Echoes and Parallels in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
The echoes and parallels in Twelfth Night separate comedy from
poignancy pertaining to different kinds of love. They reinforce and
enhance the audience's appreciation of certain characters, revealing a
different side. They emphasize certain themes through language and
metaphor, particularly those of love, disguise, and fate. They also
create anticipation and suspense for the reconciliation of Viola and
Sebastien.
Shakespeare links certain characters together in the play. The twins,
Viola and Sebastien, both make for the same place in Illyria.
Obviously, their situations are similar as they were both involved in
the same shipwreck. Both believe that their twin is dead and this is
ironic for the audience, but more importantly, it creates anticipation
and suspense as the audience await a reconciliation, which is likely
to be comic, given that the pair are identical twins and Viola is
disguised as a man.
Shakespeare links Orsino and Olivia together, as both are
self-absorbed and proud. This is recognised in both characters by
Viola. Both Orsino and Olivia describe love in terms of visual
qualities. For Orsino, the sentiment is instantaneous, "when mine eyes
did see Olivia first, Methought she purg'd the air of pestilence"
which suggests that Orsino is not really in love, and is merely
enjoying the self-indulgent daydreaming and heartache which his
affections for Olivia are causing him. Olivia is excessive in her
mourning for her brother and histrionic in deciding to become a
"cloistress' for such a period of time. Both characters enjoy
wallowing melodramatically in ...
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the destructiveness of time and the impermanence of love.
The echoes and parallels in Twelfth Night help the audience to
understand more about the themes of the play and its messages. The
audience can also expect a reconciliation between Viola and Sebastien
due partly to these parallels. The echoes highlight and augment our
knowledge and awareness of the traits and personalities of different
characters, especially Orsino and Olivia. The parallels also allow
Shakespeare to distinguish between which characters' loves are
intended to be comical and which are more poignant. The music which
fills the play dictates the atmosphere, be it comical or serious, and
allows the important 'sad clown' character of Feste to sing about time
and love's impermanence, which become important and stirring as the
play concludes.
... 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.
Feste is pivotal as he is a character able to take on several roles according to the situation. This ability to be serious and comical, clever or ridiculous, the wit or the practical joker makes him the link between the main and the sub plot, bringing the whole play together and making Twelfth Night a whole.
... and ambiguity. Shakespeare uses the ironies found in the play so that we will remember his play's limits. It cannot produce an ideal, nor can we as an audience.
William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare's most famous comedies, involving complex plots, which result in hilarious outcomes. The main plot of Twelfth Night tells of Count Orsino's efforts to woo the Lady Olivia. who does not return his affection. Instead, Olivia is smitten with her. Orsino's servant Cesario, unaware of his true identity.
Orsino’s view of love is that he is in love with love itself and he
make him think he is mad and they also make Olivia think he is mad
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, playwright William Shakespeare creates in Bottom, Oberon, and Puck unique characters that represent different aspects of him. Like Bottom, Shakespeare aspires to rise socially; Bottom has high aims and, however slightly, interacts with a queen. Through Bottom, Shakespeare mocks these pretensions within himself. Shakespeare also resembles King Oberon, controlling the magic we see on the stage. Unseen, he and Oberon pull the strings that control what the characters act and say. Finally, Shakespeare is like Puck, standing back from the other characters, acutely aware of their weaknesses and mocks them, relishing in mischief at their expense. With these three characters and some play-within-a-play enchantment, Shakespeare mocks himself and his plays as much as he does the young lovers and the mechanicals onstage. This genius playwright who is capable of writing serious dramas such as Hamlet and Julius Caesar is still able to laugh at himself just as he does at his characters. With the help of Bottom, Oberon, and Puck, Shakespeare shows us that theatre, and even life itself, are illusions that one should remember to laugh at.
