Twelfth Night Fools and Foolishness Quotes

Misprision in the highest degree! Lady, cucullus non facit monachum; that’s as much to say as I wear not motley in my brain. Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5. Lady Olivia’s clown Feste says this after she brands him a “dry fool” and orders him to be taken away. He is telling Olivia, in Latin, that “the cowl does not make a monk.” In other words appearance isn’t always the reality and she shouldn’t judge a book by the cover. While he may look the part of a fool, it does not make him foolish or without wit. And he will prove she is the fool – Olivia has gone into mourning for seven years for a brother who didn’t die recently. We come to learn that Feste is one of the play’s most intelligent characters.

OLIVIA: Take the Fool away.
FESTE: Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the Lady…
FESTE: Good madonna, why mournest thou?
OLIVIA: Good fool, for my brother’s death.
FESTE: I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
OLIVIA: I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.
FESTE: The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5. Feste may play the role of court fool. But he has enough awareness to see the foolishness of his mistress Lady Olivia’s seven years of mourning for a brother who is in a better place.

Daylight and champaign discovers not more. This is open. I will be proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-device the very man. I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me; for every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me. She did commend my yellow stockings of late, she did praise my leg, being cross-gartered, and in this she manifests herself to my love, and with a kind of injunction drives to these habits of her liking. I thank my stars, I am happy.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5. A puffed-up Malvolio, having read the fake love letter from his employer Olivia, seems to lose his puritanical reserve and throw caution to the wind to further his ambition. Which is to rise in the world from servant to nobleman and rid himself of lower-class acquaintances. He is convinced that he is not fooling himself that Olivia loves him! Oh it’s definitely love, but love of self, for the only one that loves Malvolvio is Malvolio. So much so that he cannot separate appearance from reality.

This is a practice
As full of labour as a wise man’s art,
For folly, that he wisely shows is fit,
But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 1. Viola says that Feste’s wit takes a lot of intelligence and requires as much work as a learned and wise man. The wise, on the other hand, damage their reputation when they try to play the fool. The last line can be read as a reference to Malvolio, who early in the play puts on the airs of an educated scholar but lets himself down badly as he reveals his ambitions to rise above his station.

Go, hang yourselves all! you are idle shallow things: I am not of your element.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4. Malvolio’s bitter response to the mocking concerns of Maria, Fabian and Sir Toby for him, after the Lady Olivia thinks he has gone mad. He talks down to them like they are fools of a lower intellectual class, when he is the one who looks a fool dressed in his yellow stockings and believing he could marry his employer Olivia. His ego and foolish ambition have brought him only ridicule.
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