Abstract
“…a people whose vocabulary lacks two words – ‘duty’ and ‘possession.’” Often scholars, students, and teachers need to use more than one academic discipline to come to an enriched understanding of a subject. The fields of Historical Anthropology, Literary Criticism, and Textual and Performative Analysis can usefully be employed to illuminate my thesis, that England’s Romani are at least one source for many of the transgressive figures that appear in his plays. Examples would include Poor Tom and The Fool in “King Lear”, the clown in Othello, and The Players in “Hamlet”. This paper will focus on Feste, in “Twelfth Night”, a character I believe to be modeled in part on the English Romani who proliferated along the sides of the country roads and on the wrong side of the Thames in the Taverns and Ordinaries, and with whom Shakespeare would have been familiar. I read the travelling musician, Feste, as a property-less wanderer, a free man, the voice of Time and Timelessness, a spirit of grace come among a fallen people, and Fate’s sorcerer. Such an approach casts new light on both the Romani of the Tudor period and on the play, and leads to the discovery of new ironies in both cases.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
SHAKESPEARE, ROMANI, FESTE, TWELFTH NIGHT
