Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
THE TWELFTH NIGHT COMEDY ASPECT
literature gender roles
twelfth night as a comedy with examples
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: THE TWELFTH NIGHT COMEDY ASPECT
In a book on Twelfth Night, Dr. Leslie Hotson suggested that the play was written to compliment an Italian nobleman, Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano, in a court entertainment given for him on Twelfth Night, 1601, and that it was after this gOrsinoh that one of the principle characters was named. However, I am not sure id this Italian Orsino would have feel complimented by seeing himself portrayed as a young, handsome and poetic duke but an inefficient lover.
The curtain of Twelfth Night rises with Duke Orsinofs very first speech: gIf music be the food of love, play on ch which shows his characteristics clearly. Orsino is restless, dissatisfied, vacillating between moods, with a mind full of romantic illusions, but without an object upon which his mind can rest and with which his desire can engage. Then we have the hunting metaphor that Orsino compares himself to Actaeon, who turned into a stag and pursued by his own hounds of desire. This metaphor, though is full of with Orsinofs self-pity, still shows that he is introspective to a degree. We may say that Orsino is madly in love (to be more specific, madly wants to be in love), but not mad, for he is aware that he himself is overwhelmed by his own fantastical love thoughts.
If music is the food of love, as Orsino puts it, we can infer what Orsinofs love is like by what kind of gfoodh he feeds it. Orsinofs special taste for those gold and antich songs, traditional love-laments, makes him a Petrarchan lover: he is sensitive, passionate, and intoxicated with his own romantic sufferings from Oliviafs rejection.
The repeated rejections by Olivia do not throw Orsino into despair....
... middle of paper ...
..., Orsino seems suddenly restores his reason and then spares Violafs life. We audience also feel relieved because now Orsino does be ga noble duke, in nature as in nameh and deserve Violafs love.
gLove sought is good, but given unsought better.h It is clear that shortly after the unmasking of Viola, Orsino is fully prepared to call Viola gOrsinofs mistress and his fancyfs queen.h At last, Orsino finds his right love, but surely not through the kind of constancy of which he had bragged.
Reference:
1. Twentieth century interpretations of Twelfth night, edited by Walter N. King, Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1968
2. Modern Critical Interpretations: Twelfth night, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publisher, 1987
3. Shakespeare's rhetoric of comic character, Karen Newman, New York: Methuen, 1985
William, Shakespeare Twelfth Night. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 1079-1139.
Twelfth Night, written by Shakespeare between the years of 1599 and 1601 (“Shakespeare-Online”), is easily one of his most well-known plays. A year after the assumed date of publication, on February the 2nd of 1602, Twelfth Night was performed for the first time (“William-Shakespeare)”. The location of the production is thought to have taken place in the Middle Temple, which was one of four law schools within London that were known as the Inns of Court (“Shakespeare-Online”). Though some would classify Twelfth Night as generic, it is laced with a sharp sense of humor and controversial concerns that can easily be applied to the issues of present day. Many of these issues, such as marriage, gender identity, sex, homosexuality, and social ambition, are relevant in today’s society, making them easy to relate to. The central theme of the play is romance. The characters all experience love, in one way or another, whether it be unrequited or shared between more than one person. The plot is intricately woven, sometimes confusingly so, between twists and turns throughout the multiple acts, but it never strays too far from the subject of adoration. Despite the hardships, misperception and deceit the characters experience, six individuals are brought together in the name of holy matrimony in three distinct nuptials.
William, Shakespeare Twelfth Night. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 1079-1139.
upon her. She knew she had fallen in love with Duke Orsino and had the
She does not spew out all the reasons why she loves Othello or say that she is unavoidably attracted to him as she could have. Instead, she picks a practical reason –
Orsino’s view of love is that he is in love with love itself and he
Dobson, Michael. “Twelfth Night” in The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Osborne, Laurie E. The Trick of Singularity: Twelfth Night and the Performance Editions. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1996.
Wells, Stanley, and Gary Taylor, eds. "Twelfth Night, or What You Will". William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1998.
Barton, Anne. Introduction to Twelfth Night. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974. 403-407.
Complications also arose when viola fell in love with her master, duke orsino, while at the same time had the love interest of orsino, the countess Olivia, trying to woo her. This placed viola in an extremely difficult and complex situation on one hand, she loved the duke and would have liked to do all she could to win his heart. But because she was his servant, she was obliged to serve him and help him win the hand of Olivia. What was a poor girl to do ?
After Olivia has her very first conversation with Cesario (Viola), where he tries to woo her for Duke Orsino, she immediately falls in love with him. After Cesario leaves her palace, Olivia says to herself ‘Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit do give thee fivefold blazon. Not too fast; soft, soft. Unless the master were the man. How now? Even so quickly may one catch the plague?’ Here Olivia states that Cesario’s external features are what attract her to him. Her metaphor contains a s...
...oth perspectives. They both still being servants are using disguise differently. Malvolio, servant of Olivia and Viola, servant of Orsino, they both have felt love for their masters/boss. They both express it differently, Malvolio loving Olivia uses cheery appearance and Viola loving Orsino hides her love secretly in her disguise. This essay was to prove that disguises and appearance is a symbolic feature for Viola and Malvolio's characters. According to given facts and examples, it was very clear that Viola and Malvolio use disguises as their shield, but they each use it differently.
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.
Another part of Orsino’s opening speech that shows a piece of the future plot is the part where he talks about love being “receiveth as the sea” (11). This can be taken to show that love will come by the sea. In the very next scene, Viola appears in Illyria from a shipwreck. Sebastian, although Shakespeare does not say so at the time, also comes onto the scene because of the same shipwreck. Shakespeare forecasts, very subtly, that these are t...