In Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night or What you Will, the characters are involved in a plot complete with trickery, disguise, and love. Each character is defined not by his or her gender or true identity, but by the role they are forced to take because of the complicated situation that arises. Unlike their gender, the speech the characters give an insight to their true personalities. In the Twelfth Night, the character Duke Orsino uses flowery and over-dramatic language, long poetic sentence structure, and melodramatic metaphors to display his overemotional romantic nature despite the different emotions in his various speeches.
Duke Orsino’s repeated usage of poetical verse and poetic devices to describe his woes from love set him apart from other character. By using deep metaphorical language and flowing poetic structure, Shakespeare conveys Orsino’s melodramatic nature. In Orsino’s first speech, he takes a complicated and metaphorical approach to explain his love for Olivia instead of directly stating his desires. Instead of using prose, Orsino speaks in blank verse which is significantly fancier and floral in language. He says, “If music be the food of love, play on; /Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, /The appetite may sicken, and so die” (1.1 3-5) to compare his love for Olivia to his love of music. Orsino wants the “excess of it”, so that he can become bored of music and therefore his love for Olivia. This also shows that he is excessively wordy throughout his speech and often prolongs sentences with repetitive phrases such as “…,play on/Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting” (1.1.3-4) and “…may sicken, and so die” (1.1.5) that have the same meaning. His long-winded language illustrates the dramatic quality...
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...ve./To spite a raven’s heart within a dove” (5.1.130-131), to finally summarize his long speech. Orsino uses metaphors to compare the lamb to Viola and the dove to Olivia. Viola is the gentle lamb that Orsino claims he will sacrifice in order to attain revenge against Olivia, a deceivingly beautiful dove with a dark heart. By using a metaphor to end his speech, Orsino exits with a more dramatic and profound flair than if he directly stated his plans to kill Viola.
Despite the anger in the speech in Act 5, Orsino uses similar poetic techniques such as metaphors, repetition, and flowery language to convey his dramatic nature. These techniques often convolute the original meaning of Orsino’s words because of the metaphorical structure. It is however the same traits that put him aside other characters in the play and make Orsino memorable to the audience.
With its entangled double plots and eloquent use of words, Much Ado About Nothing is a story that has the ability to entertain the masses both young and old. Shakespeare’s use of figurative language along with situation creates such vivid imagery for which carries the drama from beginning to end. For example, when we look at Act 1 Scene 1 of the play ...
when he gets bored of it then he tells him to stop, just like that.
In the Shakespearean tragedy Othello the number and description of themes is open to discussion. With the help of literary critics, we can analyze this subject in detail.
In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and in Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid, two ladies are presented, that are not necessarily the leading protagonist, but they help unravel the plays’ plots into something amazing. Twelfth Night features Maria, the lady in waiting to Olivia. At first Maria comes off as a dilettante, later on we find out that’s not the case at all. Meanwhile, in The Imaginary Invalid, there is the disputatious Toinette, who is the maidservant and nurse to the imaginary invalid himself, Argan. Maria and Toinette are two strong women characters, their strength and wit is depicted through Maria and Toinette’s deceiving schemes to make their plays more stimulating as well as their objectivity throughout all the chaos in their respective play.
William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare's most famous comedies, involving complex plots, which result in hilarious outcomes. The main plot of Twelfth Night tells of Count Orsino's efforts to woo the Lady Olivia. who does not return his affection. Instead, Olivia is smitten with her. Orsino's servant Cesario, unaware of his true identity.
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
After Duke Orsino asks Cesario (disguised Viola) to make Olivia love him, although she had stated that she would not marry for seven years due to her sadness from her brother’s death, Cesario tells him “I’ll do my best to woo your lady.” Then Viola tells the audience “(Aside) yet, a barful strife—Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife,” meaning that she has to convince another woman to love the man she loves. The exchange of words in this scene exemplifies dramatic irony since the reader now knows that a love road that connects Duke Orsino, Viola, and Olivia has formed while Orsino is clueless about the situation. Situational irony can also be withdrawn from this conversation because it is shocking that Viola is in love with Orsino. Viola’s sudden love for Orsino illustrates a universal truth about life that sometimes people fall in love too quickly without thinking far ahead.
