Appearance
If Feste fails to turn heads, it is only because he is too short to stand out in the crowd. He is a distinctly peculiar individual, usually dressed in colorful motley, his true features obfuscated by the whiteface makeup of a traveling mummer. His diminutive height and high, clear voice often cause him to be mistaken for a child. His gender, too, is indeterminate; he is referred to as a "he" for the sake of convenience, but it is impossible to tell one way or the other, something he only gets away with in Sunderland by virtue of the fact that most people assume he's a simpleton. His eyes are a pale shade of blue, and his hair, on the rare occasion that a tuft of it manages to escape from beneath his many-belled jester's hat, is a surprisingly ordinary shade of mouse-brown.
Personality
Feste's name is not his own -- it belongs to a court fool in a famous play. It is perhaps fitting, then, that Feste is frequently perceived as a halfwit based on his capricious, capering behavior and irritating habit of speaking in riddles or nonsensical verse. A careful examination of his character, however, will tend to reveal that Feste indeed possesses more than half a wit, and perhaps even more than two halves, for he is surprisingly sharp-tongued beneath his absurd exterior, and far too observant to be a true imbecile.
Few manage to get close to Feste, deterred by his extremely private, almost secretive habits, his mercurial nature, and his alternately ludicrous and curt mannerisms. He never quite seems to leave the performance behind; there is an air of theater about him all times, and one is left to question whether he really is himself or merely acting out the melodrama of the stage.
