Persuasive Twelfth Night

The overall ending of Twelfth Night is subversive, from Malvolio’s uncomfortable promises of revenge to Viola still in her Cesario attire after the grand unveiling of her identity. Feste’s song highlights these ambiguities: it is the only epilogue song with the exception of Love’s Labours Lost which is not celebratory (the latter being overshadowed by death). Feste’s lyrics emphasise the uselessness of material possessions when faced with the onslaught of time, and comes directly after Orsino’s professed desire to see Viola dressed as a queen, suggesting that this is a distraction at best, inherently dissatisfying at worst. The closing declaration that the players will “strive to please you every day” recalls Feste’s position as a professional performer and thus
The song in itself posed a staging problem for nineteenth century productions, many of whom removed it from context and attached it to the end of the play to serve as an epilogue song (Lindley, ‘Thematics’ 230) and yet its placement alongside Ariel dressing Prospero in his Milanese clothing offers it thematic significance. Just as Feste’s final song joins endings and beginnings, so too does Ariel’s song parallel his new freedom with Prospero’s return to his old position. Noble argues that the song and music in Twelfth Night are “not the indispensable factors in the presentment of the main theme [...] as have the lyrics in The Tempest” (13) and yet in this comparison the function of Feste and Ariel’s songs are similarly influential on the narrative. Just as in other elements, the specific songs in both plays subvert the generic expectations they set up, and help craft and activate the plot.
In Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Mind in General he argues that, in spite of the emotions that music