Twelfth Night: The Servant, the Love Letter, and the Pauline Epistles

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Originating in the synoptic Gospels and culminating in its supreme expression by Paul (Nygren 146), agape is the highest form of love in the New Testament. Agape denotes “the love that moved God to send his only son for the world’s redemption. The term necessarily extends to the love of one’s fellow humans, as the reciprocal love between God and humans is made manifest in one’s unselfish love of others” (Britannica). See also the scriptural definitions of 1 John 4:9–12 and, most famously, 1 Corinthians 13:4–8.

2. On Viola as high-born, see 5.1.260, 317; and Dowd, 106.

3. The phrase invokes Christ’s words to his disciples in John 13:13–14: “Ye call me Master, and Lord, … for so am I. If I then your Lord, and Master, haue washed your fete, ye also oght to wash one anothers fete.” The phrase’s currency is suggested by the Protestant martyr Anne Askew, who employed it just before being burned at the stake: “Then Wriothesley, lord chancellor, sent to Anne Askew letters, offering to her the king’s pardon if she would recant; who … made this answer again, that she came not thither to deny her Lord and Master” (Foxe 269).

4. Goulder, 479–80. My ensuing synopsis of 1 Thessalonians is based on Goulder’s, p. 480.