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Elizabethan idea of love in twelfth night
How Shakespeare presents love in the play as a whole
Elizabethan idea of love in twelfth night
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In the play ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet’ William Shakespeare explores three different aspects of love. According to the oxford dictionary the definition of love is a strong feeling of affection. The plays that William Shakespeare has written definitely adhere to this definition. These three aspects of love are true love, self love and friendship love. Many characters in these plays are tangled in a web of love and they are oblivious that they 're feeling and emotions towards other characters are not real.
Shakespeare explores different love in the two plays. In Romeo and Juliet he only speaks of true love, this is also known as ‘love at first sight’ in the modern era because love in the elizabethan time was the child being forced
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Through their times of sorrow and mourning for each of their apparent deaths they still loved each other. They believed deep down that maybe someway each of them was still alive and well.
Many people, even in today 's society, love themselves more then anything else. Twelfth Night explains the issue of self love and how it affects peoples lives. Malvolio is the easiest to identify with the problem of self love. He sees himself as a handsome and noble man. Malvolio believes many women would love to be with him. He likes to see things one way only, and he deceives himself just to suit his outlook on the situation. For example, in the play he twists Olivia 's words around to make it sound like she admires his yellow cross gartered stockings, when she really despises
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Sir Toby only cares about himself and no one else, not even his friends. He ignores Maria 's warnings about drinking into the night, and he continues to push Sir Andrew to court Olivia. Although he believes Sir Andrew doesn 't have a chance. Olivia cares about the people around her, but she also believes that no man is worthy of her beauty. She think’s she is "all that," and that no one can match her. Friendship is the third type of love expressed in "Twelfth Night." The biggest and closest friendship would have to be between Orsino and Cesario. They barely knew each other at first, and before long Orsino was telling Cesario his inner love for Olivia. He even had Cesario running his love messages to Olivia. The second friendship between Viola and the Sea Captain was not mentioned a lot, but they had a very deep bond between one another. They survived the shipwreck together and the Sea Captain promised to keep Viola 's idea about pretending to be a man a secret. If he had opened his mouth the entire play would have
Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare, is a story that many people are familiar with, even to the point that many mindlessly quote the balcony scene without really even knowing what it means. It is a classic story that students have learned about in school for years now, and still do to this day. Since it has been published in the 1500s, it has become one of the most famous love stories in history, and as the years have progressed, people have created several stories that portray many similar ideas. One of those stories is West Side Story; with the rivalries, the love story, and even the lesson, it follows the concept of Romeo and Juliet more closely than one would think.
In 2003 as a response to communities with a large amount and growing number of youth gangs the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, initiated the Gang Reduction Program (GRP) (U.S. Department of Justice 2008). The formation of gangs is seen as a response to system failures and community dysfunction. As a result, one of OJJPD’s anti-gang initiatives is to make communities safer and have a pro-social environment (U.S. Department of Justice 2008). Furthermore, OJJDP plans to provide economic and social opportunities that gangs often promise to new recruits which are often obtained in an illegal and dangerous fashion (U.S. Department of Justice 2008). OJJDP believes that the GRP is capable of addressing the underlying issues for the increasing popularity and intensity of gang activity in specific suburban and rural neighborhoods (U.S. Department of Justice 2008). The program takes an integrative approach to dealing with the issue of increasing membership and participation with gangs. The following will discuss the program’s goal, theoretical basis, methods of operation, and overall effectiveness. After reviewing these major aspects of the GRP I will personally assess the value of this program and conclude whether or not the evidence supporting the program’s efficiency is strong enough for me to recommend it for implementation.
Throughout the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, various types of love are portrayed. According to some of the students of Shakespeare, Shakespeare himself had accumulated wisdom beyond his years in matters pertaining to love (Bloom 89). Undoubtedly, he draws upon this wealth of experience in allowing the audience to see various types of love personified. Shakespeare argues that there are several different types of love, the interchangeable love, the painful love and the love based on appearances, but only true love is worth having.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is, in a way, Romeo and Juliet turned inside out--a tragedy turned farcical. The tragedy both are based on is the story of "Pyramus and Thisbe." In one, Ovid's story is treated as a melodrama (in Romeo and Juliet) and in another, it is fodder for comedy (in A Midsummer Night's Dream).
In our society, love can be portrayed in thousands of ways. With simple things such as giving someone a hug or something more elaborate such as marriage. These things show are affection and love towards others, but it does not just end there. In Romeo and Juliet, as well as our society, we portray many different styles of love. These styles of love that I thought were portrayed well in Romeo and Juliet were physical love, emotional love, and paternal love.
In stark contrast to the dark and tragic "Othello," is one of Shakespeare’s lightest and funniest comedies, "Twelfth Night." The theme of love is presented in a highly comical manner. Shakespeare, however, once again proves himself a master by interweaving serious elements into humorous situations. "Twelfth Night" consists of many love triangles, however many of the characters who are tangled up in the web of love are blind to see that their emotions and feelings toward other characters are untrue. They are being deceived by themselves and/or the others around them.
...h the idea of being in love and enjoys making a spectacle of himself. His attraction to the ostensibly male Cesario injects sexual ambiguity into his character, and reveals that genuine love does exist within his character because he allows himself for that brief scene to be exposed and vulnerable. Olivia, like Orsino likes to wallow I her own misery, and also acts absurdly by falling for Cesario within a matter of a few moments of dialogue. Olivia seems to have no difficulty transporting her affections from one love interest to the next, however, suggesting that her romantic feelings, like most emotions in the play, are not profound. In all, Shakespeare used Twelfth Night to reveal that love can be found in unlikely places; in order for love to be a genuine act it must be a selfless; and love undoubtedly requires patience and endurance through times of absurdity,.
