Yo en inglés

Durante el año 2010, cursando una de las materias de la carrera de traducción, se nos propuso que escribiéramos un trabajo de ensayo en torno a la obra “Noche de Reyes” (Twelfth Night) por William Shakespeare. Después de leer cantidad de artículos críticos propuestos, me encontré por casualidad (de hecho fue una casualidad aparecida de la nada en la caja de la fotocopiadora) con un artículo de Alberto Ure, quien puso en escena esta obra en Buenos Aires hace casi tres décadas. El artículo estaba incompleto, sólo había dos páginas y ni siquiera incluía el libro del que provenía, pero en los fragmentos que leí me trajo las preguntas con las que continuamente me enfrento en relación con el teatro una segunda lengua. ¿Qué representamos de nosotros mismos cuando hablamos otro idioma? ¿Qué se nos representa cuando escuchamos otro idioma? ¿Qué exaltamos? ¿Qué padecemos? Y sobre todo: ¿qué de todo esto es nuestra decisión y cuánto sucede “a pesar nuestro”?

Escribí entonces un ensayo en busca de algunas respuestas en la obra de Shakespeare, que desde el título nos habla del deseo: “what you will”. Les dejo aquí unos fragmentos y quien quiera adentrarse más en la lectura no tiene más que solicitarlo. Que disfruten:

Will and Fate each Other Shake:
Appearance and Reality in William Shakespeare´s Twelfth Night

El modelo del símil funciona muy bien en Argentina, incluso tiene espectadores
a los que les gusta ver un símil porque así se sienten ingleses,
“Si esta obra imita hasta lo tolerable a una obra inglesa –piensan, yo soy
hasta lo tolerable, o hasta lo posible, un espectador inglés.
Y soñar no ser argentino ha sido siempre una debilidad argentina. Alberto Ure (1)

In the experience of a represented act, both in life as in the theatre, there are elements that integrate any communicational system (a sender and receiver, a code, a message and feedback) and also the semiotic or symbolic constituents of a sing: signifier and signified. Which of these elements are in perfect command when senders and receivers of the communication are totally aware of the purpose of their representation, as in a theatre convention; and which of them escape them and rely on a conscious or even unconscious volitive element? Which are the motivations of the movement of this internal will?

The function of internal will in the distinction of appearance from reality is what gives the basis to the entangling of events in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night or What you Will and the purpose of the present study. Will appears as a force on both sides of the representation and it is the source of deceit and disorder as well as truth and restoration of balance. If this be true of the representational level of the characters of Twelfth Night, who constantly play to be what they are not but eventually reveal their true identities and motifs; how does this transfer to the motifs of theatre representation both in actors as in audience?

What is it that deceives us? What constitutes the matter of a “real proof”? What kind of evidence in an action, a gesture or a tone of voice in a person leads us to believe or distrust them? How are a person’s eyes, words, gestures, his or her handwriting, or a combination of two or more of the previous a clear evidence of their intentions? Or is it that we, as observers, are able to decide at any moment what to perform, what to believe and what not to? Are our senses enough proof of what we see, hear, read or seem to understand? And finally, as Fabian`s quote indicates, how is this affected if presented “upon a stage”?

The answer to these questions cover some of the themes in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What you will and are often grouped under the question of appearance and reality. Perhaps the first attempt at some answers in this respect is given in the very subtitle of the play, in a sort of indirect imperative that challenges us to wonder “what is it that we will” to believe in as opposed to what our senses or reason lead us to conclude. And at the same time, when our senses clearly mislead and we have to seek for other sources of proof of an apparent reality, what kind of information is ineludibly valid and what is not.

(…)

As can be noted, Twelfth Night is a play of representations. Representation becomes key in the internal structure of the play and a key factor that sustains the tension among the characters. Representation as a question of power or surrender, a triumph or defeat on what is perceived. Twelfth Night is also a play about the will for representation, the control of it in pursue of some desired effect or benefit. This works in both directions, too: as the will to represent and the will to believe what represented.

Twelfth Night is a play which reveals in its own theatricality, delighting in double- dealing, word- playing and illusion. Viola acts the part of a boy, Malvolio acts the part of a deluded lover. The meaning of words and the relationships between people are unstable and unsecure. Nothing is quite what it seems. A concern with the difference between appearance and reality runs all through the play,…(2)

(…)

Returning to the question of appearance and reality, representation becomes a sort of opposing force to fate as considered here. By the end of the play truth is restored and the masks fall. The deceived Malvolio is restored to his own self, the couples are matched after their “true loves” and real proof of the identity of the twins is believed. Nothing can be done or said against the power of fate. Balance is restored not through authority or divine intervention but by the clear collective representation of reality revealed, by the consummation of internal passion over any possible disguise.

