Feste, the mad character in Twelfth Night, in many ways represents a playwright figure and embodies the scope and tools of theater. He critiques, manipulates, and entertains the other characters while making them think about their life situations, which is similar to how a playwright like Shakespeare interacts with his audience. Moreover, more than the other characters in the play, he achieves this in a highly performative way, involving singing and clever wordplay that must be decoded, and therefore particularly reflects the mechanisms at the playwright's disposal. Feste is a representation of the medieval fool, strong in his inferior status and capable of speaking the truth of the kingdom. A playwright tells the truth using fictional actors and characters, who are in a parallel lower status compared to the audience, because they lack the dimensionality of real people. Thus, the role that Feste plays in the lives of the characters in the play resembles the role that the play itself plays in the lives of the audience watching the show. This essay will first explore this comparison by analyzing the similarities between the way Feste interacts with other characters and the way the playwright interacts with the audience, and then focus on the similarities between the goals and content of these interactions. Perhaps the simplest aspect of how Feste communicates with other characters that resembles the communication of theater itself is the overtly performative nature of his character. A clown, Feste is often depicted in productions with elaborate makeup or in a sophisticated jester costume. In this sense, it is almost a caricature of the way actors take on a new identity...... middle of paper ......(47-60).Hotson, Leslie. Shakespeare's Motley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1952. Nevo, Ruth. Comic transformations in Shakespeare. London: Methuen & Co., 1980. Osborne, Laurie E. The Thing of Singularity: Twelfth Night and Performance Editions. Iowa City: University of Iowa P, 1996. Potter, Lois. Twelfth Night: Text and Performance. London: Macmillan, 1985. Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: WW Norton & Company, 1997. Thatcher, David. Begging to differ: Modes of divergence in Shakespeare. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Vickers, Brian. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993Wadbrook, MC “Robert Armin and Twelfth Night.” Twelfth Night: A Casebook. London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1972. 222-43.