William Shakespeare 's Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night, written by William Shakespeare, is a comedy about love. Love can be things that are not always what they seem and or it can be foolish and it can also be a weakness. Foolishness and weaknesses are the most of what we see in the play, Twelfth Night, the audience sees that, yes there is a tragedy but, that is not what the play revolves around. The audience sees that later on in the play all the love that is being described is foolish as well as something a child would do. The love that is being described can not happen for a certain reason and when the characters find out that someone loves them and they were not just saying that they would do something for them, the character just sort of accepts it and let fate intervene and take place. Everyone in the world has a weakness or have done something foolish in their life. It only counts

Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play’s main focus. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various lovers find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain. Many of the characters seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively. Various characters claim to suffer painfully from being in love, or, rather, from the pangs of unrequited love. At one point, Orsino depicts love dolefully as an “appetite” that he wants to satisfy and cannot, at another point; he calls his desires “fell and cruel hounds”. Olivia more bluntly describes love as a

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play’s main focus. The play starts by following Viola, a girl who has been shipwrecked. Viola and the many other characters face many obstacles due to who they love. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various characters find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain. Throughout the play, many of the characters seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare shows that the theme is that strong and abrupt emotions, like love and hate, can be the cause of suffering.

Throughout Shakespeare 's Twelfth Night, there are various depictions of gender identity, which causes different relations among the characters. Many of the characters fall between traditional and non-traditional in terms of their courtship rituals; this eventually leads to gender confusion. In addition, the appealing language influences the characters and their decisions.

When analyzing a pair of twins, people will recognize that they seem very identical, but many would argue that their brains function differently and that they behave differently than each other as well. 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 they confuse many other characters as they mix one another up. Viola-Cesario and Sebastian are twins who look very similar in appearance, but nevertheless they are actually two opposite characters when it comes to their attitudes and characteristics as they think and behave differently from one another. 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 the fact that Viola-Cesario and Sebastian are twins, they still look very similar to each other because Viola-Cesario looks exactly like Sebastian when she disguises herself as Cesario. Furthermore, Sebastian and Viola-Cesario both find love in the play, but they fall in love differently because Sebastian is infatuated by Olivia and Viola truly falls in love with Orsino.

One of the predominant themes in William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night is love. The notion of love is important to the plot as many of the characters are driven by love. There are multiple forms of love depicted throughout the play; each character represents a different type of love. Viola displays a patient, sincere, and enduring love for Orsion as well as a deep familial love for her brother. Sebastian and Antonio share a special bond which could be classified as brotherly love. These two bonds can be seen as the most real forms of love depicted in Twelfth Night. Orsino and Olivia have both become possessed by a deep and sudden romantic love. Also, unrequited love can be seen by Olivia and Orsino. These similarities are ironic because Orsino believes he is madly in love with Olivia, whom he has never met. Olivia falls in love with Viola (i.e., Cesario) upon their first acquaintance. Meanwhile, Viola is in love with Orsino. Each character is caught in the circle of love, however, once Viola’s true identity is revealed the characters quickly change their love interests. Lastly, Malvolio represents the egoistic and conceited side of love. He loves himself and those who he can benefit from. Shakespeare combines love with humour showing the audience how love causes people act foolishly. Although each aspect of love has been greatly exaggerated in this comedy, enduring love, familial love, unrequited love, and self-love remain present in today’s society.

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

Shakespeare wrote the romantic comedy play, Twelfth Night, in the year 1601. Despite being over 400 years old, people have been studying and performing the play continuously. Even though some may argue American audience now cannot understand the significance of social hierarchy in the play nor the lines written in Shakespearean English, Twelfth Night remains popular today as shown by New York Times’ publishing of seven reviews on different performances of Twelfth Night. At the same time, Shakespeare utilizes dramatic irony, created by Viola dressed as Cesario, and reversal of social hierarchy, created by the love struck Duke and Countess, the drunk knights Sir Andrew and Toby, and the brilliant maid Maria. This essay aims to analyze comedic elements in Twelfth Night, as well as explaining why it remains popular until this day. We will compare the original and several modern productions of the play that New York Times reviewers feature in the newspapers while integrating ideas from excerpts of William Zinsser’s book On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction and Henry Bergson’s Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic.