It is therefore proposed that in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night -or What you will- appearance is shaped by a will for representation in pursue of some form of benefit; whereas reality outbursts from within characters themselves -even despite themselves- in any given form such as action, gesture or word, unaware of will, reason or benefit, as a triumph of a higher order, as unyielding fate.

(…)

Así entonces, en esta comedia, la gente se ama sin conocerse, se ama por lo que parece,
es decir, por eso que provoca la atracción. No hay ninguna certeza legalizable en el parecer y, además,
es algo cambiante; y en esos cambios está la diversión de la vida.
Alberto Ure (3)

So how is it possible that above all these representational levels and disguises and unheard revelations any sort of reality could possibly step in and take its place at a different level? How can these characters that never see what they see, hear what they hear, read what they read, believe in anything coming from their senses? The answer is: the same force that betrays them will be the one to convince them. They will once more believe what they will but at the end of the play, this will is of a different nature and it is in this sense that Shakespeare´s comedy is modern. The will of the end of the play emanates from the force of truth and is groupal and stronger than any disguise or any generated representation form. It is as inevitable as any collective force and it is what restores the balance lost. In Nunn´s version of the play, the scene of the revelation of Viola´s identity displays the visual tensions throughout the play in the different characters` walks toward each other as they drift the mood around the scene.

These plays are held together (Twelfth Night, A Comedy of Errors and As you like it) not by the nexus of external circumstance, but by the coherence of their spiritual substance. (…) They are the unified shape of an embodied idea, the representation of a created world which has become an organic universe because its very operation manifests the universality of its own proper laws (4)

(Perhaps the only critical point in the whole scene lies on the fact that in this version Antonio was aboard the ship all along and would be the first one to realise the twins are reuniting.)

Eventually, this scene leaves us with a play in which the restoration of balances leaves the spectator with a feeling of sympathy. Sympathy for human mind and soul, for our own human will and the disguises we put it as a less powerful tool. Sympathy for our innocence against the force of truth, for our internal struggle and our surrender in the end. This is represented by the final song in the play: humankind’s smallness against the power of nature, the cycle of life, its repetition. In Nunn´s version, visually emphasized with the fool running and singing in the greenest countryside.

For the rain it raineth every day. (5)

Charlton, in his distinction of Shakespearean comedy from classical comedy, classifies this play in a set, opposing them from the conservativeness of classical comedy. However, within the trio, Twelfth Night represents the consummation of this powerful insight into humankind. Charlton attributes this to the author’s old age:

Shakespeare’s vision of the depths of man’s suffering, of the essential tragedy of his lot, remains as his deepest insight into human destiny. Yet, though the tragedies abide as Shakespeare’s firmest grasp of ultimate truth, unaltered and unanswered by these last plays (Cymbeline, Winter’s Tale and The Tempest), there is nevertheless a pleasant recompense, if but a very partial mitigation, in these romances. They are an old man’s consolation for the inescapable harshness of man’s portion, a compensation which pleases the more because with the coming of age, something of the terror of the things the dramatist in his strength has hitherto seen has been blunted by the weakening in him of his power of imaginative vision. (6)

(…)

So if appearance is shaped by a will for representation in pursue of some form of benefit; whereas reality outbursts from within characters themselves -even despite themselves- unaware of will, reason or benefit, as a triumph of a higher order, as unyielding fate; if this is so in the Illyria play, how would it transfer to an audience of the major play, of ourselves of characters faced at the Shakespearean world in present times? In other words, what sort of benefit or pleasure do we pursue when we watch a play as Twelfth Night in the theatre?

El placer y el deseo aparecen como ajenos a la voluntad limitada de una persona. Es algo que va recorriendo a los seres humanos y hace con ellos absolutamente lo que se les ocurre.(7)

If this is so of the characters of Twelfth Night, it is so in ourselves as characters of life itself. We pursue our representational pleasure at watching or reading a Shakespeare play, whatever signifier this may carry in us individually or socially. In the line of our analysis, we may take as much pleasure as possible in our will for this representation of what we will in the shape of this play or any other play. However, in the end, when we go back home and turn on the lights at our Buenos Aires apartments, it is truth and fate that triumphs -as Shakespeare mastered- and the cycle of life, not representation, takes another turn.

Natalia Barry
November 2010

(1)Ure, Alberto, Noche de Reyes, p 299.
(2)Gibson, Red, What kind of play is Twelfth Night.p.157.
(3)Ure, Alberto. Op. cit. p. 302.
(4)Charlton, H.B, The Consummation. P. 277
(5)Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night,Act V, scene I. p. 97.
(6)Charlton, H.B, Op- cit. P. 267.
(7)Ure, Alberto. Op. cit.p. 302.