doth know.What is love? 'Tis not hereafter, Present mirth hath present laughter.What's to come is still unsure.In delay there lies no plenty, Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.Youth's a stuff will not endure. (2.3:39-52)This song is performed at the ardent requests from Sir Toby and Sir Andrew for a "love-song." The song depicts the events of Twelfth Night itself. Feste clearly foreshadows the events that will occur later in the play. When he speaks of journeys ending "in lovers meeting," he hints at the resolution in which several characters are married. The song also echoes the merriment of the season and how the uncertainty of "what's to come" shouldn't be disquieting, but instead a driving force to take life as it comes and to live life to the fullest possibilities.In the scene with the clown's first song, since it involves dialogue between Feste and Sir Andrew, is quite ironic. It is ironic because the licensed fool is actually no fool at all and the true fool, Sir Andrew, is the character who provides most of the entertaining comedy through his idiocy. It is this interaction that reveals two kinds of fools, the conscious and the unconscious fool. In Twelfth Night it is the unknowing fools that provide the actual comedy, while the wise Feste adds insight to the greater meaning of the play. It is by his acting like a fool that Feste gains the privilege to speak the truth of the people around him. Through these truths, which are directed jokingly at another, Feste's keen perception of others emerges. Feste's intuitions and insights are comparable only to the perceptions of Viola. Both characters are the only ones who are involved in both houses, Orsino's and Olivia's, they rival each other in their respective knowledge of the events that are taking place at the two settings. Strangely, Viola is the only character who recognizes Feste's true intelligence: "This fellow is wise enough to play the fool, and to do that craves a kind o...
