Inheriting The Motley Mantle An Actor Approaches Playing The Role Of Feste, Shakespeare's

176 Pages·2017·1.51 MB·English

UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff CCeennttrraall FFlloorriiddaa
SSTTAARRSS
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019
2011
IInnhheerriittiinngg TThhee MMoottlleeyy MMaannttllee AAnn AAccttoorr AApppprrooaacchheess PPllaayyiinngg TThhee
RRoollee OOff FFeessttee,, SShhaakkeessppeeaarree''ss UUppddaattee OOff TThhee LLoorrdd OOff MMiissrruullee
Andrew Clateman
University of Central Florida
Part of the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons
Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd
University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu
This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for
inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more
information, please contact [email protected].
SSTTAARRSS CCiittaattiioonn
Clateman, Andrew, "Inheriting The Motley Mantle An Actor Approaches Playing The Role Of Feste,
Shakespeare's Update Of The Lord Of Misrule" (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019.
2023.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/2023
INHERITING THE MOTLEY MANTLE: AN ACTOR APPROACHES PLAYING THE ROLE
OF FESTE, SHAKESPEARE’S UPDATE OF THE LORD OF MISRULE

By

ANDREW CLATEMAN
B.A.Brown University, 1989

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Fine Arts
in the Department of Theatre
in the College of Arts and Humanities
at the University of Central Florida
Orlando, Florida

Spring Term
2011
© 2011 Andrew Clateman

ii
ABSTRACT

Playing role of Feste in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night presents a
complex challenge to the actor. Feste is at once a character in the world of the play
and a clown figure with specific dramatic functions having roots in the Lord of
Misrule of the English holiday and the Vice of the morality play. How can the actor
playing Feste create a believable psychological portrayal that is aligned with the
functions Shakespeare assigns the role? And be entertaining as well? I suggest that
actor will benefit greatly from an exploration the traditional function of the clown
its development in society and literature before Shakespeare, and how
Shakespeare’s use of the clown developed, culminating in the writing of Twelfth
Night. The actor will thereby have a better understanding of what Shakespeare
might by trying to achieve with Feste,, and he (or she) may better find the
motivations for Feste’s sometimes-enigmatic words and actions, which will, in turn,
give shape and purpose to the clowning.
I put this thesis to the test in preparing for and playing the role of Feste in
Theater Ten Ten’s production of Twelfth Night in the spring of 2010 in New York
City. My research and preparation will include: a substantial immersion in much of
Shakespeare’s cannon, and viewing of performances of it (mainly on video); research on
the role of the clown, how it developed through history until Shakespeare’s time, and
how Shakespeare appropriated and developed that tradition, culminating in Feste; a
performance history of the role; a structural analysis of Feste’s role in Twelfth Night; a
character study of Feste; a rehearsal and performance journal documenting my ongoing
iii
exploration, challenges and choices. The main challenge, as I foresee it, is to arrive at my
own unique performance of Feste while fulfilling both my director’s vision and
Shakespeare’s intention.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 2: FESTE’S FOREBEARS IN ART, SOCIETY AND SHAKESPEARE ..................... 5
CHAPTER 3: FESTE’S STRUCTURAL ROLE IN THE PLOT OF TWELFTH NIGHT......... 20
CHAPTER 4: CHARACTER STUDY OF FESTE ............................................................................ 28
Feste’s Biography? .......................................................................................................................... 29
An Allowed Fool ............................................................................................................................... 30
Age? ...................................................................................................................................................... 31
Feste’s Final Song: His Life Story or the Story of His Life? .............................................. 32
Feste’s Philosophy and Relation to Religion ......................................................................... 33
Vengefulness? ................................................................................................................................... 35
A Melancholic? .................................................................................................................................. 37
Feste’s Wit .......................................................................................................................................... 38
Meta-Theatrical Elements as Part of Feste’s Character.................................................... 39
Sexuality ............................................................................................................................................. 40
CHAPTER 5: PERFORMANCE HISTORY AND PERFORMANCES VIEWED ..................... 42
Festes I’ve Seen ................................................................................................................................ 47
CHAPTER 6: MY PERFORMANCE OF FESTE.............................................................................. 51
Elements of the Characterization.............................................................................................. 52
Ageless and energetic ............................................................................................................... 52
Voice ................................................................................................................................................ 54
Motley? . ......................................................................................................................................... 55
Impish sexuality .......................................................................................................................... 56
Music and my drum ................................................................................................................... 57
Scene-by-Scene Description and Analysis ............................................................................. 59
Act 1, scene 5. ............................................................................................................................... 59
Act 2, scene 3. ............................................................................................................................... 67
Act 3, scene 1. ............................................................................................................................... 73
Act 3, scene 2 ................................................................................................................................ 77
Act 3, scene 4. ............................................................................................................................... 78
Act 4, scene 1. ............................................................................................................................... 81
Act 4, scene 2. ............................................................................................................................... 83
Act 4, scene 3. ............................................................................................................................... 88
v
Act 5, scene 1. ............................................................................................................................... 88
CHAPTER 7: REHEARSAL AND PERFORMANCE JOURNAL ................................................. 95
Audition and Preparation for First Rehearsal ..................................................................... 96
Rehearsals ........................................................................................................................................ 107
The Performance Run .................................................................................................................. 143
CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 164
LIST OF REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 168
vi
INTRODUCTION

