She's The Man Vs Twelfth Night Essay

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night examines patterns of love and courtship through a twisting of gender roles. The play centers on the lead female role and protagonist, Viola, who

The decision by Shakespeare to now portray Viola as a man, creates confusion amongst the audience in

movie varies greatly from the original play. The frivolous tone of this adaptation fails to epitomize the historical setting, depth of characters, and poetic magnificence of this comedic play. In She’s The Man the plot revolves around Viola, and her struggle to be recognized as a professional soccer player. When the girls’ team at her school is cancelled, she decides to disguise herself as her twin brother Sebastian (who coincidentally leaves for London to pursue his passion in music) in order to join the boys’ soccer team at his boarding school. However she is instantly captivated by her new roommate Duke Orsino, and he asks her to divulge his fervent and vehement love for their classmate Olivia. The movie essentially modernizes the play in order to remove the boring stigma associated with Shakespeare’s plays but with some futile additions that distort or are gross misrepresentations of the original play.

All throughout Illyria, there is romance, passion, royalty, and an immense amount of gender stereotypes. William Shakespeare imagines the kingdom of Illyria to have very traditional norms for both women and men in his play Twelfth Night. In Scene 2 of Act 1, Viola, recently rescued from a shipwreck, hears about a duke named Orsino and instantly comes up with a plan to get closer to him. Her plan is to disguise herself as a boy who she will name Cesario and become one of Orsino's’ attendants. Right off the bat, we begin to see gender stereotypes. Why must Viola become a man in order to work for the duke? Elizabethan society “molded women into the form of the dutiful wife and mother” (Elizabethan Women). Viola could not have served duke Orsino as a woman because as a woman she was expected to work at home and be either a “dutiful wife [or a] mother”. Scene two prepares the audience for the idea of gender throughout the rest of the play. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is very traditional play due to its ideas of gender stereotypes in Elizabethan society.

The play opens with Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, expressing his deep love for the Countess Olivia. Meanwhile, the shipwrecked Viola disguises herself as a man and endeavors to enter the Duke’s service. Although she has rejected his suit, the Duke then employs Viola, who takes the name of Cesario, to woo Olivia for him. As the

Another way that they are very similar is that in twelfth night sebastian goes out to sea and people believe that viola is dead and is never coming back. In shes the man sebastin tells his parents

She’s the Man is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.and has some common lessons we could use today. Like gender equality, misused identity, and relationship issues. Stuff like these are really good lessons we could use today.

Twelfth Night is a very feminist play once readers have been reading it. The story’s protagonist is a woman, Viola. Viola displays herself as a rational, strong, witting woman, who has to disguise herself as a man to be able to become a faithful attendant of Orsino. With Viola doing this it creates a big sexual mess as Viola falls in love with Orsino but cannot tell him since he still thinks she is a man. While Olivia, who is the object of Orsino’s affection, falls for Cesario, the disguise for Viola. Once Viola’s true identity is revealed Orsino declares his love for Viola which suggest that he may really just loved the masculinity she possessed. Orsino says to Viola, even after seeing her true identity, “Cesario, come; For so you shall be, while you are a man; But when in other habits you are seen, Orsino's mistress and his fancy's queen” (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night 5.1.2599-26001). After everything has been reveled Orsino still calls Viola by her disguise name…her boy name, Cesario. The readers can only wonder is Orsino truly loved Viola for her or if he was in love with the male persona she gave.

In Twelfth Night, the protagonist of the story, Viola, is displayed as a rational, sacrificial, sincere, strong, witty woman, who disguises herself as a man, to become a faithful attendant of Orsino. Viola is one with sacrificial and patient love, willingly loving Orsino, and attending to his every need. Orsino, on the other hand, is shown as an emotional man, who has superficial and transient love for Olivia. This love is very abruptly shifted to Viola at the end of the play, when Viola reveals her true identity. Through this contrast of these two individuals, we can see that Shakespeare makes a distinct different between genders, and allows to draw a contrast between characters to think deeper into their characters and purpose in the story, beyond their surface appearances.

