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William Shakespeare 's ' Twelfth Night ' Or What You Will ' Essay

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With every good story, there must be reason to the madness. With every great story, the audience is left to question their own thoughts over time. But what really makes a story great? Is it love and good will throughout where in the end nearly everyone is happy and all is well? Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night, or What You Will is an example of exactly this happy ending story. Or is it the taboo and transgressions of a story’s characters that make it great? Such as in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet; the deceitful actions of betrayal, death and incestuous behavior of the characters certainly leave the audience asking question far after the play has ended. What is the meaning? (Beha BR18) The characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet are very diverse in personality and in their roles. Herein lie the questions: How do the characters differ and how do their roles impact others and ultimately affect the play?
“Frailty, thy name is woman!” (Branagh 1996) Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, has much love for his mother, Queen Gertrude, and within the emotion of his anguish over the untimely death of his father, his frustration builds with tumultuous peaks and valleys in a sea of confusion. Shakespeare creates her character as the antithesis of her son, Hamlet. Hamlet has great intellect, is a scholar and a student of philosophy at the University of Wittenberg. A conscientious and loyal soul has Hamlet, he longs for the answers of life’s most elusive of questions. Queen Gertrude is shallow,

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