I found “Sir Topas” to be such an interesting character. On one level the situation is funny; Feste, a clown pretending be a serious old scholar provides timeless comedy. Even though it is essentially another situation where a person of lesser status presumes to be of higher regard, the scene where Feste pretends to be a parson is something I found myself able to laugh at. Somehow it is different from the way the A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s mechanicals are supposed to be humorous in their presumptuousness. While I felt uncomfortable by this in the last play we read, I laughed out loud when I saw the “Sir Topas” performance clip in class. Another reason I liked this scene was because the role seems so fitting to Feste as he consistently demonstrates his depth of understanding through his wit. Viola comments, “This fellow is wise enough to play the fool/ And to do that well craves a kind of wit” (3.1.53-54). Is the timelessness of humor in this situation purely because Feste is better educated and able to defend himself with his wit? What do you guys think about this?

Another aspect of the scene that we discussed in class and that I find so interesting is the way madness is discussed between Sir Topas and Malvolio. I think it showed some insight into the mixture of religion and science at the time. When I was reading act IV I struggled to identify Sir Topas’s exact profession. There may have been a definite answer and I missed it, but I think that the ambiguity behind whether Sir Topas is a doctor or a parson reflects the way religion and science were bound up together and also at odds with each other in the 16^th century. He is called “parson” (4.2.11) and “curate” (4.2.20), but at the same time sets out to diagnose a mental disorder through “a trial” (4.2.45) with questions about Pythagoras. For many people in the middle ages the primary avenue to scholarship was through the church. Some believe that later when the Scientific Revolution was birthed it came out of a blend of church and science, which is exhibited in Sir Topas. Pythagoras is a philosopher we credit for mathematical ideas we still hold today, but he clearly had a mix of religious beliefs that many might call outdated. Another example of the mixture of science and religion is in the definition of madness. The one that is given is subjective; Malvolio does not agree with Pythagoras’s philosophy on the soul, therefore Feste declares him mad. Further ignorance, or living “in darkness,” was associated with an afflicted soul. Evil spirits are determined to be the cause of Malvolio’s madness. The irony in all this is that a fool is the one under the beard who is expressing all these ideas. Once he takes the beard off he says, “I’ll ne’er believe a madman till I see his brains.” The mixture of pseudoscience continues. He could either mean until an enlightened mind is demonstrated, or it could be taken literally to mean until an autopsy is performed. The distinction between scientific methods of understanding the world and religion-based epistemology is voiced by the fool—but this fool is arguably the most clear minded character in Twelfth Night. What do you guys think about this two-fold analysis of the Feste’s line, “I’ll ne’er believe a madman till I see his brains”?