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Poem of the week: When that I was and a little tiny boy by William Shakespeare

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For 1 April, a sonorous refrain from one of literature's most plaintive fools, making plain the shadows behind the japes

It's not often that April Fool's Day and "Poem of the week Monday" coincide. So it seems an auspicious time to honour one of Shakespeare's most graceful and complex fools, Feste, from Twelfth Night, or What You Will. His song, "When that I was and a little tiny boy", concludes a play which is itself a celebration of misrule, with a plot driven by disguise, mistaken identity and practical jokes.

The lyrics of this song, like others in Twelfth Night, might not have been written by Shakespeare. Robert Armin, a noted singer and clown, and the first actor to play Feste, is also a contender – as is our old friend, Anon. Whoever he was, the writer seems to have wanted to fill out Feste's character and "back-story" and add a little last-minute tragi-comic, silly-sad commentary on life. It's almost a version of "All the world's a stage". For that reason, my money's on Shakespeare as the song's author.

A recent displacement in the clown's fortunes is hinted at early in the play. Feste – "a fool that the Lady Olivia's father took much delight in" – has outlived his first master, and seems to wander freely between the houses of Olivia and the Duke Orsino. Jester, singer, psychologist, philosopher, informal physician and spoof priest, Feste knows his own superior worth: "Those wits that think they have thee do very oft prove fools."

Twelfth Night is full of music, and explores different attitudes to it. For Orsino, music is "the food of love" and even Sir Toby Belch prefers a love-song to "a song of good life". The forlorn realism and mock-ballad-form of "When that I was…" make it unique among the seven songs in the play.

The double refrains in each verse are relentless, yet their touch is light. "Hey, ho, the wind and the rain" shrugs a wry weariness at life's weather. The play has delivered the requisite happy endings to its nobly-born leads, but Feste and the rain go on telling a different story. Their epilogue points a sly finger at privilege, and, perhaps, at the whole device of happy endings.

The first line offers a charming image, almost a Nativity scene, and an unexpected conjunction: "When that I was and a little tiny boy" (my italics). Why the word "and" rather than the equally metrical "but"? It's oddly effective, fencing off the first part of the sentence to give it existential bite – "When that I was… " It's the kind of enigma Feste loves. However, the answer is probably that three subsequent verses, and the penultimate line, begin with a "But" (almost as in a nonsense poem). Another would be excessive.

"A foolish thing was but a toy" could be a joking reference to masturbation; the actor can make the appropriate gesture and get an easy laugh. The price of the double entendre is the pathos of imagining the clown as an innocent child, not yet officially a clown, not blamed for foolish acts, simply licensed to play. Some commentaries interpret the "foolish thing" as the child himself, in which case he would also be the worthless "toy" or "trifle".

If the child has made a sadly unnoticed start in life, the second verse brings no redemption. Attaining adulthood, he remains an outsider, one of the "knaves and thieves" who will never enter the gates of inheritance and power (a further manifestation of "man's estate").

The life story goes from under-achievement to under-achievement. Each verse, every "but", knocks down another hope. But (alas!) there's no fooling the wife. Does she throw out her swaggering husband between the verses? The strange plural of "beds" lends it a hovering association with the guest-house dormitory – perhaps also with hospitals and Bedlam. The beds could be harlots' beds, or, as the Shakespeare scholar Leslie Hotson says, "the various spots he is likely to fall". By now, the clown is an old man, infirm, perhaps a drunk.

In the third line, the narrator seems to omit a first person pronoun: "With tosspots still" (I) "had drunken heads". He might be alluding to past carouses with Sir Toby and his pals, or merely generalising. The tosspots, whoever they are, will simply go on boozing, whatever happens.

Finally, he seems about to embark on a mock-history of the world. But it's a tease and he shifts quickly to real time and real identities, with a courteous farewell to the relieved audience. "Come back for more" might be the gist of the last line, "We put on a great show every day!" Meanwhile, "that's all one" and the fooling is over. "All's one" is a phrase Feste uses several times during the play, and, again, it reminds us of that little existential shadow the character (or Shakespeare himself?) so often casts.

"When that I was and a little tiny boy…"

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
  For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man's estate,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut the gate,
  For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas! to wive,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
  For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my beds,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
  For the rain it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world begun,
  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that's all one, our play is done,
  And we'll strive to please you every day.


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