University of Virginia Library

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,

has been sung when Maria, seeing Malvolio approach, interrupts Sir Toby with "For the love of God, peace!" Had Malvolio not entered just then, we might have had a few more lines of the ballad and a better chance to identify the song that has long puzzled commentators on the play. Although most of the other songs in the play have been identified, the original of this ballad has escaped the many searchers for it. William Sidney Walker declared that "it is the first line of a narrative ballad"[1] but did not further identify it. Later editors of the play have not been successful in identifying the song: William Allen Neilson notes that "this song has not been identified."[2] William J. Rolfe explains it as "from some old ballad that has not come down to us."[3] The Cambridge editors, after stating that "the rest of the ballad has been lost," add that "it is conceivable that the words may give us a clue to the actual date of the first performance . . ."[4] G. H. Nettleton, in the Yale Shakespeare, and Arthur D. Innis, in the Arden Shakespeare, have no note on the 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,

and then there follows a listing of the gifts that were presented on the days between Christmas and Twelfth Night—twelve bells a-ringing, eleven bulls a-beating, ten asses racing, nine ladies dancing, eight boys a-singing, seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four colley birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a part of the mistletoe bough, or, and the part of a June apple tree—a long and generous series of gifts. About the singing of this carol, Mr. Sharp has this to say:

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,

but it appears that the older version is the one with twenty-three verses.[7] Country singers seem to have delighted in this type of song and to have regarded such sequences as tests of memory and endurance.[8]

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

Twelve Days of Christmas" is the only recorded ballad which has such a definite day-naming at the very first.

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.