When Orsino sends Viola-Cesario to woo Olivia in his name, he does not think any more of it. When Viola-Cesario goes to woo Olivia for her master Orsino, she starts to woo her using the first person, referring to ‘me’ and ‘I’, under Olivia’s request. She continues using the first person throughout this wooing, where she tells of Olivia’s beauty and her person through her perspective instead of Orsino’s. This wooing becomes vital to the plot and the theme of love throughout the play, because this wooing causes Olivia to fall in love with Viola-Cesario instead of the Duke Orsino. This could be due to the request of Olivia asking Viola-Cesario to “tell me your mind.” (Shakespeare I.v.204) When Viola-Cesario woos Olivia, Olivia become smitten with Viola in her disguise of Cesario, while Viola believes that her wooing helps her master Orsino. This wooing becomes essential to the theme of love because Olivia falls for Viola-Cesario; however, the pain from this love does not come until the end when Viola’s identity is revealed. Olivia is then left puzzled and upset because she believed that Cesario was a real person, when in fact, it was Viola playing Cesario and she has married Viola’s twin brother Sebastian. All of the confusion causes the pain that Olivia feels from her love of Cesario because the Cesario that had told her all of the beautiful things was not the man she married and the one who told her all of those things turned out to be a woman. Along with this pain from the realization, she continues to feels a slight pain throughout the play because Cesario will not accept her love and pushes her away, ironically, like she pushes Orsino’s love or her away.
Orsino’s final speech in the play comes after Olivia has revealed that she...
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...e themselves to the person, which shows the opposition to be improper between the name “Twelfth Night” and the play’s second title, “What you Will,” which is “between what is given and what is desired.” (Henze 275) All of these elements present in this play show the miserable and gloomy counter side to the traditional idea of the ‘happy love.’
Works Cited
Draper, John William. The Twelfth Night of Shakespeare's Audience. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1950. Print.
Henze, Richard. "Twelfth Night: Free Disposition on the Sea of Love." The Sewanee Review 83.2 (1975): 267-283. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 11 Jan. 2011. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.
Salingar, L. G. "The Design of Twelfth Night." JSTOR, 1958. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, Or, What You Will. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print.
"William Shakespeare, William. "Twelfth Night." Norton's Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York City: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010.
During the weeks leading up to matrimony, Olivia fell madly in love with Cesario, who though looks and sounds just like Sebastian, is truly Viola dressed as a man. Sebastian does not realize this as he meets Olivia for the first time. He is amazed that a woman of her statue and beauty would feel so strong for him and he wastes no time.... ... middle of paper ...
Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Shakespeare wrote his acclaimed comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream more than a thousand years after Apuleius’ Roman novel, The Golden Ass. Although separated by thousands of years and different in terms of plot and setting, these works share the common theme of a confused and vulnerable man finding direction by relying on a supernatural female. One of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s many subplots is the story of Bottom, a comical figure determined to be taken seriously in his production of a Pyramus and Thisbe. As Bottom becomes caught up in a quarrel between the king and queen of the fairies, the commanders of the enchanted forest where Bottom and his players practice, the “shrewd and knavish sprite” Puck transforms his head into an ass’ s and leads him to be enthralled in a one night stand with the queen, Titania. (2.1.33) Apuleius’s protagonist Lucius endures a similar transformation, after his mistress’s slave girl accidentally bewitches him into a donkey, leaving him even without the ability to speak. Although Lucius’ transformation lasts longer and is more severe, he and Bottom both undergo similar experiences resulting from their animal forms. Lucius’ suffering ultimately leads him to salvation through devotion the cult of Isis, and Bottom’s affair with Titania grants him clarity and a glimpse into similar divine beauty. Ultimately, both asinine characters are saved through their surrender to the goddesses.
In stark contrast to the dark and tragic "Othello," is one of Shakespeare’s lightest and funniest comedies, "Twelfth Night." The theme of love is presented in a highly comical manner. Shakespeare, however, once again proves himself a master by interweaving serious elements into humorous situations. "Twelfth Night" consists of many love triangles, however many of the characters who are tangled up in the web of love are blind to see that their emotions and feelings toward other characters are untrue. They are being deceived by themselves and/or the others around them.
William, Shakespeare Twelfth Night. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 1079-1139.
William, Shakespeare Twelfth Night. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 1079-1139.
Orsino sends Cesario expresses his affection for Olivia, which Cesario/Viola is not thrilled about. with.
Viola, as Cesario, manages to win the favour of Orsino He truly believes that she is a he. Orsino, still convinced of my majesty, believes that he can win the love of a woman, via a proxy. By having Viola merely read the words he has prepared, he thinks that Olivia will fall immediately in love with him. But while Orsino had his head in the clouds about his love, Viola is attempting to conceal from him, her love for him.
Print. Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. N.p.: n.p., n.d.
Although Viola might be able to relate to Olivia's grief at first, her love for Orsino is so great that she cannot understand why Olivia would deny him. When Olivia expresses affectio...
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, Or, What You Will. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night Or, What You Will. New York, New York: New American Library, 1998. Print.
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...