Through comedy, Shakespeare bends the rules for the gender in the play Twelfth Night. Viola and Olivia are two women who complicate the relationships they have. Viola dresses as a man who she calls Cesario, while her double life has her learning the roles of both male and female. She meets Olivia who struggles with her own relationships and looks to Viola as Cesario for help. Both these women go through the same struggles of the gender roles but because Shakespeare created to Viola play both male and female her roles allow her to push the role of the female gender in society. These roles that they have are heteronormative verse binary gender, use of male and female communication, male power verse female power, relationships and identity. …show more content…
The power that Viola has in this love triangle shows the two genders are hard to balance in the citation at hand because she knows who she is but people cannot see her for who she truly is because she is playing a binary role. When Viola and Olivia meet, they are both going through the same mourning of losing their bothers. The reason for their meeting is because of Orsino who wants Cesario to read a letter to Olivia. After reading this letter from Orsino, Olivia ask the question “how does he love me?” (1.5.256) as Viola goes on and tells her how, Olivia then asks how would you love me. Viola states love should be shouted and you don’t rest when in love. You can argue in this scene you get the more feminine side of Viola by her use of communication and her emotions that are shown in the
The play Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare is a 1601 comedy that has proven to be the source of experimentation in gender casting in the early twenty-first century due to its portrayal of gender in love and identity. The play centrally revolves around the love triangle between Orsino, Olivia, and Viola. However, Olivia and Orsino both believe Viola is a boy named Cesario. Ironically, only male actors were on the stage in Shakespeare’s time. This means that Olivia, Viola, and other female characters were played by young boys who still had voices at higher pitches than older males.
Viola and Beatrice both take on men's roles, Viola that of a manservant and Beatrice that of the perpetual bachelor and the clown: "I was born to speak all mirth and no matter," she says to Don Pedro [II.i.343-4]. They appear to be actors and manipulators, much more so than their female predecessors, who are mostly reactive and manipulated, such as Hermia, Helena, Titania, and Gertrude. None of these women seemed in charge of her own destiny, but tricked by the schemes of men and later scorned or humiliated as a result of male machinations. Viola and Beatrice, although they both seem fiercely independent and comfortable in a man's world, reveal themselves to have only the trappings of manhood, and not its full capacity for action. They are undone by unrequited love, made desperately unhappy by their inability to woo the man of their choosing. In the end, it is only coincidence and the plotting of other characters that bring the true nature of their affections into the open and thus force the plays to their respective matrimonial conclusions.
Plot Context: King Claudius is talking about Hamlet mourning the death of his father still. His mother Gertrude says she also still misses her husband but you have to move on.
"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. There are certain instances in the play where the emotion of love is true, and the two people involved feel very strongly toward one another. Viola's love for Orsino is a great example of true love. Although she is pretending to be a man and is virtually unknown in Illyria, she hopes to win the Duke's heart. In act 1, scene 4, Viola let's out her true feelings for Cesario, "yet a barful strife! Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife (1)." That statement becomes true when Viola reveals her true identity. Viola and Orsino had a very good friendship, and making the switch to husband and wife was easy. Viola was caught up in another true love scenario, only this time she was on the receiving end, and things didn't work out so smoothly. During her attempts to court Olivia for Orsino, Olivia grew to love Cesario. Viola was now caught in a terrible situation and there was only one way out, but that would jeopardize her chances with Orsino. It's amazing that Olivia could fall for a woman dressed as a man, but because Viola knew what women like to hear, her words won Olivia's heart. The next case of true love is on a less intimate and romantic scale, and more family oriented. Viola and Sebastian's love for one another is a bond felt by all siblings. Through their times of sorrow and mourning for each of their apparent deaths they still loved each other. They believed deep down that maybe someway or by some miracle that each of them was still alive and well.
The movie She's the Man shows much of the general idea of the original Shakespearean book, the twelfth night. It also, illustrates the change in feminine roles in the community and society at large, the main theme of the movie being feminism. In Shakespearean era and time, the important, recognizable and powerful positions in the society were taken by men and therefore Viola in the twelfth night disguises herself as a eunuch in order to get close to the Olivia, the countess and the
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.
Within high school theater, this is a reoccurring problem that is common throughout the United States. Many high schools have a lot of girls but little to no boys. In college and professional theater, however, this is the opposite, they have a surplus of boys but are lacking in girls.
Finally, Olivia officially tells Viola (Caesario) that she loves him after Viola delivers another message to Olivia. Olivia tells Caesario that she has been in love with him ever since she first saw him, and that she cannot hold it anymore. She cares not about what her society would think about her for falling in love with a person not from her class. The reader knows that Viola is not interested at all in Olivia since she is in love with Orsino. Lady Olivia’s love for Caesario illustrates a universal truth about life that when someone is in love, he/she will do whatever it takes to show the other person that they love them. They are willing to sacrifice everything they’ve got for their love. In this case, Olivia is sacrificing her social status and reputation.
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...
Livingston conducted many of their interviews one-on-one in the personal homes of the interviewee. Typically there was no background music so that the viewer could focus on the words coming from the drag queen. Occasionally, she would just do a voice over with the drag queen but still always managed to cut back to the person speaking. I believe she chose her interview settings and what that speaker would look like to better emphasize whatever concept was being discussed. Her interview techniques and juxtaposition of scenes were just two ways she exposed the performativity of gender. At certain points in the film, she records a drag queen walking around normal society. While switching back and forth was a good technique to ease in to the
In Hamlet, gender plays a huge role in the assumed capability of people. Queen Gertrude had to remarry instead of rule the kingdom by herself. If she wouldn’t have gotten remarried, it would have been likely that her kingdom would have been usurped by a chauvinist male ruler; who felt that women couldn’t rule a kingdom.
This would make sense if we look at the plot of the play because Olivia falls in love with Cesario due to the fact that they both lost someone. On the other hand, Viola could have cross-dressed because she is a bold and defiant person and she is willing to face whatever comes her way. It is interesting to see how Shakespeare plays out his characters in all of his ...
Despite many cases of disguise in the play, the one that sparks the most trouble, and is of most importance to the plot, is Viola pretending to be a man named Cesario. Her decision to pretend she is a man when she is left stranded on the foreign land of Illyria truly shows how men were the dominate gender at the time. It proves that if Viola wanted to succeed in anyway on Illyria, she had to be a man. Once Viola establ...
Today, actors have a new way of living. They do not realize how different their lives would have been if they lived during the Greek and Elizabethan time period. Acting has changed throughout history based off of gender roles, how the performances were conducted, and the social status of the actors and audience.
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...