The play Twelfth Night is set in a Elizabethan country household in a place called Illyria. Illyria is a fictional place. Although the setting felt familiar to the audience, the name Illyria gave it a feeling of escape from reality, something that was important because everyday life could be tough in those days. The people needed an escape from reality sometimes. In this play we meet the upper class, as well as the lower class. It is not certain whether it really is "twelfth night", but there are several things in this play that suggest that it might well be the twelfth night. The twelfth night is on the 6th of January, a night where the servants and other low class figures get to change place with their superiors. The hierarchy is turned up-side down, to create a state of "topsy-turveydom." It is a sort of carnival where it is allowed to drink and play tricks on others, especially the superiors, without getting punished for it. One might call it licensed misrule. This play is full of confusion and intrigues as the characters constantly dress up and act as someone else. It is a inviolability of disguise. Gender shifts and social status are important themes which run through the whole play. At the end of the play, we, the audience are left to wonder about what is going to happen to the characters once the play is over. The end is almost open in a way. We really do not know what the future brings for the characters, we can only imagine. But some of the characters get married in the end, a typical comic closure, so the end is not completely open. The main character is without doubt Viola, who dresses up as Cesario to work for Orsino, a lord who is deeply in love with Olivia. Olivia and Orsino make up the high class characters of t...
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... the genre of comedy, whilst comic just means something funny. Although both these plays are comedies, I think they were more so in the days they were written. The humour then was very different from the humour today. For instance, I do not think it is very funny when an actress on stage shouts "not bloody likely", but when Pygmalion was first produced, they had to stop the play for several minutes when Eliza said these exact words, the audience could not stop laughing. So what I am saying is that is not always easy to write about old plays because the times have changed, and can hardly be compared. Neither can the genre of comedy.
Works cited:
C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy, A study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press, 1959.
Fisher, Jacqueline, ed. Pygmalion. London, Longman, 1991.
... He speaks to Viola, before Feste, Olivia’s Jester, sings to signal the ending. “Cesario, come – For so you shall be while you are a man; But when in other habits you are seen Orsino’s mistress and his fancy’s queen.” The characters in Twelfth Night each play an important and specific role, especially when it comes to interfering or setting fate for romantic interests.
Precise definition of a festive comedy is best outlined in the distinctive depictions if merry in the tone, exhibition of Elizabethan holidays, satire depiction in the composition to mockery which is to a greater extent natural. The same is resonated in depictions of comic faith wherein what matter most is the rather satirical and happy depiction of events in the hope of a greater cause such as religion and love. In structuring up the play ‘A Midsummer’s Night Dream,’ there is clear mapped outline that makes reference to the ideal of it being regarded as a festive comedy but notions of the same are heavily transcended in the different sections of the play coupled with the ideal of comic faith as well. What is followed
5 Dec. 2012. Carroll, Camden. Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 1. 15, No. 1 -. 2 (Spring, 1964), pp. 113-114. 247-255
In Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, gender identity and alternative sexualities are highlighted through the depiction of different characters and personalities. In the play, Viola disguises herself as a man thereby raising a merry-go-around of relationships that are actually based on a lie rather than actual fact. Viola attracts the attention of Olivia since she thinks that Viola is a man but even more fascinating is the fact that Orsino is attracted to Viola although he thinks that she is a man. In another twist Viola is attracted to Orsino and has fell in love with him although their love cannot exist since Orsino thinks that Viola is a man.
Cohen, Walter, J.E. Howard, K. Eisaman Maus. The Norton Shakespeare. Vol. 2 Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. New York, London. 2008. ISBN 978-0-393-92991-1
Adelman, Janet. 1985. 'Male Bonding in Shakespeare's Comedies.' In Shakespeare's Rough Magic: Renaissance Essays in Honor of C.L. Barber, edited by Peter Erickson and Coppélia Kahn. Cranbury and London: Associated University Presses, 73-103.
Logan, Thad Jenkins. "Twelfth Night: The Limits of Festivity." Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama. N.p.: Rice University, 1982. 223-38. Vol. 22 of Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Rpt. in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
Barton, Anne. Introduction to Twelfth Night. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974. 403-407.
