TWINS AND SHAKESPEARE’S RECONSTRUCTED FAMILY
By
Barrie Hesketh
2011 April
[I am grateful to Philippa Comber for her careful reading and generous assistance]
In 1596, Shakespeare lost his only son, Hamnet, a twin to Judith. Hamnet was eleven when he died. One can only speculate as to the cause but what we do know is that life was cheap and death was all around. In Tudor times, the average lifespan was thirty-five years.
Early on in Shakespeare’s career, it is known that two of his Stratford friends, Fulke Sandells and John Richardson, died. This was followed by the death of Thomas Webbe, another acquaintance from Stratford, in 1598, a year that also saw off James Burbage, builder of London theatres, himself an actor and father of another, the famous Richard Burbage.
In 1601, Shakespeare lost his own father and two more friends from Stratford: the shepherd Thomas Whittington, thought to have been the model for Adam in As You Like It; and the much-revered vicar, Richard Barton, who had officiated at the baptism of Hamnet and Judith. In 1602 it was the turn of Shakespeare’s cousin, John Lambert – not greatly missed, I imagine, since the Shakespeares had twice taken him to court over land owned by them rather than Lambert (on both occasions, they lost the case). Much closer to Shakespeare’s heart, I think, would have been the loss the same year of Richard Quiney, an old friend of the family. Five years later, in 1607 or thereabouts, Adrian, Richard Quiney’s father, died; and in 1608, Shakespeare’s mother, Mary. 1608 was the year – or so it is thought – that he wrote Coriolanus, a play containing a scene between the hero and his mother in which Coriolanus, foundering on loss and grief, is left speechless – or is it the author who for a second cannot speak?:
(Coriolanus holds her by the hand, silent)
He recovers and continues in the manner of the play:
O mother, mother!
What have you done? Behold the heavens do ope,
The gods look down, and this unnatural scene
They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O!
(V. iii. 182)
Then there is King John, written in 1596, including the scene in which Constance grieves for the loss of her son, commonly held to be a reflection of Shakespeare’s own sadness. Though the play as a whole is thought to have been written before Hamnet died, there is no practical reason why Shakespeare might not have interpolated the scene at a later date, even of his having borrowed phrases uttered by his grieving wife and daughters for the purpose.
It seems strange to me that the actual death of Constance’s son, Prince Arthur, comes after the scene when his mother bewails his loss, with no hint of hope that his life could be saved (III.iv). In my experience, when the scene is performed on stage, this oddity is barely noticed, if at all.
Here is the passage that tells of her grief:
Pandulph You hold too heinous a respect for grief.
Constance He talks to me that never had a son.
King Philip You are as fond of grief as of your child.
Constance Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief
Fare you well. Had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.
(She undoes the binding round her hair)
I will not keep this form upon my head
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son,
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world,
My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure! (Exit)
King Philip I fear some outrage, and I'll follow her.
(III. iv. 90)
We shall never know if Shakespeare added these words after the loss of Hamnet; or indeed, how the boy’s death affected his sisters, his twin Judith and Susannah – let alone Shakespeare himself. But there may be a clue as to how he thought about and responded to the death when we compare the two comedies in which twins feature in leading roles. The first, The Comedy of Errors, was written between 1590 and 1594, a few years before Hamnet’s death; and Twelfth Night, which came along a few years afterwards.
Hamnet and Judith were born in 1585. If they were five years old when their father was writing The Comedy of Errors, they would have been developing a sense of their place within the family circle; if, on the other hand, they were eight, they would be well on the way to becoming part of the wider world around them – the world of their parents’ friends and acquaintances and the local community.
The Comedy of Errors is the stage adaptation of a story from the Menaechmi of Plautus. Shakespeare turns it into a hilarious and well-crafted farce in which the single set of twins in the original story is joined by another set. This doubling up of twins multiplies the opportunities for confusion. If Shakespeare’s world was reflected in this play, it was a rumbustious and rosy one. If the incidence of tears is anything to go by – with only five references to weeping – it measures amongst the most carefree of the canon.
A few years later, between 1600 and 1601 or thereabouts, when Hamnet had been dead four or five years, Shakespeare returned to the theme of twins in Twelfth Night. On this occasion, it was not two sets of identical twins that attracted his interest, but a boy and a girl, an image of what had once been part of the reality of his own family.
The comparison between these two plays is poignant. The twins in The Comedy of Errors offer us unalloyed fun; not so, the twins in Twelfth Night. With the shadow of death never far away, the confusion they bring about belongs not to farce, but to romantic comedy – romantic comedy in which wistfulness and yearning are always in the air.
Twelfth Night is set in Illyria. Viola and her twin, Sebastian, have been separated during a shipwreck. Viola, safely washed ashore, hopes her brother has survived. Sebastian is safe, but not so sanguine: he believes his sister to be dead. And we in the audience experience – albeit briefly – their mutual dismay.
Having disguised herself as a young man, Viola sets out to seek her fortune at the court of Duke Orsino. Orsino is one of those who is for ever in love – but more in love with the idea of love than with an actual person; a bit of a softy, a bit fickle, he currently fancies himself smitten by the charms of a well-to-do lady, the Countess Olivia.
For her part, however, Olivia forbids Orsino to pay court to her since she, too, is in mourning for the loss of a brother – and of her father. According to Valentine, a courtier, she intends to “abjure the sight of men” for seven years, and
like a cloistress she will veiled walk,
And water once a day her chamber round
with eye-offending brine: all this to season
A brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh
And lasting, in her sad remembrance.
