Feste’s findings

I have been thinking a lot lately about icons, images, and models for Feste. The haggard (a mature wild hawk or falcon) and the magician. I have been feeling a bit androgynous in rehearsals, trying to pay attention to carrying a male physique but I’ve been slipping into tactics that I think females use more often than males. I feel like a woman especially when acting as a more female figure toward Antonio in ‘Bring Me a Boat.’ It’s just an interesting thing to think about.

As I have been thinking about this image of a haggard I found this passage from Anne William’s “Art of Darkness”:

As the lovers prepare to depart, Porphyro declares the storm “Of haggard seeming but a boon indeed” (1. 344; my emphasis). The text of “La Belle Dame” shows that to Keats “haggard” is a word loaded with the wight of mortality, a mortality quite conventionally associated with the feminine: the Knight is called “so haggard and so woe-begone” (1. 6). The various meanings of “haggard” themselves reveal these feminine associations. Beneath the current senses of “thin and worn” and “emaciated” lie the obsolete ones of “wild-eyed,” “wantan,” “unchaste,” “intractable,” “willful.” And “hag,” the syllable buried in the word, is a harpy or witch, a female demon, a nightmare.

I have also attached this link for your viewing…please excuse the cheesy music and introduction, but I think that Feste’s inner energy is very haggard-like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW7wsDhouus

I think his outer energy is very much like Edward Norton’s character in this clip from THE ILLUSIONIST. The sword trick is one that is playful and entertaining on the outside, but also has a tinge of truth and challenge underneath. It is a trick that Feste would love to share.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgOnwRrfUuA&feature=related