SOURCE: "Feste's 'Whirligig' and the Comic Providence of Twelfth Night," in ELH, Vol. 40, No. 4, Winter, 1973, pp. 501-13.

In the essay that follows, Hartwig contends that Feste helps illuminate the discrepancy between human will and Providence in Twelfth Night and proposes that Feste's enigmatic final song emphasizes the ambiguities of human experience—which is neither as grim as the clown's pessimistic verses nor as blissful as romantic comedy.

Shakespeare's plays frequently counterpose the powers of human and of suprahuman will, and the antithesis usually generates a definition of natures, both human and suprahuman. These definitions vary, however, according to the play. For instance, Hamlet's "providence" does not seem the same as the darker, equivocating power that encourages Macbeth to pit his will against a larger order; and these controls differ from Diana and Apollo in the later plays, Pericles and The Winter's Tale. Furthermore, Hamlet's submission and Macbeth's submission...