Cruelty in Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Cruelty in Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

"Twelfth Night" is also subtitled as "What you Will" which shows that

this should be a happy, festive comedy, its title is from the

twelve-day cycle of celebration enjoyed by medieval revellers each

December. As this is a comedy it means that there are multiple

marriages in the final scene and happy endings for most, except maybe

one person who is seen as a fool throughout the play in this instance,

Sir Andrew or Malvolio or some may even think, Orsino if they have

seen the Trevor Nunn film of this play, in my opinion Feste will not

be an object of humour throughout the play as in the Nunn film he is

quite a serious character. There are not any deaths in the play that

occur directly as this is a comedy.

In this essay I am going to write about how Shakespeare's "Twelfth

Night" has an underlying cruelty. I am going to look, in particular at

Sir Toby's exploitation of Sir Andrew, the way in which Sir Toby uses

Sir Andrew as a wallet to buy drinks. I shall also concentrate my

essay on the cruelty towards Viola in the love triangle and also

briefly at the cruelty towards Antonio. I could also look at cruelty

towards Malvolio but I do not think I will be able to have enough time

to do so.

In the cartoon version, the BBC film and the Nunn film production

Andrew is portrayed as a silly, thin, feeble fool with blonde hair and

a pale, pasty complexion, the way in which the directors have chosen

to portray Aguecheek, in all versions, is promoted by the other

characters in "Twelfth Night" describing him like this. Act I, scene

iii, is the first scene in which you meet Sir Toby and Sir Andrew...

... middle of paper ...

...ark side of it. Most probably a close friend or family member of

Shakespeare's died at this time or Shakespeare himself experienced a

tragedy, which may have led him into this darkness. I have discovered

from a book I am reading that Shakespeare had epilepsy; this book is

not a reliable source as an epileptic wrote it, but I think it casts

for me some new light over some of Shakespeare's darker, crueller

plays and ideas. Maybe he had an especially depressing aura

(pre-seizure state) when he wrote some of the darker parts of the play

or had a particularly bad seizure as it is common with epileptics that

they write during there auras as a release of their creativity and

that they do not need to revise what they have written in this state

so there are many possibilities as to why Shakespeare made this comedy

a cruel play.