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The Twelfth Day Of December:
Twelfth
Night,
II.iii.91
by
I. B. Cauthen, Jr.
The old ballad which Sir Toby Belch begins in Twelfth Night (II.iii.91) is never finished: only the first line,
The suggestion has not previously been advanced that the line may refer to a well-known carol of the Christmas-Epiphany season, "The Twelve Days of Christmas," which has flourished in England since the Renaissance and is still sung today. It is conveniently found in print in the Sharp-Marson collection of Somerset folk-songs.[5] The carol begins,
Eleven bulls a-beating, etc.,"
and so on till the twelfth verse, as given in the text.
Two turtle doves
One goldie ring,
And the part of a June apple tree."
Mr. Sharp has also pointed out that another way of singing it is to begin with "On the first day of Christmas, etc." and to continue to the twelfth day when the song concludes. This latter version is the most familiar today,
Several things can be cited, I believe, to substantiate the conjecture that Sir Toby's unfinished ballad is "The Twelve Days of Christmas." In the first place, Sir Toby has never been praised for his memory, originality, or accuracy; indeed, he is seldom free from the delightful malapropisms and mistakes which mark his speeches. The misunderstanding of "prodigal" as "prodigy" (I.iii.25), the misunderstanding of "lethargy" as "lechery" (I.v.123), and the misuse of "encounter" for "enter" (III.i.74) are characteristic mistakes. It seems not unlikely that he might substitute the word "December" (the month of the Christmas season) for "Christmas" in the first line of a ballad familiar to the English audience of the time.
In the second place, the song would not be inappropriate for a play that was named after, and perhaps first performed on, the Feast of the Epiphany. As Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch writes, "It seems a reasonable guess that Shakespeare had written [this play] for presentation on . . . Twelfth Night (Epiphany), 1602."[9] If the play were given at that time, a reference to Epiphany, in the good humored vein of Sir Toby's mistake, would link the occasion of the performance as well as add another deft touch to Sir Toby's character.
Then, too, "O the twelfe day of December" appears to be a ballad which contains the definite introduction of a particular day in the first line. Such a first line might belong to a topical broadside ballad, but there should be a definite point to singing it here. There seems to be no such reason to introduce a broadside, for the ballads preceding this one in the text are traditional ones. If a broadside ballad is to break the mood, it should have a definite point alluded to by the date; that point cannot be ascertained here, and hence a traditional ballad seems more acceptable. Among the traditional, "The
Therefore we may believe that this unfinished ballad is not an old one that has been lost nor a precise reference which may be used in dating the first performance, but instead that it is a familiar one with a changed first line. This changed line would be in character for Sir Toby, and yet the ballad from which it was taken would be distinctly appropriate for a play called Twelfth Night. The audience, on to the joke when Sir Toby started singing the line (for the tune would give the joke away), would enjoy another example of the Tobian mistake.
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