Twelfth Night
- Submitted by: canus
- Views: 323
- Category: English: Plays
- Date Submitted: 04/28/2014 10:10 PM
- Pages: 9
- Report this Essay
“Twelfth night” as a comedy
* Main characters are from high social classes
Viola: a young woman of aristocratic birth
Orsino: Duke of Illyria, a powerful and noble man
Olivia : a wealthy, beautiful and Nobel Illyrian lady.
Sebastian: viola’s twin brother of aristocratic birth
* Mediterranean setting
The setting for Twelft Night is in Illyria, along the Adriatic Coast of Italy. A storm has caused a terrible shipwreck and main characters accidentally have met there. A magical place where anything can happen. A setting like this is popular with Shakespearean comedies because this type of setting allows comedic events to take place. Unlike a dark setting, with misery and despair, this happy setting allows the comedy of character and situation to take place. Because these elements are able to grow from this setting, it proves how essential this setting is, and the rest of the plot can develop from here.
* Theme of love and madness
Love as a cause of suffering: Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play’s main focus. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various lovers find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain. Many of the characters seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively. Various characters claim to suffer painfully from being in love, or, rather, from the pangs of unrequited love. At one point, Orsino depicts love dolefully(hüzünlü bir şeklide) as an “appetite” that he wants to satisfy and cannot (I.i.1–3); at another point, he calls his desires “fell and cruel hounds” (I.i.21). Olivia describes love as a “plague” from which she suffers terribly (I.v.265). Even the less melodramatic Viola sighs unhappily that “My state is desperate for my master’s love” (II.ii.35). This desperation has the potential to result in violence—as in Act V, scene i, when Orsino threatens to kill Cesario because he...
* Main characters are from high social classes
Viola: a young woman of aristocratic birth
Orsino: Duke of Illyria, a powerful and noble man
Olivia : a wealthy, beautiful and Nobel Illyrian lady.
Sebastian: viola’s twin brother of aristocratic birth
* Mediterranean setting
The setting for Twelft Night is in Illyria, along the Adriatic Coast of Italy. A storm has caused a terrible shipwreck and main characters accidentally have met there. A magical place where anything can happen. A setting like this is popular with Shakespearean comedies because this type of setting allows comedic events to take place. Unlike a dark setting, with misery and despair, this happy setting allows the comedy of character and situation to take place. Because these elements are able to grow from this setting, it proves how essential this setting is, and the rest of the plot can develop from here.
* Theme of love and madness
Love as a cause of suffering: Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play’s main focus. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various lovers find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain. Many of the characters seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively. Various characters claim to suffer painfully from being in love, or, rather, from the pangs of unrequited love. At one point, Orsino depicts love dolefully(hüzünlü bir şeklide) as an “appetite” that he wants to satisfy and cannot (I.i.1–3); at another point, he calls his desires “fell and cruel hounds” (I.i.21). Olivia describes love as a “plague” from which she suffers terribly (I.v.265). Even the less melodramatic Viola sighs unhappily that “My state is desperate for my master’s love” (II.ii.35). This desperation has the potential to result in violence—as in Act V, scene i, when Orsino threatens to kill Cesario because he...