When Orsino sends Viola-Cesario to woo Olivia in his name, he does not think any more of it. When Viola-Cesario goes to woo Olivia for her master Orsino, she starts to woo her using the first person, referring to ‘me’ and ‘I’, under Olivia’s request. She continues using the first person throughout this wooing, where she tells of Olivia’s beauty and her person through her perspective instead of Orsino’s. This wooing becomes vital to the plot and the theme of love throughout the play, because this wooing causes Olivia to fall in love with Viola-Cesario instead of the Duke Orsino. This could be due to the request of Olivia asking Viola-Cesario to “tell me your mind.” (Shakespeare I.v.204) When Viola-Cesario woos Olivia, Olivia become smitten with Viola in her disguise of Cesario, while Viola believes that her wooing helps her master Orsino. This wooing becomes essential to the theme of love because Olivia falls for Viola-Cesario; however, the pain from this love does not come until the end when Viola’s identity is revealed. Olivia is then left puzzled and upset because she believed that Cesario was a real person, when in fact, it was Viola playing Cesario and she has married Viola’s twin brother Sebastian. All of the confusion causes the pain that Olivia feels from her love of Cesario because the Cesario that had told her all of the beautiful things was not the man she married and the one who told her all of those things turned out to be a woman. Along with this pain from the realization, she continues to feels a slight pain throughout the play because Cesario will not accept her love and pushes her away, ironically, like she pushes Orsino’s love or her away.
Orsino’s final speech in the play comes after Olivia has revealed that she...
... middle of paper ...
...e themselves to the person, which shows the opposition to be improper between the name “Twelfth Night” and the play’s second title, “What you Will,” which is “between what is given and what is desired.” (Henze 275) All of these elements present in this play show the miserable and gloomy counter side to the traditional idea of the ‘happy love.’
Works Cited
Draper, John William. The Twelfth Night of Shakespeare's Audience. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1950. Print.
Henze, Richard. "Twelfth Night: Free Disposition on the Sea of Love." The Sewanee Review 83.2 (1975): 267-283. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 11 Jan. 2011. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.
Salingar, L. G. "The Design of Twelfth Night." JSTOR, 1958. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, Or, What You Will. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print.
William, Shakespeare Twelfth Night. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. 1079-1139.
The characters in Twelfth Night each play an important and specific role, especially when it comes to interfering or setting fate for romantic interests. Not all characters get a happy ending, and a particular character’s husband turned out to be someone much different than who she believed to be marrying. Through dishonesty, confusion, and chicanery, each character had a helping hand in dishing out each other’s fate, but nonetheless, the relationships that resulted in a law binding marriage beat destiny and overcame every hardship standing in the way of love and happiness.
Marciano, Lisa "The Serious Comedy of Twelfth Night: Dark Didacticism in Illyria." Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 56.1 (2003): 3-19. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 6 Nov. 2009.
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.
Osborne, Laurie E. The Trick of Singularity: Twelfth Night and the Performance Editions. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1996.
Barton, Anne. Introduction to Twelfth Night. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974. 403-407.
Shakespeare wrote his acclaimed comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream more than a thousand years after Apuleius’ Roman novel, The Golden Ass. Although separated by thousands of years and different in terms of plot and setting, these works share the common theme of a confused and vulnerable man finding direction by relying on a supernatural female. One of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s many subplots is the story of Bottom, a comical figure determined to be taken seriously in his production of a Pyramus and Thisbe. As Bottom becomes caught up in a quarrel between the king and queen of the fairies, the commanders of the enchanted forest where Bottom and his players practice, the “shrewd and knavish sprite” Puck transforms his head into an ass’ s and leads him to be enthralled in a one night stand with the queen, Titania. (2.1.33) Apuleius’s protagonist Lucius endures a similar transformation, after his mistress’s slave girl accidentally bewitches him into a donkey, leaving him even without the ability to speak. Although Lucius’ transformation lasts longer and is more severe, he and Bottom both undergo similar experiences resulting from their animal forms. Lucius’ suffering ultimately leads him to salvation through devotion the cult of Isis, and Bottom’s affair with Titania grants him clarity and a glimpse into similar divine beauty. Ultimately, both asinine characters are saved through their surrender to the goddesses.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, Or, What You Will. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print.
Viola, as Cesario, manages to win the favour of Orsino He truly believes that she is a he. Orsino, still convinced of my majesty, believes that he can win the love of a woman, via a proxy. By having Viola merely read the words he has prepared, he thinks that Olivia will fall immediately in love with him. But while Orsino had his head in the clouds about his love, Viola is attempting to conceal from him, her love for him.
to get involved in a scuffle, for which Viola is unjustly blamed. Finally Sebastian and Viola are reunited, but only after they have already caused a large amount of chaos and confused everyone. It is only then that everyone begins to discover the extent of Viola's trickery. More disorder is created when Olivia, who Orsino is hopelessly in love with. with, falls for Cesario, who is secretly in love with Orsino.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night Or, What You Will. New York, New York: New American Library, 1998. Print.
Summers, Joseph H. "The Masks of Twelfth Night." University of Kansas City Review 22 (1955): 86-97.
The liminality in performing Twelfth Night lies in sexual ambiguity on the stage. It enables a boy actor to play viola's role and disguised as a boy who is wooing another boy who plays a female role . The audience sees no more than a p...
...h the underlying theme of festivity in the play. Edward Cahill’s article and evidence from the play provides solid evidence to support this argument. However, what Salingar hasn’t addressed in his article is that the sub-plot also serves to illustrate the dangers of unchecked festivity. The sub-plot is absolutely necessary to the play and adds a layer of depth and insight into the themes of Twelfth Night but most of all, the subplot is what allows this play to be classed as a comedy.
Throughout Twelfth Night, disguise and mistaken identity works as a catalyst for confusion and disorder which consistently contributes towards the dramatic comic genre of the play. Many characters in Twelfth Night assume disguises, beginning with Viola, who disguises herself as a man in order to serve Orsino, the Duke. By dressing his protagonist in male garments, Shakespeare creates ongoing sexual confusion with characters, which include Olivia, Viola and Orsino, who create a ‘love triangle’ between them. Implicitly, there is homoerotic subtext here: Olivia is in love with a woman, despite believing her to be a man, and Orsino often comments on Cesario’s beauty, which implies that he is attracted to Viola even before her male disguise is removed. However, even subsequent to the revealing of Viola’s true identity, Orsino’s declares his love to Viola implying that he enjoys lengthening the pretence of Vio...