With the modernization of any tale, certain plot threads have to be dropped, and others have to be changed. One such thread is Illyria: in Twelfth Night, Viola is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria, while Illyria is actually the name of the boarding school Viola attends in She’s the Man. Another difference is Cesario, Viola’s male identity in Shakespeare’s original work. Cesario is the name given to the restaurant Orsino and his cronies frequent in She’s the Man, while Viola takes the identity of Sebastian instead of creating a whole new one, as she is acting as a substitute while the real Sebastian is out of the country. However, she has her own personal agenda: to prove she is worthy of playing on a boys’ soccer team. This is also why she takes Sebastian’s identity and not a false name: she wouldn’t be able to attend Illyria since it would be a fake identity, so she had to assume a real one. In the movie’s Shakespearean source, Viola crafts a male identity to act as a servant and start a new life without Sebastian, who she thinks is lost at sea. Another notable difference is the elimination of characters and the combination of traits between others. One example of this is the character of Feste from Twelfth Night, who is portrayed as the fool who is actually the smartest man in the room. This character is

Much of the first half of the Twelfth Night is about disguised identities and general misconceptions about who is actually who. The play opens on a note of melancholy and death, Orsino grieving because Olivia refuses to love him and Viola and Olivia mourning the deaths of their brothers. It is following a shipwreck that Viola disguises herself as a male, ensuring that confusion will be part of the plot. The idea of masquerading as a member of the opposite sex is a familiar device and the “complications, artificial as they may appear, are an essential part of the play’s complete development.” (Travers 308) It is interesting to note that unlike other comedies such as “The Tempest”, Shakespeare does not create an older generation who prevent the young lovers from being together; instead it is the perplexity about gender and that keeps them apart. Sebastian, Viola’s identical twin, is the solution to all of the problems, though his appearance does add to it for a short while. Viola, dressed as Cesario, is mistaken for Sebastian by Antonio, and is asked for the money that he gave to Sebastian. However, this type of confusion adds to the comic nature of the plot as the audience is aware of the concealed identities. Order eventually comes from the chaos, disguises are shed and identities are revealed. The appearance of Sebastian ensures that the marriage will be possible for the main characters; Viola is free to marry Orsino and Olivia marries Sebastian, although she

Viola’s first words that lay out her gender defying scheme are “Conceal me what I am and be my aid for sure a disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent” (Shakespeare 1.2.53-56). Throughout Twelfth Night Shakespeare plays with the idea of gender and its role in society. The audience sees Orsino, the duke, trip over his words in his misogynistic contradictions of his opinions on women and their ability to love. Surprisingly, Viola also shares in such contradictions. However she is far from being misogynistic in modern terms. Viola’s outward duality is Shakespeare’s means of contrasting her with Orsino and reinforcing her disguise. (maybe: commenting on the nature of disguises)

In Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night or What you Will, the characters are involved in a plot complete with trickery, disguise, and love. Each character is defined not by his or her gender or true identity, but by the role they are forced to take because of the complicated situation that arises. Unlike their gender, the speech the characters give an insight to their true personalities. In the Twelfth Night, the character Duke Orsino uses flowery and over-dramatic language, long poetic sentence structure, and melodramatic metaphors to display his overemotional romantic nature despite the different emotions in his various speeches.

William Shakespeare, in his well-known comedy Twelfth Night, creates a plot that revolves around mistaken identity and deception. Mistaken identity, along with disguises, rules the play and affects the lives of several of the characters. Shakespeare's techniques involve mistaken identity to bring humor, mystery, and complication to the play. Many characters in Twelfth Night assume disguises, beginning with Viola who is disguised as a eunuch, Maria who writes a letter to Malvolio as Olivia, and then the mix-up between Sebastian and Viola are revealed.

Viola sacrificed who she was and expressing her love to Orsino so that she could create her voice in the world and be accepted in a dominate male society. Act one, scene two, lines 53 and 54, Viola says, “Conceal me what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become.” She portrays her courage when she decides to disguise herself as a young man. She does not have to mask her inner bravery while dressed as a man, because it’s acceptable for a male to be openly courageous constantly, while Desdemona showed moments of her strength which I will discuss. Viola becomes “Cesario” and Olivia becomes infatuated with him because he is unlike any other man she has encountered. Act one, scene five, lines 296-298, Olivia speaks to herself after Cesario has exited, “Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections with an invisible and subtle stealth to creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.” Cesario acts as a close female friend would, because he is actually a female. He listens, cares, and makes Olivia a priority. I believe that this is Shakespeare’s way of convincing or proving to 1600’s men in the audience that if they show compassion and understanding toward women, young ladies will fall in love with them easier.