William Shakespeare 's Twelfth Night

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.

love when actually they just loved the idea of it. One such a man is

Male and female relationships differ a tremendous amount compared to now versus Shakespeare’s time. The obvious answer to many as to how it differs is the superiority of men over women. Of course, it may not be like that now, but way back then to when this play was written, much was different. Shakespeare demonstrates different types of relationships through the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Like the couple of Lysander and Hermia, Shakespeare shows an extreme love between a man and woman and how the man guides her important life decisions, but with a stubborn father right by their side. Again through Oberon and Titania, Titania wants to seem powerful and “independent” you could say by disobeying Oberon’s wishes. Shakespeare sort of creates a little battle between two authoritative characters but throughout the play put the male, Oberon, on top. Finally, Shakespeare demonstrates what is called gender role reversal between Helena and Demetrius. Helena instead of being lady-like and reserved, pretty much begs for Demetrius’ attention. Shakespeare makes Helena seem desperate throughout the play exemplifying the male has the most say in what goes on. Through these various male and female relationships, Shakespeare illustrates the overall power of males occurring in his time.

At first glance, twins may seem identical, but many would argue that they behave differently with uniquely hardwired brains. In William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, two main characters Viola-Cesario and Sebastian are lost in a shipwreck, but later reunite with each other and along their journey, confuse many other characters while mixing one another up. Viola-Cesario and Sebastian are twins who look very similar in appearance, but nevertheless they are actually two opposite characters with different attitudes and characteristics which shape their unique behavior. For instance, Sebastian and Viola-Cesario behave differently from each other since Sebastian is an aggressive person and Viola-Cesario is a peaceful person. However, considering

In Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, there are quite a few characters that don't seem as important and generally irrelevant to the overall message of the story. Although it may seem that way while glancing at what the characters say and their frequency in the play, they are all deeply relevant. One in particular is the fool. The fool is one of the most impactful characters of them all by influencing other characters.

In Twelfth Night, a myriad of relationships are created and elaborated. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this play is how each of these connections develop while being intertwined with one another. The relationship between Viola and Olivia grows from a small fascination to an intense and burning desire over the course of the play. This creates a significant effect of confusion, frustration, and satisfaction on the other characters as they struggle to unwind the complexities of their relationships to each female lead.

By using gender criticism, an approach of understanding the impact of sexual identity on literary works, to view Twelfth Night, Shakespeare reveals confusion brought by gender identity to both individual and

In the comedy Twelfth Night written by William Shakespeare many of the characters experience emotional pain. The pain that a character name Olivia experiences is the death of her brother, causing her to mourn. Malvolio who is Olivia's steward is involved with emotional pain caused by humiliation, which occurs more than once in this play. Lastly, a great deal of characters battle with the feeling of unrequited love. Even though Shakespeare wrote this as a comedy, there was still a mass amount of emotional pain throughout.

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, starts off very dramatic and with a feeling of sadness and love lost or out of reach. Orsino has fallen for a woman called Olivia, whose brother has died. At the same time Viola’s loses her brother as well tragically in a shipwreck. Following immediately after this she decides to dress as a man, to gain her livelihood working for Orsino. Here we go from the Romantic mood of the story, to the slightly ludicrous but amusing idea of cross dressing or gender bending. Which is a major plot instrument throughout the entire story, an instrument that crates both hilarity and a great amount of drama.

When Act 2 begins, we meet Sebastian, who has washed up on shore and been taken care of by a man named Antonio. Sebastian is understandably upset, due to the fact that he thinks his sister Viola is dead, and has decided to go traveling, stopping at Duke Orsino's court first. Because Antonio has grown attached to Sebastian, he decides to follow him there.

One of the many comedic plays written by William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, was produced into a film. The key actors within this film are Frances Barber, Chris Hollis, Caroline Langrishe, Christopher Ravenscroft, and Richard Briers. The 1988 film, directed by Paul Kafno, kept an almost perfect faithfulness to the text and it was very easy for me to follow along in the book. Although the film was not the most entertaining one, it did a great job of portraying the famous Shakespeare play.

The Twelfth Night was a religious festival held during the Elizabethan Era. It also 

celebrated the concept of the reversal of normal order, where the lower and upper class had the 

chance to experience each other’s roles in society. It was a day of celebration in which enabled a 

time of foolishness for each class. This religious festival seem to have influenced Shakespeare’s 

play, Twelfth Night in relations to the concept of the foolishness celebration of switching the 

roles of upper and lower class. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, he utilizes Feste’s role as a clown 

to be the figure who functions as a blur for class distinction and to also show that words hold 

power regardless of ones status in society. Malvolio functions as the fool who hopelessly

The main character in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, experiences a drastic physical identity change and crisis. Viola, shipwrecked to this new land, Llyria, disguises herself as her twin brother, Sebastian, in order to gain work. At first glance, this may not put forth a problem, but understanding the historical and social context during the time in which this play was written, illustrates a sense of feminist upcoming, but Shakespeare tugs back in forth from women superior roles to men. Was this tug-a-war simply a gesture to show equality or that both, men and women, will always need each other? Twelfth Night is

William Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night, focuses on identity, love, and comedy. While we made our adaptation to this play, we chose to have a more modern approach. Because we decided on a modern adaptation, we had to come up with a modern storyline; therefore, there is still love and confusion about identity. Taking place in 2015 in Los Angeles, Orsino is the number one modeling agency in the state. Along with a new setting, we have also changed some actions with the characters, meaning some things that take place in the play are not a part of our storyline (for example Feste as the Clown). Our adaptation has the potential to be a real movie because it is realistic. The main purpose behind Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was to entertain, and

William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night can easily be interpreted as a romance play. Given that the majority of the characters in the play in some way or another fall in love, but there are many twists that come with these romantic relationships. Some of the characters fall in love with the same character, others fall in love with a character that loves another, who actually loves another causing a chaotic love triangle. Within every romance a character is tragically hurt, turning the romance play into more of a tragedy. Throughout the play the characters throw around a rigid construction of the term “love,” that of a desire and not an actual feeling. Therefore, again turning the play away from a romance play, but now turning it towards a mocked romance play. The aspect that is manipulated causing all the misinterpretation is the representation of the term love, which is implicated by using multiple characters different scenarios of their love. The main characters reside in somewhat of a love triangle, Olivia, Viola, and Orsino. Love is often aligned with lust, stability, and class. None of which defines love as a sense of true selflessness. In the representation of love the reader interprets no selfless actions done to express their love to one another. Love is shown more as an obsession implied on the thought of love with respect to many alternative motives, which also show a lack of love being understood by the characters. In result, of the various representation of love