The role of Feste in Twefth Night is arguably Shakespeare’s quintessential clown
creation and as such presents a distinct honor and challenge to the actor who gets to play it.
In almost every one of his plays, Shakespeare created roles of varying size for the actor
considered the clown of the theatrical company. Of all these roles, Feste has the most lines,
the most constant stage presence and most integral function to his play. In Feste,
Shakespeare combined the many facets and functions of the clown roles he had been
developing. Through Shakespeare, Feste stands at the apogee of the development of the
clown in society and art to that point, and as a clown character in a play, he has not been
surpassed. The actor may more fully appreciate the honor and approach the challenge of
playing Feste by gaining a fuller understanding of Feste’s place in the spectrum of
Shakespeare’s clown creations and the point on the continuum of the development of the
clown in art and society he represents.
The challenge of playing Feste has many elements. Not only is Feste a character in
a play, he functions as an actual clown, an entertainer with a particular array of talents,
including singing, dancing, ability to perform physical humor. Feste, more essentially than
the other characters in Twelfth Night, is also a theatrical device serving several functions.
He is figure that stands apart from the story itself, who comments on the action of the play;
directly, though his words; indirectly, through his very being. He juggles with levels of
reality and has a special and direct connection with the audience. Feste fulfills many of the
1
time honored functions of the clown of Elizabethan culture (as well as cultures prior and
contemporary to it) and it will inform the actor’s choices to gain an appreciation of how
those functions function in the world of Twelfth Night. The most essential of those
functions is as a subtle version Lord of Misrule, the leader of festivals of Saturnalia (Twelfth
Night among them) and living up to this mantle requires genuine subversive energy. It is
also crucial to appreciate that Feste was created for an actual clown whose fame in London
was approaching its zenith, the urbane Robert Armin, who had just replaced the rustic
clown Will Kemp as Shakespeare’s company clown, and that Shakespeare and his audience
were mutually aware of this development and the ironies of having such an ascendingly
popular clown play a clown in a play.
On top of these considerations, the actor must, in conjunction with the director’s
vision, determine and arrive at particular balance between the comic and melancholy
elements of Feste’s character. On the comic side, the actor has to contend with Feste’s
complex and often obscure brand of humor. As a court fool, Feste’s humor based in tricky
wordplay, as opposed to the more accessible low humor of the rustic clowns of the first half
of Shakespeare’s career. He is not even intended to be the funniest character in the play,, as
the belly laughs belong to the situation and character-based humor of the other comic
characters. It will likely be a frustrating paradox to the actor playing Feste that
Shakespeare’s quintessential clown has a hard task getting laughs. Perhaps as a partial
response to this frustration, as well as to evidence in the text, there has been a trend in
recent decades to emphasize the melancholy aspects of Feste’s character. In trying to
reconcile these elements, I found it helpful to work with the understanding that
2
Shakespeare intended Feste’s humor to be more thought provoking and effective than
hilarious. Feste is the wisest guy in the room if not always the funniest. Yet, Feste must still
be funny to be effective.
Originally, I set out to create a one-actor performance piece that would explore
Shakespeare’s clown roles as a collective. In 2007, I played Fool in King Lear (for Northeast
Shakespeare Ensemble), Shakespeare’s most significant clown role in the context of a
tragedy. In 2009, with this thesis idea in mind, I got to play Dromio of Ephesus in The
Comedy of Errors (again for NESE), perhaps Shakespeare’s earliest rustic clown. While
working on that role and in the months after, I prepared for the performance project by
reading or rereading the majority of Shakespeare’s plays so I could deepen my personal
understanding of Shakespeare’s oeuvre as a whole and the role of the clown within it.
Although I was greatly informed and inspired by this exploration, I felt the need to
narrow my focus. Fortuitously, I was offered the opportunity to play Feste in Theater Ten
Ten’s production of Twelfth Night in the spring of 2010. It seemed a perfect confluenence:
a perhaps-once-in-a-lifetime chance to play Shakespeare’s quintessential clown role and
streamline my thesis topic, utilizing my ongoing research on the clown roles in toto. My
work toward a performance piece Shakespeare’s clowns should be that much richer for
having focused so intensely and intimately on Feste.
As a serendipitous coda to the experience of playing Feste for Theater Ten Ten, I
also was cast as Malvolio in very different production of Twelfth Night for Connecticut Free
Shakespeare (CFS). I got to watch a very wonderful and very different performer tackle the
role of Fesete (from the vantage point of his nemesis) with a director whose vision of the
3