Twelfth Essay

The play Twelfth Night is set in a Elizabethan country household in a place called Illyria. Illyria is a fictional place. Although the setting felt familiar to the audience, the name Illyria gave it a feeling of escape from reality, something that was important because everyday life could be tough in those days. The people needed an escape from reality sometimes. In this play we meet the upper class, as well as the lower class. It is not certain whether it really is "twelfth night", but there are

Love triangles.  They’re complicated and quite messy, as shown in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.  In Twelfth Night, twins Viola and Sebastian of Messaline are separated by a shipwreck, and both land in Illyria, but still separated, believing the other is dead.  Meanwhile, Duke Orsino is attempting to win over his crush, Lady Olivia, but she’ll have none of him since her brother died and she vows to mourn him for seven years, whilst avoiding everyone except her servants during such time.  Viola

Throughout Twelfth Night, Viola plays the part of a fascinating contradiction. During her courting of Olivia on behalf of the heartsick Orsino, Viola describes how she would woo Olivia if she loved her as Orsino does: “Make me a willow cabin at your gate, / And call upon my soul within the house, / And sing them loud even in the dead of night; / …Cry out ‘Olivia!’” (1.5.237-45). Later, she directly compares her own love for Orsino to his love for Olivia, yet she does not cry out his name in heartbreak

In William Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, Duke Orsino is desperate for somebody to love. His starvation for love in the opening scene is the start of the humor in the play. The very first line of the whole play is “If music be the food of love, play on” (Shakespeare 1:1 line 1). By that sentence, you know that there is a character that is craving love. When Orsino first laid eyes on Olivia, he knew that she was the one for him. He is not going to give up loving her, until she does. To get

“There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.” -Aristotle. Olivia’s clown, Feste has a very intriguing role in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Throughout the play, Feste is a bold and valiant character who continually makes daring comments towards everybody, including his mistress. The clown’s job is to be silly and crazy but in reality, Feste has the most wisdom and intelligence of all characters. Feste is also able to delude the other characters in the play using his wit or a disguise

Madness and foolishness make many appearances in Twelfth Night. Feste, the jester in count Olivia’s house states in act 3 scene 1, “foolery, sir, does walk about the ord like the sun; it shines everywhere.” The first appearance of madness in the play is when Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, is reciting a poem about love. Orsino, instead of showing madness as insanity or a mental illness he shows it as mad with love. Some have made inferences that the images Orsino creates with the poem is him hallucinating

the beginning of the 20th century, The Go-Between demonstrates how a young boys deceived and clouded perception of life leads to a disillusioned old man, who can’t recover from the distressing events of the first summer of 1900. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night disappointment is exhibited through many characters whom experience the torments of a love that is not reciprocated. Furthermore, Thomas Hardy explores similar themes in his poetry via the use of specific literary techniques, such as metaphors

In Act 1 of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Olivia falls for the reinvented identity of Viola, “Cesario”, the character she embodies along with her physical change. During her appearance earlier in the act, Orsino orders Viola to “unfold the passion of my love”(1.5.27). In the interaction between Olivia and “Cesario”, the actions Viola performs are merely for the expression of her disguise. Even the compliments where Viola refers to Olivia as “radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty” (1.5.169) are

There are several good film adaptations of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night, or What You Will,” each one having their own strengths and weaknesses. The four most notable are: The 1969 film, the 1988 Branagh film, the 1996 film, and the Globe Theater’s 2012 production (recorded on film). The 1969 Film certainly has the atmosphere of an old and classic film. Thus the portrayal seems a bit antiquated. Like many productions, the first two scenes are switched, and the first thing I noted was a bit

triangles. These are the staples of a standard Shakespearian play. Each play written by Shakespeare relies on these elements to allow the audience to receive the comedy of each play and move the plot along. One of Shakespeare’s most famous plays is Twelfth Night where drama dominates the story. The majority of the drama that occurs stems from the fact that little is as it seems because without the deception and drama that occurs in the play, the story would be stuck back in the first act. The characters