You’re supposed to want to play Viola, the play’s heroine, or Olivia, the girl everyone is in love with. But I found that Feste suited me. I didn’t mind being called a fool, because the fool opened and closed the show. He was never entwined in the actual drama, never pivoted the plot, but observed it all—the theatrics and the audience observing those theatrics. His purpose was to remind the audience and the actors that it was all a play, and with his ironic dirge about death, that none of it mattered anyway.
