The Role of the Fool in Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
In English Literature, a fool is a person professionally counterfeits
folly for the entertainment of others. They are always regarded as
comic figures, which provide mediation under tensional circumstances.
As Twelfth Night is an atypical romantic comedy, the jester is not the
only fool who is subject to foolery, many other characters are subject
to foolery by their silly acts as well. There are two types of fool in
the play, namely Feste the professional jester who is in fact quite
intelligent, and the non-jester fools, who are not fools but act like
fools. Since Feste is the only designed fool in the play, the role of
Feste will be explored in the following.
Feste is more of the comic truth of the comedy. Since Feste is a
licensed fool, his main role is to speak the truth. Feste plays the
role of a humble jester employed by Olivia's father. "Feste the
jester... a fool that the Lady Olivia's father took much pleasure in",
Feste is "an allowed fool", meaning he is licensed, privileged critic
to speak the truth of the people around him. In Act1 Sc5, Olivia is
proved to be a true fool by Feste when she is asked what she was
mourning about, there is no point for Olivia to mourn for a person’s
soul in heaven, “The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's
soul, being in heaven”.
Feste is a comedic character who is extremely intelligent. From the
very beginning of the play, the fact that Feste is intelligent had
already been well established by the light-hearted and witty
conversation between Maria and Feste. Initially, Maria threatens Feste
because he was not where...
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...es a play on words and sybolizes
that the jester is smarter than the rich and educated people he works
for. Twelfth Night like all Shakespearean comedies is largely about
social concerns. The social messages in Twelfth Night are largely
about that no one should be judged on appearance as they can be
deceptive and the importance of self awareness or the humour in lack
of.
In conclusion, Twelfth Night is full of lighthearted moments and this
is expressed through both the main and the subplots, in which the fool
is the one to control comedy and humour in the play. Feste's role in
this Illyrian comedy is significant because he assists in making the
comedy work in many senses. Feste as well creates the confusion
through humour and works out everything at the end to make Twelfth
Night a really amusing Elizabethan play.
upon her. She knew she had fallen in love with Duke Orsino and had the
Orsino’s view of love is that he is in love with love itself and he
In Shakespeare 's well known play Twelfth Night, which takes place somewhere in Illyria, Lady Olivia is an independent, powerful, wealthy but single woman; the sudden deaths of her father and brother has left her in sadness alone in a big castle to herself. She has her relative Sir Toby Belch who was still around and visited her. Orsino, a duke, has a huge crush on her and is trying to have her to himself. Meanwhile, the jealous steward Malvolio who also has a crush on Lady Olivia, is a guy who is full of himself and acts like he 's king, he forgets where his place is sometimes. In Olivia 's house there is the weak and foolish Sir Andrew who has a crush on Olivia and is wishing one day he would get a chance with her. are also these twins,Viola and Sebastian. They have been shipwrecked and isolated from each other, so Viola thinks Sebastian is dead, and Sebastian thinks viola is dead. Later Viola decides to disguise herself as a messenger and call herself Cesario so she can work for Orsino. Since Viola was so pretty and the way she used her words were great, she won Orsino’s trust. Orsino tells Cesario
William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night In the last act of the play the plot entanglements and confusions are not only sorted out but, also reach their climax. To do this all the plots that have been occurring throughout the play are brought together in one final conclusion. The various plot entanglements are sorted out in what is generally thought to be a happy ending, for instance:- Viola, who is under the mistaken identity of Caesario, finally reveals her true identity because Sebastian has appeared therefore everyone else thinks they are seeing two Ceasario's. By Viola doing this, she can finally reveal to Orsino that she loves him.
There is much to find in the play to makes us smile with lots of songs
Feste, the fool character in Twelfth Night, in many ways represents a playwright figure, and embodies the reach and tools of the theater. He criticizes, manipulates and entertains the other characters while causing them to reflect on their life situations, which is similar to the way a playwright such as Shakespeare interacts with his audience. Furthermore, more so than the other characters in the play he accomplishes this in a highly performative way, involving song and clever wordplay that must be decoded, and is thus particularly reflective of the mechanisms at the command of the playwright. Feste is a representation of the medieval fool figure, who is empowered by his low status and able to speak the truth of the kingdom. A playwright speaks the truth by using actors and fictional characters, who are in a parallel low status in comparison to the audience, as they lack the dimensionality of real people. Thus, the role Feste plays in the lives of the characters in the play resembles the role the play itself plays in the lives of the audience watching the performance. This essay will explore this comparison first by analyzing similarities between the way in which Feste interacts with other characters and the way the playwright interact with the audience, and then focus on the similarities between the aims and content of these interactions.
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a play with themes that parallel the folly of the festival it is named after. The main storyline of the plot plays on this a lot by mixing up the stereotypes around gender that were very present at the time. However, a sub-plot involving secondary characters defines this theme even more. It takes the idea even further by relating servants’ attempts to blur the lines between social classes. Twelfth Night’s Maria and Malvolio both have great aspirations to rise above their social class. However, Maria succeeds where Malvolio fails because of her capability to make use of the satiric ambiance of her mistress’s household to achieve her goals.
It would be impossible to label all the roles that Fool plays to his king. His only assigned brief - an entertainer of the court - is most likely the fool’s least important. Fool acted far more importantly than a mere source of entertainment, being Lear’s informative protector and friend. By far his most significant role was that of a moral instructor to his king. Fool teaches Lear that humans are unable to know themselves completely.
Andrew is funny, it is not intentional. His faults include a lack of wit, a
After Olivia has her very first conversation with Cesario (Viola), where he tries to woo her for Duke Orsino, she immediately falls in love with him. After Cesario leaves her palace, Olivia says to herself ‘Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit do give thee fivefold blazon. Not too fast; soft, soft. Unless the master were the man. How now? Even so quickly may one catch the plague?’ Here Olivia states that Cesario’s external features are what attract her to him. Her metaphor contains a s...
to address Viola as if she were male, he says, "Boy, thou hast said to
make him think he is mad and they also make Olivia think he is mad
The theme of deception runs very strong in Act One. Almost all the characters seem to either be deceiving someone, or being deceived themselves.
Humor in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night In Twelfth Night we see different types of humour. There is the witty
Twelfth Night or What You Will is one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies. It has been performed hundreds of times and adapted into a number of modern films. The main plot of the play follows Viola, a girl who is rescued from a shipwreck and enters into the service of the Duke Orsino disguised as a man. Rising quickly in his estimation, Viola begins delivering messages of love on his behalf to Olivia, a noble woman who has no interest in Orsino’s advances. Over the course of the play Olivia falls in love with the disguised Viola, Viola falls in love with Orsino, and Viola’s twin brother Sebastian, who supposedly died in the shipwreck, returns. Following Sebastian’s return the twins are mistaken for each other, leading to both misunderstanding and marriage in the final scenes of the play. Alongside the main plot of Twelfth Night is an almost equally prominent subplot involving Malvolio, a servant of Olivia, who falls in love with her and who falls prey to a prank planned by the other members of the household who despise his abhorrence of fun. In the article “The Design of Twelfth Night” by L.G. Salingar, Salingar examines the plot and structure of the play and addresses the significance of the subplot. The purpose of this essay is to examine both evidence from the play and articles from other authors, with a focus on Salingar, who have written on the subject in order to determine the purpose of the subplot. In his article, Salingar comes to the conclusion that the purpose of the subplot is to provide a comic mirror of the main plot while amplifying the main themes of delusion, misrule and festivity. Salingar presents a solid argument, however he has neglected another lesser but significant element of the sub-plot which illustrate...