Antonio and Sebastian are very intimate with one another and have become very loyal to each other. This is shown quite evidently throughout the play many times. An example of this is when Antonio wants to go with Sebastian to Illyria to make sure he is safe, he tells Sebastian, “But, come what may, I do adore thee so that danger shall seem sport, and I will go” (Act 2, Scene 1, lines 40-41). Deep down inside, Antonio feels a shrill desire to follow and help his friend on his travels. Although

The very first word following the dramatis personae in the text of William Shakespeare 's comedy, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, is Music. The first thing that playgoers hear at the beginning is music. This music is being played for a duke, a powerful lord residing over the setting of all the characters. He is surrounded by other lords and his attendant, Curio. The duke, Orsino, cannot help but comment:

Far from an unfamiliar concept, love can be seen throughout time by tracing its countless strings in stories of ancient gods and goddesses to modern fairytales. As such a timeless and endless subject, society continues redefining, reanalyzing, and recasting it as humanity deciphers its many facets. The resulting interpretations appear in some of history’s greatest artworks, in forms of musical compositions, paintings, or dramas. Shakespeare explores his own view of love throughout the comedic Twelfth Night, with its many love conflicts and subplots. Set in Elizabethan times, the play contradicts the common belief of a set hierarchy that controls the universe. The hierarchy begins with God, filtering down through celestial objects, man, animals, plants, and ending at elements. Each of the four distinct levels contains a primate, a head among the group running along the border of the next rather than inside of it. These positions and the levels themselves develop from the balance of elements. The more perfectly the elements mix, the higher they are in the pecking order and the less prone they are to decay. Shakespeare, instead of depicting his characters to follow this hierarchy, allows them to break social norms of the time in the name of love. Through the quickly knotting ties between those of the love triangle, Shakespeare surmises that love surpasses any limitations.

William Shakespeare is perhaps one of the most famous writers of English literature. His writings and plays have touched the lives of many people. At some point in our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, we have all come across a poem, play or perhaps even an old adage that was written by William Shakespeare that has captured our attention. I still remember the very first time I read Romeo and Juliet in high school. The story was one of the most memorable pieces of literature that I recall reading in school. Shakespeare’s unique style of writing has had a great influence on our society. One of his famous plays, Twelfth Night, was modernized by director Andy Fickman and made into a movie called, She 's the Man in 2002. Although

It is clear from Antonio’s first scene that he has an infatuation and devotion to Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother whom the former rescued from a shipwreck, in some form or another. Though the nature of these feelings are left ambiguous, Antonio’s cares for Sebastian is apparent in how he worries about the young man and wants to travel with him in Act II scene 1. The thought of being apart from Sebastian is something Antonio does not want to imagine or see become reality, and he even goes so far as to ask “If you will not murder me for my love, let me/be your servant” (II.1, 32-33). The idea of dying by a lack of love or rejection is reflected in many of the characters throughout the play, mostly from Orsino in regards to Olivia, however Antonio reacts to this idea differently. Instead of lamenting at the rejection, or perhaps even enjoying the rejection of love, as many of the other characters do, Antonio takes action and follows after Sebastian to Orsino’s court despite the danger he will face, citing “But come what may, I do adore thee so/That danger shall seem sport, and I will go” (II.1, 43-44). This can be seen again in taking up Viola’s fight against Sir Andrew Aguecheek after he mistakes Viola, dressed as Cesario, for Sebastian in Act III. Antonio is in the court of the most powerful man in Illyria, who wants to arrest him for piracy, and is still willing to fight to protect the person he believes he loves. His love has driven him to madness, like many other

Twelfth Night, or What You Will is a play written by world famous poet William Shakespeare. The romantic comedy, is believed to have been written in the early 1600s to represent the celebration called “Twelfth Night”, which is a celebration during the passing Christmas time and has, since the play, also been coined “Opposite Day”. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare illustrates a balance of the genders by using Viola, and different characters, to prove that women and men are equally capable of a deep, honest Love, although Viola disagrees with this in Act II.

In the famous comedy Twelfth Night, Shakespeare dabbles with the phenomenon of love. This is seen through his various characters who are forced to deal with the aspects brought on by love. Characters like Cesario, who is Viola dressed as a boy. In the play the characters deal with their problems around love. The three major characters that love seems to impact more than the rest are Duke Orsino, Lady Olivia, and her servant Malvolio. Each of these characters is affected by love and each reacts differently when in love to out of love. Their reactions to love are based on their behavior, their speech, and their relations with other characters.