Twelfth Night Identity Essay

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

Great Expectations tells the ultimate rags to riches story of the Orphan Pip. Dickens takes his readers through life changing events that ultimately mold the identity of the main character. Dividing these events into sections will provide the basis for interpreting which events had the most profound effect on Pip’s identity towards the end of the novel. These life-changing events provide the catalyst for the development of Pip’s character from childhood, his adolescence, maturing into a social gentleman, and finally becoming a self-aware man of society.

Most people, unless they choose to be an outsider, want to be considered “cool.” Whether it’s to fit in with a peer group, or clique, or to impress someone in particular, like a member of the opposite sex, or a potential mate. Or possibly to gain something from an individual for financial or social gain (see “Scamming”).

In “Twelfth Night”, disguise is a key theme in order for the play to take shape. Within the first three scenes, we have several examples of characters deliberately deceiving others in order to achieve a selfish goal. An example of this is seen through Viola’s decision to disguise herself as a eunuch in order to find favour with the duke.

    It is not unusual that the fool should be a prominent figure and make an important contribution in forming the confusion and the humor in an Elizabethan drama. In William Shakespeare's comedy, Twelfth Night, Feste the clown is not the only fool who is subject to foolery. He and many other characters combine their silly acts and wits to invade other characters that either escape reality or live a dream. In Twelfth Night, Feste, Maria and Sir Toby are the fools that make the comedy work in many senses.

Identity is what defines us as a person. Everyone one on earth has their own unique identity. To showcase my identity, I created a collage of images and descriptive words, called an identi-kit. This identi-kit shows what I feel like is my identity to myself and the others. My identi-kit identifies me as a mixed martial artist. The identi-kit has images of a deadly shark with mixed martial arts gloves on that say mixed martial arts on the front and fight shorts with the words competitor and warrior on them. It also has descriptive words like “killer instinct” and “fight” which describe my spirit. There are three assumptions that come to question when asking about one’s identity. The first is if you were born with this

My identity is something that that no one can take away from me. As I am still growing and learning, I can say that I have found many things that appeal to me. My interests will help define my personality and express myself in ways that I can’t express through words. I enjoy finding new things to do and doing my best in aiming towards my goals. I have many goals, but I know that I can only accomplish them through patience and perseverance.

The play Twelfth Night encapsulates what it meant to be a man and women throughout

According to The English Review, Duke Orsino has “full of devotion to an ideal of love.” He does not understand that love is not straightforward, and if you love someone, they might not love you back. Orsino loves Olivia, but Olivia loves Cesario who is really Viola. Olivia’s love is complicated. She decides to confess her love to Cesario by saying “Would thou ’dst be ruled by me!” (4.1.68). The confusing part of this encounter is that Olivia really says this to Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother, not Cesario. Olivia’s confusion is most likely not commonly found in the everyday world. However, her complex relationship shows how love is not simple. Olivia thought she loved Cesario/Viola, but in the end, she loved Sebastian. Now, Viola’s character shows the pain and complication of a silenced love. She loved Orsino the whole time she was pretending to be Cesario. She says that she would marry Orsino in the beginning of the play when she says “myself would be his wife” (1.4.46). However, she couldn’t act upon this love until her true identity could be revealed. Sounds very simple and easy does it

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

This is the set up of many situations, such as the meeting of Olivia and Viola in which Olivia falls very quickly in love with Cesario ‘even so quickly may one catch the plague’ this is an example of unrequited love, or the ‘melancholy lover’ a melancholy lover is a lover which suffers from his/her love. The other example of unrequited love is again because of mixed Identities, Viola the other ‘melancholy lover’ in the play, loves Orsino but Orsino cannot return that love because he thinks she is a man so never would think that she loves him, but she also cannot reveal her love to him because she would then have to reveal her true identity, which cannot be revealed until the right time. Cesario/Viola talks about how she knows how Orsino feels because “My father had a daughter loved a man,” Viola talks to Orisno about how her ‘sister’ loved a man that

William Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night, explores many different themes, the most notable being that you may take another character to be seen as your true self. To start, the male character, Cesario, is truly a female named Viola, who has presented herself as a eunuch to serve the Duke of Illyria, Orsino. As Cesario, Viola falls for Orsino but cannot pursue her desires as she is thought to be male. Before Cesario reveals to be a women, “he” gives hints that he has feelings for Orsino. In Act Two, Scene Four, Orsino quizzes Cesario as to what women he has fallen in love with.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld, a famous French writer has once made the claim, “There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.” Despite the care, time and energy put into disguising oneself or deceiving others, it is impossible for one's true identity, emotions and personality to remain hidden forever. In Shakespeare's play, Twelfth Night, disguises and mistaken identities play a dominant role in influencing the professions and love lives of several character. By looking at the mistaken identity of Viola as Cesario, Maria's handwriting and Feste's role as the household fool, it is evident that mistaken identity plays a vital role in the plot development of the Twelfth Night.

Viola, one of the main protagonists, experiences suffering when she falls in love with Orsino, whom she cannot pursue or express her true feelings for. After a shipwreck, Viola finds herself stranded in the country of Illyria. In order to work for the Duke Orsino, she disguises herself as a man named Cesario, which makes romance with the duke impossible. After spending three days with him, she falls in love. Not only does she have to repress her feelings toward Orsino, but to add to her pain, Orsino assigns her to spend her time trying to persuade Lady Olivia to marry him. Viola says to the audience, “whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife” (1.4.42), because she wishes to marry Orsino.

In 'Twelfth Night’, gender and sexuality in many ways add to the play’s themes of madness. 'Twelfth Night ' is a reflection of renaissance thought and culture, the renaissance was a transitional period from the medieval to the radical Elizabethan era. The culture of the time was a contradictory one, as from one aspect it was influenced by the patriarchal medieval time, where women were under the rule of men and seen as needing the protection of men, however, from another perspective, the culture was a changing one as women were starting to receive education and many humanists believed that women should be given more rights. The play reflects these attitudes and often challenges the social hierarchy and establishes ideas on gender roles, sexuality and cross-dressing. These factors indeed undermine the expectations of male and female behaviour, and in turn further the play 's theme of madness which has a comedic effect on the audience due to the shock humour it provides.