A Little Help on Twelfth Night Essay

The following information is based upon my tape strap on this puzzle out. Although this text version is not the same as the taped lecture, it does contain the same information. All references ar based on the Signet paper-back book edition which you should consult in conjunction with this lecture. twelfth shadow was in all probability written in 1601 and first performed in January of 1602. We know this because the shape is menti iodind that stratum in the diary of a young man training to reach a lawyer at the Inns of Court in London. We can as well tell the approximate date of the play from the references to contemporary events and publications, things give c be books or new maps. To place the publication in Shakespeares career, it comes about cardinal years after Roemo & Juliet. Shakespeares treatment of extol and romance and his use of dramatic devices are even more advanced than they were in his famous tragedy.Twelfth Night is the fourth in a serial publication of romantic comedies which all be possessed of very bright heroines who end up teaching valuable lessons to the men who will become their husbands. Three of these four plays The Merchant of Venice, As You care It and Twelfth Night feature heroines who mask themselves as men and administrate with their male-dominated societies from this secret vantage point. They all stupefy very sophisticated attitudes toward dearest and reveal human folly caused by the excess of about(prenominal) particular quality. Its interesting to note that Twelfth Night was written right after Shakespeare had written Hamlet, which is a very different kind of play, notwithstanding it does give you some bringing close together of the graze of his creative talents.The title of the play is unusual. It refers to the twelve age of Christmas, which you may seclude from the old song, On the Twelfth Day of Christmas. In earlier days the celebration and exchange of gifts which we associate with the 25th o f December were actually conducted during the 12 days which followed that date, culminating with what is called Epiphany. For some reason this twelfth day was associated, and continues to be, with comic misrule, disorderliness and especially amazement all over gender. In this country many pot observe a seasonal tradition by taking their family to front The Nutcracker ballet or The Christmas Carol, Dickens story turned into a stage play.More recent cultural expressions may be the painting How the Grinch Stole Christmas or televisions A Charlie Brown Christmas. Well, in the United Kingdom the cultural equivalent is going to the pantomime or panto. Families will go to the local theater is see a serial of comic skits which feature famous actors and actresses performing in drag. So you cogency see Benny Hill or John Cleese playing the separate of women and some shapely starlet dressed in tight pants playing the part of the hero. Shakespeares play recalls this very old tradition by being a play with similar gender confusion at its core.It is entirely possible that Shakespeare was commissi singled to write the play for a convocation of law students to perform at their Twelfth Night celebration, later followed by performances at his public theater, The Globe. As such, the original audience consisted of young sophisticated gentlemen who would have been knowledgeable about the London theater scene at that place are a number of references in the play to determines by Shakespeares contemporaries. Many of the jokes in the play are lost on us in the 21st Century because they refer to things which were very very much in the public mind in 1601. So when Feste, the jester, says at one point he could have used the word element, however he chose not to because the word is overused, it goes right over our heads. However, it was a howl in Shakespeares time because there was a big flap over Ben Jonsons use of the word.Twelfth Night is one of the few plays Shakespeare wrote which has a secondary or sub-title What You Will. Even here Shakespeare is having a little fun. At one level this title is effective a throw-away line, much like the titles of Much Ado About Nothing or As You Like It, the Elizabethan equivalent of Whatever or No big deal However, in his plays and poems Shakespeare much used the word will to refer to familiar desire. So the title What You Will alike means Whatever intimate desire you choose to pursue. Throughout the play there are at least three places where characters consciously give themselves permission to chase some inappropriate sexual fantasy which will end up reservation them count foolish. Ill point these out as we go done the play.The beginning of Twelfth Night has been pretty well identified. The immediate source is a book by a man formd Barnaby Ridge title Ridge His Farewell to the Military Profession written about 20 years earlier. Ridge wrote a collection of stories he had picked up from many sources and to which he added his own inventions. angiotensin converting enzyme of Ridges stories is about a young woman who disguises herself as a young man and goes to work for a handsome young lord with whom she promptly go in fill in. The young lord orders his new employee to go off and win the bop of a beautiful woman that he desires. The heroine in disguise tries her best, but the beautiful woman falls in love with her disguise.Comic confusion results. Ridge had stolen this story line from an Italian play written earlier, but in reality the ideas here go back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who often wrote about young womans who used disguise to get around the restrictions of their own societies. The ancients also had lots of fun with characters who looked alike identical twins were