An Echo Chamber for Narcissus: Notes
An Echo Chamber for Narcissus: Mythological Rewritings in Twelfth Night
[This paper was first published in Cahiers Élisabéthains 66 (Autumn 2004), 23-28. Reproduced by kind permission of the General Editors.]
Notes
1. This paper was first delivered at the 2001 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Denver, Colorado, in a session entitled “Narcissus and Echo: Entangling Transformations”. Back to text
2. Gérard Dessons, Introduction à la poétique: approche des théories de la littérature (Paris: Nathan, 2000 [1995]), 15-38. Back to text
3. Leah Scragg, Shakespeare’s Mouldy Tales: Recurrent Plot Motifs in Shakespearian Drama (London, New York: Longman, 1992), 24-35. Back to text
4. Anthony Brian Taylor, “Shakespeare and Golding: Viola’s Interview with Olivia and Echo and Narcissus”, English Language Notes 15 (1977), 103-06. Back to text
5. D. J. Palmer, “Twelfth Night and the Myth of Echo and Narcissus”, Shakespeare Survey 32 (1979), 73-78. Back to text
6. Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Back to text
7. Pierre Iselin, “Écho, ou la répétition dans Twelfth Night”, Twelfth Night: le langage en fête, ed. Jean-Jacques Chardin (Paris: Éditions Messene, 1996), 77-87. Back to text
8. A. B. Taylor himself has carried on with his inquiry. He published another note in 1997, followed by an article. See “Narcissus, Olivia, and a Greek Tradition”, Notes and Queries 242 (March 1997), 58-61; and “Shakespeare Rewriting Ovid: Olivia’s Interview with Viola and the Narcissus Myth”, Shakespeare Survey 50 (1997), 81-89. Taylor focuses on Olivia’s interview with Viola in Act I Scene 5, and sets up an opposition between Olivia/Narcissus and Viola/Echo. Back to text
9. Quotations of Twelfth Night are from the Arden edition, second series. Back to text
10. Quotations of Ovid are from Shakespeare’s Ovid Being Arthur Golding’s Translation of the Metamorphoses, ed. W. H. D. Rouse (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1961), III, ll. 427-642. Back to text
11. Palmer, “Twelfth Night…”, 74-75. Back to text
12. Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid, 148. Back to text
13. Iselin, “Écho, ou la répétition…”, 81-82. Back to text
14. For a detailed analysis of this first scene, see Pierre Iselin, William Shakespeare: Twelfth Night (Paris: CNED-Didier Érudition, 1995), 24-31. Back to text
15. Palmer, “Twelfth Night…”, 73. Back to text
16. René Girard, A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 113. Back to text
17. Palmer, “Twelfth Night…”, 74; Taylor, “Narcissus, Olivia…”, 59. Back to text
18. Girard, A Theater of Envy…, 115. Back to text
19. Marie-Madeleine Martinet, Le miroir de l’esprit dans le théâtre élisabéthain: variations dramatiques sur une idée philosophique, littéraire et artistique (Paris: Didier Érudition, 1981), 171-76. Back to text
20. Cf. Olivia, “We’ll once more hear Orsino’s embassy”, I.5.168. My italics. Back to text
21. She insists on this point: “I would be loath to cast away my speech: for besides that it is excellently well penned, I have taken great pains to con it” (I.5.173-75), “I can say little more than I have studied, and that question’s out of my part” (I.5.179-80), “I will out with my speech in your praise, and then show you the heart of my message” (I.5.190-92), “Alas, I took great pains to study it, and ’tis poetical” (I.5.195-96). Back to text
22. Taylor, “Shakespeare and Golding…” Back to text
23. Later, she actually gives her picture to Viola: “Here, wear this jewel for me, ’tis my picture: / Refuse it not, it hath no tongue to vex you” (III.4.210-11). Back to text
24. Taylor, “Shakespeare and Golding…” Back to text
25. For an analysis of these lines, see Girard, A Theater of Envy…, 106-11. The author emphasizes the lack of differenciation between Olivia and Viola, and stresses the “reversibility of all narcissistic configurations”. Although the theory of mimetic desire focuses on Narcissus at the expense of Echo, instability remains a key word. Back to text
26. Girard, A Theater of Envy…, 110. Back to text
27. William Dodd, “‘So Full of Shapes is Fancy’: Gender and Point of View in Twelfth Night”, English Studies in Transition. ESSE Inaugural Conference (London, New York: Routledge, 1993), 149. Back to text
28. Iselin, “Écho, ou la répétition…”, 84. Back to text
29. Iselin, “Écho, ou la répétition…”, 84. Back to text
30. Pausanias, Description of Greece, with an English Tanslation by W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge, Massachussets: Harvard University Press, 1918-35), XXXI, 6-9. The Greek version of the myth is further studied by A. B. Taylor, who connects it with Olivia’s mourning for her brother (Taylor 1997a). Back to text
31. Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid, 149. Bate’s analysis becomes more ambiguous as it introduces another — darker — reading, in which Viola is finally reduced to the status of man’s echo, tamed like Shakespeare’s famous shrew. Back to text
32. Kenneth J. Knoespel, Narcissus and the Invention of Personal History (New York, London: Garland, 1985), 59-104, 108. Back to text
33. Knoespel, Narcissus and the Invention…, 104. Back to text
34. Knoespel, Narcissus and the Invention…, 110. Back to text
35. See Michèle Willems, “Double et déguisement dans Twelfth Night”, Aspects du théâtre anglo-saxon (Rouen: Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 1981), 59-75. See also Palmer, “Twelfth Night…”, 76; Martinet, Le miroir de l’esprit…, 120-24, 171, 175; Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid, 145-51. Back to text
36. Leonard Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism (New Haven,London: Yale University Press, 1986), 48. My italics. Back to text
37. See also Maria’s statement that he is “the best persuaded of himself” and thinks “that all that look on him love him” (II.3.149-50), which is in keeping with the popular conception that Narcissus exemplifies self-love and a tendency to overestimate one’s deserts. The latter is illustrated in Geoffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes (Menston: Scolar Press, 1969 [1586]), 149. Back to text
38. The characters of Orsino and Malvolio play on different traditions: one is Narcissus the long-suffering lover, while the other is Narcissus the embodiment of philautia, or self-love (Palmer, “Twelfth Night…”, 74). Back to text
39. According to Maria, Malvolio also learns fine phrases by heart, to repeat them in later conversations (II.3.148-49). He may thus appear as “a grotesque embodiment of both Echo and Narcissus” (Iselin, “Écho, ou la répétition…”, 72). Back to text
40. A detailed commentary on that passage is provided in William C. Carroll, The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 89-90. Back to text
41. Iselin, “Écho, ou la répétition…”, 86. Back to text
42. On this passage, see Ernest B. Gilman, The Curious Perspective: Literary and Pictorial Wit in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1978). The author analyzes the twins’ “natural perspective” (V.1.215) and connects it with Renaissance pictorial experiments. Back to text
How to cite
Charlotte Coffin. "An Echo Chamber for Narcissus: Mythological Rewritings in Twelfth Night." Cahiers Élisabéthains 66 (Autumn 2004), 23-28. Cited from A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Classical Mythology, ed. Yves Peyré. http://www.shakmyth.org/page/An+Echo+Chamber+for+Narcissus