Historically speaking, the cultural limitations of women in the sixteenth century were very strong. Publicly, women had no life, and characteristics within the home were expected to mirror that of a servant: patience, silence, and obedience, to name a few. However, this essay will rely solely on evidence from the text, Twelfth Night, to examine the ways the female characters, specifically Olivia, both abides by, and defies the gender roles presented.
Levin, Harry. General Introduction. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974.
Twelfth Night or What You Will is one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies. It has been performed hundreds of times and adapted into a number of modern films. The main plot of the play follows Viola, a girl who is rescued from a shipwreck and enters into the service of the Duke Orsino disguised as a man. Rising quickly in his estimation, Viola begins delivering messages of love on his behalf to Olivia, a noble woman who has no interest in Orsino’s advances. Over the course of the play Olivia falls in love with the disguised Viola, Viola falls in love with Orsino, and Viola’s twin brother Sebastian, who supposedly died in the shipwreck, returns. Following Sebastian’s return the twins are mistaken for each other, leading to both misunderstanding and marriage in the final scenes of the play. Alongside the main plot of Twelfth Night is an almost equally prominent subplot involving Malvolio, a servant of Olivia, who falls in love with her and who falls prey to a prank planned by the other members of the household who despise his abhorrence of fun. In the article “The Design of Twelfth Night” by L.G. Salingar, Salingar examines the plot and structure of the play and addresses the significance of the subplot. The purpose of this essay is to examine both evidence from the play and articles from other authors, with a focus on Salingar, who have written on the subject in order to determine the purpose of the subplot. In his article, Salingar comes to the conclusion that the purpose of the subplot is to provide a comic mirror of the main plot while amplifying the main themes of delusion, misrule and festivity. Salingar presents a solid argument, however he has neglected another lesser but significant element of the sub-plot which illustrate...
Miola, Robert S.: Shakespeare and Clasical Comedy: The Influence of Plautus and Terence, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Shakespeare is a famous writer of many plays, such as Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy that takes place in Illyria and incorporates several songs throughout the play. Shakespeare normally assigns the singing roles to characters of lower class and minor personalities, such as servants, clowns, rogues and fools. Major characters never usually sing unless they are in disguise or in distracted mental states. In Twelfth Night, the Fool, who is also known as Feste is in charge of all the songs and he uses music to effectively portray the truth and reality beneath all the acting in the play. The songs are not a reflection of him, but are addressed to the protagonists themselves. Through his use of indirect speech and metaphorical
Throughout Twelfth Night, disguise and mistaken identity works as a catalyst for confusion and disorder which consistently contributes towards the dramatic comic genre of the play. Many characters in Twelfth Night assume disguises, beginning with Viola, who disguises herself as a man in order to serve Orsino, the Duke. By dressing his protagonist in male garments, Shakespeare creates ongoing sexual confusion with characters, which include Olivia, Viola and Orsino, who create a ‘love triangle’ between them. Implicitly, there is homoerotic subtext here: Olivia is in love with a woman, despite believing her to be a man, and Orsino often comments on Cesario’s beauty, which implies that he is attracted to Viola even before her male disguise is removed. However, even subsequent to the revealing of Viola’s true identity, Orsino’s declares his love to Viola implying that he enjoys lengthening the pretence of Vio...
Pygmalion is one of Bernard Shaw’s most famous and beloved plays, which he published in London in 1912. This play was written during the Edwardian era which was characterised by major political, social and economical changes. Politically, the reign of king Edward VII witnessed a relative involvement of social segments such as labourers and women in political life. Socio-economically, the British society was marked by a strict and a clear-cut social class system in the early twentieth century. During this period and up to First World War, it was believed that 1% of the British population owned approximately 70% of the country’s wealth. As an outcome of the industrialisation and urbanisation processes, however, people increasingly started to get interested in socialist ideas and called for the improvement of women’s position. Given this historical background, Shaw was devoted to write a type of plays different from the Victorian plays which he regarded to be superficial and meaningless. In his view, drama has to be about ideas and conflicts and not about unimportant matters. Thus, Pygmalion can be considered as a social criticism on various topics such as social identity, social class and the power of language. This essay is an attempt to examine the themes of language, social class and gender in Pygmalion. Firstly, a brief summary of the play will be provided. Next, the theme of language and social class will be addressed. The last part will be devoted to the theme of gender and specifically the position of women.