The Different Types of Comedy Employed by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night

People tend to judge others based on many aspects. Sometimes they may try to force people to act upon certain rules that define their place in society. They often try to meet expectations that society has made for them based on gender and social status. William Shakespeare reinforces these ideas in his play Twelfth Night, which introduces many meaningful messages about situations that still occur in society today. He clearly develops important themes worthy of analysis. A few of these strong themes are about stereotypes and society’s expectations and rules, which he proves to be irrelevant most of the time. Many situations in the play falsify commonly held stereotypes about gender and social status by showing how they are sometimes invalid. He also shows how these stereotypes can affect the way people behave towards and judge others.

Not only this but the humorous, light-hearted tone of the workers as they prepare for their play serves as a refreshing contrast to the more dramatic― yet still comic― circumstances between Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena, as well as the other plot involving Titania, Oberon and the other fairies. Everything about the workmen is rather humorous, from their superficial traits to their deeper, less apparent traits, including their habits of mispronouncing words in a way that makes their entire sentence comically misconstrued, such as when Nick Bottom, at the time playing Pyramus says “Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover’s grace. / And like Limander [actually Leander] am I trusty still.”(Shakespeare 5.1.189-190)”. Not only does this provide the audience with some form of comical relief but these characters raise questions about the topics and themes most present in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an observation confirmed with every new piece of information that the reader discovers about the tradesmen. For example, Nick Bottom, like his

In spite of the promise of three weddings to be celebrated, the play concludes on a sour note when Feste, the clown, depicts life as grim, "for the rain it raineth every day" (Act V Scene i). They play’s primary central theme is that of the comic relationships between men and women. Furthermore, it illustrates the traditional, societal notions of “interdependence, and the newly emerging attitudes towards individual choice and personal desire, or as the play puts it, ‘will’” (Malcolmson 163). Although Twelfth Night is a story of love and courtship, nevertheless, it is also a “comedy of gender,” because of its ability to override the traditional Elizabethan notions of the female role through the characters of Viola and Olivia.

It is said that Queen Elizabeth I’s controversial reign at the time informed the play’s content. She, in fact, used to like to invite theater companies to her palaces[2] and saw a performance of the play at Christmastime while on a campaign in Ireland[3]. In her medieval England, people met the idea of a female monarch with hostility[4], because there had never been one until[5] . The challenge to tradition that was Queen Elizabeth I’s reign most likely to lead the discussion of gender roles in Twelfth Night.

The only reference to Twelfth Night during Shakespeare’s own lifetime is to a performance on February 2, 1602. A law student named John Manningham wrote in his diary about a feast he attended at the Middle Temple in London where he was a law student and where “we had a play called Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will." This was likely to have been an early performance since it is generally agreed that the play was probably written in 1601. In 1954 Sir Leslie Hotson’s book, The First Night of Twelfth Night, sought to identify the exact date of the first performance of Twelfth Night. He used the evidence of old records to suggest that Queen Elizabeth asked for a new play for the last night of the Christmas 1600-01 season, the Feast of the

"It would bow to me, for every one of these letters are in my name!"

In the kingdom of Illyria (fantasy world), Twelfth Night was supposedly originally written for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth I. William Shakespeare’s comedy associates with the Feast of Epiphany (January 6th) and was means for entertainment in the seventeenth century. It contains some aspects that can be thought of as a successful comedy when compared to the standards of today’s society. The play incorporates some of the very same devices that are used in modern comedies today, such as topsy-turvy romance, foolery, and mistaken identities. Twelfth Night also involves many cultural aspects that would be tough for an audience today to relate with. Some of these ideas are social class, dialect, and lack of modern technology that affect

In the Twelfth Night film directed by Trevor Nunn, there are differences between the sequencing of the scenes, lines of characters, and character stage directions/movements compared to the original text. Directors use film adaptations to enhance the writer’s intended meaning hidden in the original text, however, Trevor Nunn altered the meaning of a Shakespearean comedy. Shakespearean comedies are characterized as entertaining plays centered around a person of power, who delivers a statement of harsh judgment and must make amends, and the comedies usually end in marriage. In Twelfth Night, Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, passes harsh judgment towards Lady Olivia by telling his servant, Cesario, to “be clamorous and leap all civil bounds/

The torture many people receive for a reason varying reasons. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare presents a prank by five characters; Maria, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Fabian and Feste, that easily twists into bullying Malvolio. “Shakespeare gives the latest strategy in anti-bulling in schools” by The Denver Post shows how much bullying relates to the real world and Twelfth Night. Malvolio, the steward of Olivia, the noble woman of Illyria, always gets Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria, Feste and Fabian into trouble for many different reasons and their anger leads to a prank fooling Malvolio with an epistle that Olivia loves him and that to show his love he need to wear yellow as the sun stockings with black as night cross guarders up them, live openly mean to Sir Toby, walk around smiling and not mention anything about the epistle, this leads Maria and Sir Toby to lock him up in a dark room and make him go crazy. The thesis and matches the background knowledge because bullying takes place in both the play and the real world. Bullying in Twelfth Night and in the real life stay the same, the epistle works as a form of cyber bulling today, verbal, and physical bullying plays a role that works the same as Twelfth Night as the real, modern world too.

Deception and disguise are two key themes in Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night'. As in most comedies, Twelfth Night celebrates different forms of disguise and deception in order to make the play more entertaining. It also develops a strong connection between the main plot (with Viola, Orsino, Olivia, and the others) and the sub-plot (involving Sir Andrew, Sir Toby, Malvolio, and Maria). Disguise and deception appear in many different ways throughout the story.

There is a certain degree of expectation with the genre of comedy that despite whatever difficulties appear within the play, by the end these will be resolved and the play will have a traditional happy-ending with a marriage or a celebration in the final scene. The “Twelfth Night” is no exception to this rule. Despite problems of confused identities and sexualities, the play ends with marriage for the major characters because they “have learned enough about their own foolishness to accept it wisely, and their reward, as it should be, is marriage.”(Schwartz 5140). There is a resolution of harmony to a certain extent and an endorsement of romantic love yet despite the happiness evident in the last scene, there are many elements in the play

Comedy, in the Elizabethan era, often included themes of wit, mistaken identity, love, and tragedy, all tied up with a happy ending. These themes are prevalent in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a comical play that explores the pangs of unrequited love and the confusion of gender. Love is a powerful emotion that causes suffering, happiness, and disorder throughout the play. The play also demonstrates the blurred lines of gender identity, which ties into the modern day debate on sexuality and gender identity. The main characters in the play, Viola, Olivia, and Orsino are connected by a love triangle, each person pursuing an unrequited love. Suffering from love and the fluidity of gender are the prevalent themes explored throughout the play and intertwined with Viola, Olivia, and Orsino.

Shakespeare used dirty and witty humour in most of his plays but it is perhaps most obvious in Twelfth Night. He used different types of humour to please all of the people who flocked to see his plays. There was always an array of people, and they all needed to be kept interested. There were the peasants that he could entertain with the dirty jokes and humour. An example of this is ‘this is my lady's hand these be her very C's,

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.

In Shakespeare’s play, Malvolio and Maria both wish to do this; one by courting Olivia, and the other by trying to get closer to Sir Toby. The main difference between the two characters is Malvolio’s self-adulation and lust for power in comparison of Maria’s cleverness and her willingness to put her immediate wants aside to ultimately satisfy her craving for a better social standing at a later time. Malvolio’s immediate addiction to power and wish to get revenge on others overcomes any will he could have to play a part to access a higher social status.