As prescient and insightful as this evaluation may seem after considering the outcome of Twelfth Night’s romantic pairings, it reads as a very shallow perspective rather than any sort of wisdom – to the Duke, love is never permanent, lasting, or constant (just like the nature of the tides, it always changes). Duke Orsino has no concern whatsoever for Olivia’s feelings of grief after the loss of her brother – she is merely an object of his desires at the moment, and as his eventual courtship with Viola proves, he is extremely fickle in his affections. (Even before Viola’s disguise became apparent, Orsino showed some signs of attraction to the male Cesario – this raises a few questions about exactly how far his romantic indecisiveness
William Shakespeare has provided some of the most brilliant plays to ever be performed on the stage. He is also the author of numerous sonnets and poems, but he is best known for his plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet. In this essay I would like to discuss the play and movie, "Romeo and Juliet", and also the movie, Shakespeare in Love.
What is love? Love is the pinnacle of all emotions, it is the epicenter for life, what is the point of living if there is no love, ironically love is the cause of many a down fall. William Shakespeare has single handedly captured and embraced this necessary feeling and has allowed us to view in on it through the characters in his two masterpieces, Othello and King Lear. Three different kinds of loves explored in both Othello and King Lear, sharing both similarities and differences are a love for a significant other, the love a father holds to his children, and the love a daughter holds for her father. By looking at the outcomes of these loves one may draw a sense of loves negative and positive effects, and how the different traits of loves play into the outcomes in the fate of Shakespeare's characters. Through the analysis of love in these two plays one will become a more knowledgeable student of literature.
In the play Twelfth Night, Shakespeare employs a plot filled with contradictions to portray love as an insurmountable force, and with the use of symbols insinuating deception, along with dolefully forthright metaphors and similes, Shakespeare further demonstrates that deception and suffering are the true fueling entities of this puissant force known as love. The extreme actions of Olivia and Sebastian exemplify the power of love and depict how this force can blind an individual to the point where their actions display high levels...
There is a certain degree of expectation with the genre of comedy that despite whatever difficulties appear within the play, by the end these will be resolved and the play will have a traditional happy-ending with a marriage or a celebration in the final scene. The “Twelfth Night” is no exception to this rule. Despite problems of confused identities and sexualities, the play ends with marriage for the major characters because they “have learned enough about their own foolishness to accept it wisely, and their reward, as it should be, is marriage.”(Schwartz 5140). There is a resolution of harmony to a certain extent and an endorsement of romantic love yet despite the happiness evident in the last scene, there are many elements in the play that causes the audience to wonder whether the happiness is forced or genuine. The words of a departing Malvolio, “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack you.”(Twelfth Night 5.1.365) leads to a conflict being unresolved. The marriage of Olivia and Sebastian also leads the audience to question whether Shakespeare has pushed the limitations of comedy to far, as Olivia marries Sebastian who she believes to Cesario and whose identity is only revealed after. The appearance of Antonio in the last scene also casts a sombre ambience over events; he is not united with the one he loves though he was willing to sacrifice his life for what he believed to Sebastian’s safety. The last discourse of the play from Festes once again returns to the melancholic mood that was apparent in the opening and it is this mood that remains with the audience.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a Renaissance poet and playwright who wrote and published the original versions of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and often called England’s national poet. Several of his works became extremely well known, thoroughly studied, and enjoyed all over the world. One of Shakespeare’s most prominent plays is titled The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. In this tragedy, the concept that is discussed and portrayed through the characters is love, as they are recognized as being “in love”. The general umbrella of love encompasses various kinds of love such as romantic love, the love of a parent for a child, love of one’s country, and several others. What is common to all love is this: Your own well-being is tied up with that of someone (or something) you love… When love is not present, changes in other people’s well being do not, in general, change your own… Being ‘in love’ infatuation is an intense state that displays similar features: … and finding everyone charming and nice, and thinking they all must sense one’s happiness. At first glance it seems as though Shakespeare advocates the hasty, hormone-driven passion portrayed by the protagonists, Romeo and Juliet; however, when viewed from a more modern, North-American perspective, it seems as though Shakespeare was not in fact endorsing it, but mocking the public’s superficial perception of love. Shakespeare’s criticism of the teens’ young and hasty love is portrayed in various instances of the play, including Romeo’s shallow, flip-flop love for Rosaline then Juliet, and his fights with Juliet’s family. Also, the conseque...
One of the greatest questions addressed in both Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love is the question "does love conquer all?" Should one follow his heart or should one conform to society's view as to what is proper? In the movie, love does in fact conquer all, but, in the play, it does not. In the play Romeo and Juliet decide to follow their hearts and they do not conform to society's wishes. Romeo and Juliet end up dead and the feud between the Montagues and Capulets is over. In the case of Shakespeare in Love, Will loses Viola but his love for her lives on as seen in his later writings. So, one could argue that in some instances love does indeed conquer all and, in other cases, it does not. Following the path of true love can be a tragic one as seen in Romeo and Juliet. As for Shakespeare in Love, both characters meet society's wishes and therefore return to their normal lives never being quite the same.
In Twelfth Night the relationships are anything but romantic. Shakespeare writes from the male point of view which implies an un-easy split between love and physical charm. In Twelfth night the romance is falsely produced by selfish desire. Duke Orsino and Viola stand out from the other relationships. By questioning the relationships between the other couples, Shakespeare highlights the true love between Viola and Orsino and the fake relationship of Malvolio and Olivia which is truly based on Malvolio’s desire of a higher status , despite his status and his personality , Malvolio tries to impress Olivia by dressing up in ridiculous clothes , which does far from his aim , and repulses Olivia.