The Carnivalesque Role of the Fool in Twelfth Night and...

Twelfth Night and The Servant of Two Masters both relate to this course’s theme of the carnivalesque. Both plays share the commonality of having a clown, or a fool; in Twelfth Night it is Feste or the Fool, and in The Servant of Two Masters it is Truffaldino. Both characters play the fool in contrasting ways to express similar yet different forms of the carnivalesque. During carnival, laughter is prominent; people are laughing together, they are laughing at each other, and they are being laughed at. The laughter of carnival is both malicious and happy and everyone is included in it. Feste and Truffaldino show the different aspects of carnival laughter through their portrayals of the fool. Feste plays the role of the artificial fool†¦show more content†¦Truffaldino is too immersed in the action of the play to even notice the laughter of others. Because he is so wrapped up in what is going on, he isn’t able to stop and notice that everyone is laughing at h im. This is clearly shown in the dinner scene. Truffaldino is so busy trying to serve both masters that he misses the other waiters making fun of him and he misses how foolish he looks running back and forth from Beatrice’s room to Florindo’s room stuffing food in his mouth in between (Goldoni 129-134). Feste and Truffaldino both take part in trickery in their respective plays. Their motives behind doing the tricks show the different ways that each character plays the fool. Feste participates in the scheme against Malvolio by attempting to drive him insane by dressing up as Sir Topas and speaking nonsense. In response to Malvolio complaining that it is dark in the room, Feste says â€Å"Why, it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clerestories toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony. And yet complainest thou of obstruction?† (Shakespeare 4.2.34-36) Feste tells Malvolio that the room has two small windows that are as clear to see out of as if looking out of stone and that the windows facing south north are as clear as ebony. It makes no sense. Feste contributes to this prank out of revenge. Malvolio had wronged him in the past: I was one, sir, in this interlude, one Sir