Twelfth Night revolves heavily around the shipwreck plot device to split apart the siblings Viola and Sebastian, leading to the development of a bizarre love-triangle and a case of mistaken identity. Besides the rather literal importance of the sea as the driving force for the play’s plot, water appears to resonate as a recurring theme throughout many scenes; specifically, it becomes a living representation for the emotional status of various characters, and woven within the ebb and flow of the tides, qualities such as fate, grief, death (imagined or real), and reflection churn amongst the brackish waters of the play’s symbolic ocean. Of course, because Twelfth Night fails to meet definition of a tragedy outright, these elements will not lead
Twelfth Night consists of a large number of love triangles, however many characters are too indulged in love that they are blind to the untrue, and the weakness of their relationship, they are deceived by themselves and many people around them ( ex. Malvolio is tricked by Sir Andrew, Feste ,Sir Toby and Maria),but there are certain incidents where the love is true and two characters feel very strongly about one another. In the play, Viola and Orsino have the most significant relationship. The way they interact with each other causes the complexity on which the play is all about, their relationship turns from strangers to friends then lovers .In the First Act Viola is not honest with Orsino because she disguises herself as a male servant named Cesario in order to get closer to the duke. Orsino. Orsino quickly trusts Cesario and sends him to Olivia to declare Orsinos Love for her, the girl he most dearly loves. This quick bond is the fast example of their relationship. At the beginning of the play, Viola thinks her brother (Sebastian) is dead (after they’re deadly boat crash, where they get separated) when actually he is alive and thinks she is dead, Viola always seems to have a part missing from her which shows her bond with Sebastian is strong, and a part of her but in a brotherly/sisterly way rather than a proper relationship like viola and orsino, At the end of the play they meet and both fall in love , Viola with Orsino and Sebastian with Olivia.
Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night revolves around a love triangle that continually makes twists and turns like a rollercoaster, throwing emotions here and there. The characters love each another, but the common love is absent throughout the play. Then, another character enters the scene and not only confuses everyone, bringing with him chaos that presents many different themes throughout the play. Along, with the emotional turmoil, each character has their own issues and difficulties that they must take care of, but that also affect other characters at same time. Richard Henze refers to the play as a “vindication of romance, a depreciation of romance…a ‘subtle portrayal of the psychology of love,’ a play about ‘unrequital in love’…a moral comedy about the surfeiting of the appetite…” (Henze 4) On the other hand, L. G. Salingar questions all of the remarks about Twelfth Night, asking if the remarks about the play are actually true. Shakespeare touches on the theme of love, but emphases the pain and suffering it causes a person, showing a dark and dismal side to a usually happy thought.
William Shakespeare's, Twelfth Night has many themes, but appearance vs. reality is the theme that illustrates a different picture from two perspectives, there are many characters behind their masks and disguises. Some are hiding love behind these disguises and some are trying to show their love through a different disguise. They both still being servants are using disguise differently. Malvolio, servant of Olivia, falls in love with the trap (the letter) thinking his lady likes him, and to show his love he uses a different appearance to express it. Viola, servant of Orsino, falls in love with him, but secretly, not wanting to express her love for him, because of her disguise as her barrier for that case. Viola/Ceasario is wearing a disguise and secretly loves Orsino. Malvolio, on the other hand, is also a servant but still changes his appearance to express love for the great lady Olivia. This essay will prove that disguises and appearances are symbolic of the characters named Viola and Malvolio and are differently used for both.
Critics call Twelfth Night one of William Shakespeare’s most poetic and musical plays. Shakespeare writes poetic lines for the major characters, Viola, Orsino, and Olivia, and gives the Fool, and other minor characters, songs to sing throughout the play. The particularly romantic lines of the play make it seem as if the characters are professional poets themselves. Shakespeare also uses the music and poetry in Twelfth Night to foreshadow what is going to happen for the rest of the performance and to reveal major themes in the play. Music and poetry become major characters in the play themselves.
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...
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...
Love however, is the source of much confusion and complication in another of Shakespeare’s comedies, Twelfth Night. Men and women were seen as very different from each other at the time the play was written, they were therefore also treated in very different ways. Because of this Viola conceals her identity and adopts the role of a man, in order to better her safety whilst being alone on the island, and to get a job at Count Orsino’s court. In the play Shakespeare uses the gender confusion he has created from obscuring characters identities to explore the limits of female power and control within courtship, and their dominance within society. Violas frustration surrounding her inability to express her feelings to the Count because she is a woman is an example of the limiting rules of courtship which were upheld at the time. (Aside) ‘yet, a barful strife! Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife.’ Here she is already expressing her anxiety and emotion at being a woman, and having to keep her emotions hidden from those around her. She longs to be able to express her love as a man could, and in her disguise as Cesario she finds an opportunity to vent her feelings for the Count, but concealed as his words and towards Olivia. Viola is unaware of how her words may sound to Olivia because she is aware of their gender boundaries however Olivia isn’t and soon falls for Cesario. Because Olivia is a Lady and head of the household, and especially how she lacks a father figure, she has a lot more freedom in courtship. Duisinberre comments on this saying, ‘...Viola and Beatrice are women set free from their fathers, and their voice is that of the adult world.’ This is seen when Olivia immediately takes the dominant role in her and Cesarios relat...