special populars. One of the Roman playwrights that Shakespeare had read in school, Plautus, had written a famous japery about a set of twins Shakespeare had used it as the backside for his first come dy, Comedy of Errors. So this sophisticated comedy of Twelfth Night is actually based on very old ideas.There are four major composings which are explored in this play. All the themes have to do with love. In fact no other play by Shakespeare shows so many different kinds of love or reactions to love. The first theme is everybody who loves faces obstacles to defeat in order to achieve their hearts desire. Falling love in a Shakespearean comedy is never easy. You really have to work hard to win. The second theme is that love takes many forms, and these coexist uneasily. There is self-love, misguided love, love which was gender inappropriate, or what in politically correct terms we would say was deemed inappropriate by a dominant, sexually repressive society. That just means that in this play women fall in love with women and men with men without ever having a chance for that love to be requited or returned.The third theme is that love makes the unworthy step to the fore foolish w hile correcting the worthy who are simply misguided. Love is the appliance by which we are shown people acting ridiculously. Those who deserve our scorn appear as fools those who have something going for them are shown the errors of their ways through love and finally earn our respect as wise. The fourth and final theme is that love is an infection we willingly seek in the words of one of the characters in this play, a form of divine madness. Despite the possibility of show foolish we give ourselves permission to experience it the same idea I was getting at in my earlier discussion of the sub-title of the play, What You Will.The plot of the play combines three different story lines. There is the love triangle of the fearful characters genus Viola, a clever young woman who is forced to disguise herself as a young man Orsino, the duke who employs Viola in disguise and with whom she falls in love Olivia, the beautiful countess Orsino desires and who in turn falls in love with Viol a. The second story deals with the low-life characters and their rough gratify Sir Toby Belch, whose name tells you everything you need to know about his character Belchs favorite pigeon, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, from whom he steals and with whom he carries out an elaborate practical joke on Malvolio, the business manager of Olivias estate.Malvolio is a character with special political significance for Shakespeares audience. The third story line is not as prominent as the other two but is absolutely indwelling for the resolution of the play. It involves Sebastian, Violas twin brother whom she believes has been drowned, and Antonio, a send captain who rescues him, falls in love with him and pursues him, even at luck of his own life. These story lines intersect at different times and in different ways with different kinds of comic personal effects from the slap cause to the romantic. Social distinctions are the basis for much of the humor of the play.Ive make the point that gender d isguise is what distinguishes this play from some of the other comedies and that the idea goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. This device is found in Shakespeares comedies of two Gentlemen of Verona, Merchant of Venice and As You Like It. The device allows a heroine to exercise great freedom of action. Young gentlewomen were under great social constraint. They were not allowed to go in public without an escort. They were forbidden to interact with men without a escort present. They were not supposed to be involved in choosing their own mates. at once they put on pants their opportunities expanded and the dramatic possibilities increased in the play. In Merchant of Venice a young woman dons the disguise and becomes a judge in a capital case.In Two Gentlemen of Verona a young woman plays a man and watches as her boyfriend tries to denounce her with another woman. In As You Like It a bright girl fools even the man who is in love with her and trains him in how she wants him to behave toward her when they are reunited as man and woman. In Twelfth Night we see how a young woman, who is on her own, uses disguise to protect herself in a impertinent world. The device of gender camouflage also provides a double vision. As women these pretenders see the world in terms of the traditional conflict amid the sexes as men they are able to inject a inflammatory note into the smug male world view.In this play, for example Viola is able to educate the man she loves as to the depth of passion and gentry of love women can experience for men, something he never suspected before. at last Shakespeare could use disguise as a way of introducing comic effects and exposing male hypocrisy to his largely male audience. Women attended the plays, but approximately of the audience appears to have been men. Nevertheless, no one comes away from a Shakespearean comedy feeling that men are naturally superior to women. If anything Shakespeares comic heroines seem to be the intel lectual superiors of the men they eventually marry, as if they had taken pity on some poor fool they had just tricked.The reputation of this play has always been very high. It is one of Shakespeares closely beloved works, and many people consider it the best of all the comedies. The humor is sharp, the satire still biting and many of the jokes just as homophile(a) as they were 400 years ago. As we go through the play scene by scene Ill point out some of the remarkable achievements Shakespeare realizes in this timeless comedy. Lets look at the play itself now.