(I. i. 29)
These are sad tidings with which to open a comedy. Why the playwright brought in an extra death – that of Olivia's father – might be explained by the underlying workings of Shakespeare’s own grief. In an age when to have a son was all-important, something would have died within him the moment he lost Hamnet. To be left as the father of two girls was cold comfort: they represented a liability, needing to be watched and expecting substantial dowries so as to attract husbands.
Notwithstanding Olivia’s self-imposed sequestration, the Duke sends Viola, whom he thinks of as a “dear lad”, to woo Olivia on his behalf. As is the way of comedy, this brings in its wake a raft of complications. Viola falls madly in love with Orsino; and though she does not relish being the go-between, she plays her part and delivers the Duke’s message, suffering all the agonies of unrequited passion in the process.
Furthermore, because Viola maintains her identity as a young man, Olivia falls in love with her; and so the merry-go-round keeps up its pace. But the ride is not easy, nor is it gentle. Sir Toby Belch and his companions – who introduce an element of knockabout comedy – play a cruel trick on the “most notoriously abused” Malvolio, Olivia’s steward. Then there is Feste, the clown, always ready with a song about life's melancholy, as in “When that I was and a little tiny boy”, “Come away, come away death” and “O mistress mine, where are you roaming?”
As the end of the play approaches, it is time for the twins, Viola and Sebastian, to be brought back together; it is here, however, that Shakespeare’s own unresolved grief brings in a note of sadness to what should have been an unalloyed happy reunion. Viola and Sebastian recognise each other by a shared memory – that of the father who died on their thirteenth birthday:
Viola My father had a mole upon his brow.
Sebastian And so had mine.
Viola And died that day when Viola from her birth
Had numb'red thirteen years.
(V.i.234)
The fact that Shakespeare makes nothing more of the “unlucky” number thirteen does not mean it isn’t worth taking into account. The favoured source of the plot is an Italian play, Gl' Ingannati (The Deceived Ones), from which Shakespeare borrowed the heroines, one of whom is Lelia, a marriageable thirteen-year-old girl who has adventures similar to those of Viola.
We know from Romeo and Juliet that thirteen was the age when girls were put on the marriage market. Though rarely in practice, it was the age representing the threshold of a fertile life.
It is thought that Twelfth Night was written between 1598 and 1602; and if thirteen is subtracted from 1598, we arrive at the date of the twins’ birth, 1585. Although scholars favour the later date for when the play was written, the psychological evidence supports the earlier one, the date of the twins’ birth – indicating, rather, the year in which the play was originally drafted or conceived.
Grieving has its seasons. For some, it comes pat on cue, immediately following the loss; for others, it retreats into the shadows and waits, sometimes for years, before making its appearance.
When Shakespeare wrote The Comedy of Errors, he was the father of three young children, Hamnet, Judith and Susanna, the elder sister by two years. After 1596, only the two girls and the memory of Hamnet remained to him.
It is my contention that the actual loss – along with the imaginary reconstruction of Shakespeare’s original family – is a thread that runs through Twelfth Night from beginning to end.
A popular version of the theatrical convention of the time was for a girl (played by a boy) to play the part of a youth; and Viola is only one among several of Shakespeare’s young women to do this (others include Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Rosalind in As You Like It, Imogen in Cymbeline, Portia and Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice). But because Viola is a twin, her disguise serves two purposes: one to hide her identity from the other characters in the play; the other, through the workings of the dark side of her mind, to take on the imago of the brother feared dead. In other words, for a while, she replaces Sebastian.
The names “Viola” and “Olivia” are linked anagrammatically, but with the “i” (the first person singular?) missing from “Viola”. And whilst the two women share the experience of the loss of a father and a brother, the strongest link of all will come after the play has ended. Once the marriage ceremonies have taken place, we may imagine the relationship between Viola, Olivia and Sebastian to take on a special meaning for Shakespeare – one which is foretold by Olivia and Orsino (my comments in italics and square brackets):
Olivia (To Orsino) My lord, so please you, these things further thought on,
To think me as well a sister, as a wife [as he had first intended],
One day shall crown th'alliance on't, so please you,
Here at my house, and at my proper cost.
Orsino Madam, I am most apt t’embrace your offer.
[i.e. to become not her husband, but her brother-in-law]
[To Viola - speaking of himself]
Your master quits you; and for your service done him,
So much against the mettle of your sex,
So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,
And since you call’d me master for so long,
Here is my hand; you shall from this time be
Your master's mistress. [i.e. he is to marry her]
Olivia A sister; you are she.
(V. i. 306)
I find this cry of Olivia's deeply touching. The women’s bond is now about to take on the strength of a legalised tie: when Olivia marries Sebastian, she becomes Viola’s sister-in-law, thus creating for Shakespeare, in fantasy and as near as the law allows, his original family of children – twins, a boy and girl, and an elder daughter.
The character of Orsino has been criticised for being the portrayal of someone who transfers his affections too easily from one mistress to another. In my view, it is his very vapidness that is important – thereby allowing no serious obstacle to get in the way of Shakespeare achieving the personal imperative of bringing back a son into the family. An actual reconstruction of the original family was never going to be possible, so this was the nearest that could be devised. The play reaches its happy ending with Shakespeare’s family complete and reunited, with twins and a sister – albeit a sister-in-law.