...ove in the tempo of the speech, which is fast paced, variable, and possibly even jerky. Orsino’s rapidity of the first speech “suggests his passion, especially since, as a Duke, he should speak with dignified deliberation. This tempo of his speech with these inconsistencies helps strengthen the pain that Orsino feels because of Olivia’s rejection.
Orsino is the first deceiver we meet. He is also being deceived, by himself. He is fooling himself by believing that he only has to tell a woman he loves her, and she will fall in love with him. He is in love with the idea of love itself. He is so infatuated with love, he makes parallels about love. He says it is that same as music and flowers. He then continues the parallels and makes the connection about love being the food of life. Without it, you would be needing the 'hearts and flowers.'
To begin this essay, I will provide a brief analysis of the atmosphere of the play. I will also establish the mood created by Shakespeare to give a comedic tone to his story which would otherwise have been a maudlin story revolving around romance. The play, which actually has the full title Twelfth Night, or What You Will, was written specifically to be performed for the twelfth night of Christmas. In Elizabethan England, this was a day where people are handed out slices of a cake cooked with a pea and a bean. The two people that eat the special slices are appointed King and Queen of the evening’s festivities. As Shakespeare purposefully tried to emulate, the themes of the festivals revolve around servants according themselves more privileges than they were usually given by their masters. Like it is demonstrated by Shakespeare in the play, sometimes people dressed up in the opposite gender or even as wealthy nobles. Centering his play’s plot around this is what took his play from being only romance-oriented to being more comedic and thus more appropria...
In Act 2 Scene 4 Shakespeare pokes fun at courtly love. Orsino requests music to sooth his melancholy love to Olivia. Shakespeare shows Orsino suffering and in pain " in the sweet pangs of it". This is an oxymoron "sweet pangs", it suggests that his pangs of pain are good. As a courtly lover the man should be suffering as part of his role, so Orsino thinks this is how love should be in his eyes.
We see this exaggerated one-sided love play out in many forms throughout the play. Viola, for example, says in this line, “I’ll do my best To woo your lady: Aside. Yet a barful strife! Whoe 'er I woo, myself would be his wife.” (1.4.44-46) This tells us that Viola, having just met Orsino a few days ago, has a desire to be wed to Orsino. This kind of desire that Viola has for Orsino can only be conjured up from a fairytale due to the sheer passion and irrationality of falling in love with an acquaintance. Shakespeare also uses diction in deceptive forms. This is evident when Orsino uses the word “violets” (1.1.6) in his speech and to display the deception that is played out in the play. The word “violets” comes from the comes from the latin word viola. Some readers would be deceived, as many might not even notice the hint that Orsino gives in his own speech. We know this deception to be true in the form of Viola when she disguises herself as a eunuch to Orsino in his own courts as evidence in this line, “For such disguise as haply shall become The form of my intent. I 'll serve this duke: Thou shall present me as an eunuch to him”
The Development of the Character of Othello as Shown by his Use of Language and Imagery in William Shakespeare's Play
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.
The opening soliloquy of Act I Scene I, given by Duke Orsino, is another perfect example of Shakespeare using music to show the upcoming storyline of the play. At first, Orsino is using music as a metaphor that feeds the appetite of love. He speaks for a minute about his love for the music playing, and then changes abruptly by saying, “Enough; no more” (7). Already Shakespeare is foreshadowing Orsino’s fickleness when it comes to music which in turn stands for love. Of course, further into the play, it is shown that Orsino truly is fickle when it comes to love. As soon as he finds out that Cesario is in fact the woman Viola, he instantly forgets all the passion he had for Olivia and marries Viola.