldview into a few words. In this case, it’s the concept of duty
versus freedom, rules versus license, virtue versus cakes and ale. It is part of Sir Toby’s campaign in favor of the good life against the encroachment of death; the life of the artist versus a life unlived. The phrase
cakes and ale
has entered into our consciousness as if it were part of our vocabulary, and it even became the title of a best-selling novel published in 1930 by Somerset Maugham.

Epigrams

An epigram is a short, witty statement, often satirical, often depending on paradox for its effect. (Another word for it is
aphorism
.) The
cakes and ale
sentence is a perfect example of an epigram.

You should point out to your children that Shakespeare’s ability to create epigrams and weave them seamlessly into the dialogue of his plays is a significant, often undervalued aspect of the poet’s genius. Often when we talk about Shakespeare, we discuss those complex aspects of his art that we study in school: his imagery, his symbolism, his themes, his meaning. But a more down-to-earth aspect of his genius is this extraordinary ability to crystallize thoughts into memorable phrases:

Twelfth Night
at the Chichester Festival Theatre, with Paul Shelley as Sir Toby Belch, Patrick Stewart as Malvolio, and Michael Feast as Feste
(photo credit 15.1)

All that glitters is not gold
.

Parting is such sweet sorrow
.

Speak low if you speak love
.

Brevity is the soul of wit
.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be
.

Screw your courage to the sticking place
.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better
.

The lady doth protest too much
.

Frailty, thy name is woman
.

Fair is foul and foul is fair
.

A rose by any other word would smell as sweet
.

The better part of valor is discretion
.

It is a wise father that knows his own child
.

There are hundreds of them. Sometimes Shakespeare borrows the ideas from other writers. Sometimes he repeats ideas. And sometimes Shakespeare’s epigrams take the form of longer sentences, no less memorable than the shorter ones:

There is a tide in the affairs of men
,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune
.

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are

May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives
.

The point is that Shakespeare is brilliantly quotable in the best sense of the word.

Epigram Exercise

Ask your children to come up with a Shakespeare-like epigram. You could do it around the dinner table, and you could give them various topics to get things started:

• The young are sometimes wiser than older people
.

• Love can come upon us quickly
.

• Love is better when it takes time to happen
.

• Taking chances is the best way to live your life
.

• Most people are essentially good
.

These are the kinds of ideas that Shakespeare would turn into memorable sayings in the context of his plays. After your children try it, you should too, and then compare the results. In our household it has given us a greater appreciation of Shakespeare’s genius.

T
he Malvolio Plot in
Twelfth Night
is a virtually separate story from the Viola Plot, and it begins just after the
cakes and ale
moment. When Malvolio leaves the room after criticizing Sir Toby, the housemaid Maria comes up with a plan to get revenge: She’ll write a love letter to Malvolio, sign it “Olivia,” and drop it somewhere that Malvolio will find it. She also suggests that Sir Toby and Sir Andrew should watch Malvolio from a hiding place when he finds the letter, and that is exactly what happens two scenes later.

Tip for Budding Dramatists

Shakespeare, particularly in his comedies, uses this dramatic construction all the time. He has a character tell another character about something he’s
going
to do, and then he does it just the way he said he would. By setting up major comic scenes this way, Shakespeare accomplishes two things: He keeps the action crystal clear, and he adds a level of comedy that is fueled by our anticipation of what’s going to happen.

The Letter Scene

The next morning we see Malvolio walking in the garden, talking to himself about how wonderful it would feel to become “Count Malvolio”
by marrying Olivia. Then he spies Maria’s letter on the ground and says:
MALVOLIO

What employment have we here?…(taking up the letter) By my life, this is my lady’s hand! These be her very c’s, her
u’s,
and her t’s, and thus makes she her great P’s
.

P
for
pee
is a low joke, but a very good one because it’s so unexpected, and it never fails to get a big laugh in the theater.

Malvolio proceeds to read the letter aloud, and sure enough, he believes it’s from Olivia. In it, to his delight, he discovers (1) that “Olivia” is in love with him, and (2) that she would love him all the more if he did three things: smiled more, wore yellow stockings, and wore his leggings cross-gartered, a fashion whereby your garters were crisscrossed up the leg.

Needless to say, a few scenes later Malvolio appears before Olivia in yellow stockings, cross-gartered, and smiling as widely as his face will allow. Have your children act out the scene:
OLIVIA

How now, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO

Sweet lady, ho, ho!

OLIVIA

Smil’st thou? I sent for thee upon a sad occasion
.

MALVOLIO

Sad, lady? I could be sad. This does make some obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering, but what of that?…

OLIVIA

Why, how dost thou, man? What is the matter with thee?

Twelfth Night
at the Donmar West End at Wyndham’s Theatre, with Derek Jacobi as Malvolio
(photo credit 16.1)

MALVOLIO

Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs…

OLIVIA

Wilt thou go to bed, Malvolio?

MALVOLIO

To bed? “Ay, sweetheart, and I’ll come to thee.”

OLIVIA

God comfort thee!

At which point, Olivia is convinced that Malvolio has gone insane and puts him in the care of Sir Toby.

The next twist is a darker one: Sir Toby takes advantage of the situation and has Malvolio bound and put into a dark room. There he is tormented by Feste, the jester, who is dressed as a priest. Finally, at the end of the play, Malvolio complains bitterly to Olivia of his unfair treatment. She realizes that he has been put upon and promises him justice, but the much-abused man storms off bellowing