In a discussion of Twelfth Night last Friday, my British literature survey class discussed the challenges of a first date. The scene that sparked our conversation is the one where Viola, passing as a man, carries Orsino’s love proposal to Olivia. Of course Olivia falls in love with Viola instead.
We started talking about Orsino’s decision to send an emissary rather than show up himself. The issue comes up because, in the famous willow cabin speech, Viola notes that she would show up in person if she were the one in love:
Viola: If I did love you in my master’s flame,
With such a suff’ring, such a deadly life,
In your denial I would find no sense,
I would not understand it.
Olivia: Why, what would you?
Viola: Make me a willow cabin at your gate
And call upon my soul within the house,
Write loyal cantons of contemnèd love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Hallow your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out ’Olivia!’ O, you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth
But you should pity me.
I asked how hard it was these days for a guy and a girl to get together. In my own case, I reminisced, I was so fearful of being rejected that, like Orsino, I sat around my room in painful longing. Just as Orsino has his music (“If music be the food of love, play on”), so I had my record player and listened endlessly to Joan Baez and Simon and Garfunkel. Like Orsino, I came off a bit like a wiimp. It was not an effective courting strategy.
Would life have been easier if I’d had an emissary to send? The class volunteered that they now have electronic emissaries. There are cell phones and texting and instant messaging and twitter and (particularly useful in the courtship game) Facebook. Now couples can have long conversations before they even meet.
So does this mean, I asked, that we no longer have the old problems. Somehow I knew the answer would be no.
And I was right. The problems, they said, are still there. First of all, imagine having the first face-to-face conversation after always having been able to edit one’s words before. In Twelfth Night, Viola shows up with a memorized speech and then is at a loss when Olivia tells her to forego it:
Viola: I will on with my speech in your praise, and then show you the heart of my message.
Olivia: Come to what is important in’t. I forgive you the praise.
Viola: Alas, I took great pains to study it, and ‘tis poetical.
Olivia. It is the more like to be feigned.
And then there’s the problem of projection. In their electronic communications, both have been sending out idealized pictures of themselves and having idealized fantasies of the other. They are like Orsino, how has such an elevated images of Olivia that she could never live up to it.
Viola has an advantage in the dating game, however, and it’s not just speaking on behalf of someone else. As another woman, she doesn’t view Olivia (as my student Shannon Hager put it) as a china doll upon a pedestal. She is able to cut through the gender divide and treat Olivia as a flesh and blood woman.
For example, she leaves her prepared remarks and asks to see Olivia’s face. Then she asks her whether she is seeing her actual complexion or a cosmetic job. The ensuing compliment is far more direct and powerful than any prepared speech could possibly be:
Viola: Good madam, let me see your face.
Olivia: Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face? you arc now out of your text: but we will draw the curtain and show you the picture. [ Unveiling.] Look you, sir, such a one I was as this present: is’t not well done?
Viola: Excellently done, if God did all.
Olivia: ‘Tis in grain, sir; ’twill endure wind and weather.
Viola: ‘Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on:
Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive,
If you will lead these graces to the grave
And leave the world no copy.
Olivia: O! sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out divers schedules of my beauty: it shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labelled to my will: as Item, Two lips, indifferent red; Item, Two grey eyes, with lids to them; Item, One neck, one chin, and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me?
Viola: I see you what you are: you are too proud;
But, if you were the devil, you are fair.
This is woman-to-woman talk, beyond the reach of any man (certain of Orsiono’s male emissaries). No wonder Olivia falls in love with Viola. She feels understood in a deep way.
Now, a married couple can learn to develop that kind of directness. But how does one past those early stages. As I say, my students say that it remains difficult, even with all the electronic communication devices they have
In fact, they pointed out one problem I didn’t know existed. I’ve been struck how students today so often go around in groups. In these cases, I noted, the two people will have known each other personally. Does that make dating easier, I wondered.
Well, no, I was told. Apparently, moving from a group identity and a paired identity poses its own set of challenges. One student noted that “you know him, but not in that way.” Again, there is a painful dance involved in the minefield that is the sharing of vulnerability.
So how does Twelfth Night help us with the early stages of dating. First of all, it gives us images for how hard it is. That’s useful. It also assures us that the other person is flesh and blood and not a pedestal object—so if we can work on being genuineourselves, we may break through.
And if not? Well, at lest we’ve upped our odds. Viola gets further than Orsino.
