Twelfth Night, Or What You Will zOne of Shakespeare’s “great” comedies-- that is, not just funny, but bitter sweet. z Other “great” comedies are As You.

Twelfth Night,Or What You Will

One of Shakespeare’s “great” comedies--that is, not just funny, but bitter sweet.

Other “great” comedies are As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing.

The title refers to the twelfth night after Christmas, the end of the holiday season.

What is a comedy?

A “comedy” is a dramatic form, as is a tragedy. Therefore it need not necessarily be “comic.”

In fact, much comedy can be a bit horrifying if we think about it--the physical violence of slapstick, laughter at another’s expense in farce, the isolation of an outsider or scapegoat (in this play, Malvolio).

The Plot

There is no standard plot in comedy, but there are typical features and set types of characters. Many of these characters have prototypes in Greek and Roman comedy.

By contrast, most tragedies tell the same story: someone whose qualities we admire suffers for those very qualities.

Remember to distinguish comedy and tragedy from the comic and the disgusting.

The Plot, cont.

This play follows a typical plot line: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. This can be reverse: girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy.

The playwright's job is to invent obstacles to keep the lovers separated, then a means to for them to overcome the obstacles.

The Plot, cont.

This is a play about three couples, the reuniting of a set of twins, and a social outcast.

Like many comedies, it symbolizes social renewal. This is the symbolic meaning of marriage, but also of the outcast.

1. Viola and Duke Orsino

2. Sebastian and Olivia.

3. Sir Toby and Maria.

4. Malvolio--the loser (who loves Olivia but loses)

The Plot, cont.

Let us ask, what obstacles keep the couples apart until the exciting climax of the play?

Since the play has multiple plot lines, we should also compare and contrast them. (We will save this task for discussion.)

Viola

Viola washes ashore in Illyria (the Dalmatian coast, across the Adriatic from Italy). She has heard of Duke Orsino, and disguises herself as a man to work for him.

Obstacles: 1. The Duke is in love

with Olivia.2. Viola is dressed as a

man and therefore cannot express her woman’s love for the Duke.

3. To remain his servant, she cannot reveal her true rank.

Duke Orsino

Duke Orsino is a moody man in love with Olivia, a rich countess. His obstacle to loving Viola is that he does not know she exists. This will be solved when she reveals herself. It is part of the play’s humor that he will never overcome the obstacles to loving Olivia.

Obstacles1. Olivia is mourning

her dead father and not interested in the Duke.

2. Olivia falls in love with Cesario (the name Viola adopts in her disguise as a man).

Malvolio

Malvolio is steward to Olivia and loves her hopelessly. He has no sense of humor, and is the butt of Uncle Toby’s jokes. He is the funniest and the saddest character--that combination that produces a “great” comedy.

Obstacles to his love for Olivia.

1. He has a rival, Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

2. Neither Olivia nor anyone else particularly likes him.

3. He is pompous and humorless.

Uncle Toby Belch and Maria

Uncle Toby lives in Viola’s house and parties every night.

He is a rogue, like Falstaff, who takes money from Sir Andrew Aguecheek on the pretext of forwarding Andrew’s suit for Olivia’s hand.

Obstacles to love.1. Too much drinking.2. He needs to learn

how clever and fun Maria is.

3. Shakespeare wants to surprise the audience by making his attraction to Maria see very sudden.

Sebastian

Sebastian is Viola’s twin brother. She thinks that he drowns in the storm that washes her ashore. But he is alive. Sir Andrew mistakes him for the disguised Viola, whom he challenges as a rival for Olivia.

Sebastian and Viola form another kind of couple: they are twins who are reunited at the end of the play: a reversal of their fortune as they recognize each other. These are standard plot features.

Elements of Plot

Reversal One of Aristotle’s plot

elements, perepeteia is a “reversal of intention,” and occurs when a deed is done in blindness and defeats its own intention. Note the relation to character: vice that is virtue misapplied.

Recognition Also mentioned in

Aristotle’s Poetics, a recognition, or anagnorisis, occurs when a character recognizes the truth.

The purpose of comedy

To show the flaws and imperfections of humans.

Types of comic characters

These comic characters occurred in Greek comedy and were copied by the Roman playwrights Terence and Plautus, and in turn by Renaissance writers like Shakespeare.

1. The busy-body servant.

2. The angry old man3. The gluttonous

parasite.4. The impudent

cheat5. The greedy

procurer (pimp)

Types of comic characters, cont.

6. The whore with a heart of gold.

7. The braggart soldier

8. The young lover9. The meretrix

mala10. The leno

periurus

Types of comic characters, cont.

Other “types” are mentioned by Aristotle in his Rhetoric and the treatise on comedy, the Tractatus Coislinianus

The eiron, the one who deprecates himself: one who pretends to know nothing

The alazon, the self-important character; the ridiculous imposter

The pharmakos, or scapegoat; may be a scoundrel.

The bomolochoi, or buffoon The agroikos, or churlish

rustic, country cousin

Act 1, Scene 1

The play begins as Duke Orsino consoles himself with the thought that the reason Olivia rejects his love--that she might mourn for her dead brother--indicates the intensity of her passion, a passion that one day may be directed at him.

The scene revolves around several metaphors.

1. Music = food 2. Hart (a deer) = heart

(the dear one pursued) 3. Desires = hunting

hounds that attack a man changed into a hart (the Actaeon myth)

Act 1, Scene 2

Elsewhere, Viola, who has been shipwrecked in Illyria and thinks her brother has died in the wreck, convinces a sea-captain to help her disguise herself as a eunuch in order to serve Duke Orsino

Act 1, Scene 3

In yet another scene, Sir Toby convinces Sir Andrew to remain in Illyria to allow time for Olivia to notice him and be impressed by his talents (which are fairly nonexistent).

Act 1, Scene 4

Viola, now in the service of the Duke and named Cesario, promises to woo Olivia for the Duke (although she seems to keep in reserve whether she intends to double-cross him.)

Act 1, Scene 5

1.5Olivia falls in love

with Cesario.

Summary of Act 1

Viola’s dilemma

The same disguise that makes Olivia love Cesario prevents the Duke from loving Viola.

Act 2, Scene 1

Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother, has arrived in Illyria too.

Sebastian leaves Antonio, because he does not want to infect him with his misfortune.

Act 2, Scene 2

Realizing from the ring that Olivia love her, Viola abdicates to the workings of time the problem of how to resolve the love triangle, wherein Olivia loves her as a man while she, as a woman, loves the duke.

“I am the man!”

Act 2, Scene 3

Sir Toby invites Andrew to burn some sack, forgetting that he has promised Maria (or, at least, given her the impression) that he would go to bed in exchange for her promise to gull Malviolio.

Act 2, Scene 4

The duke sends Cesario on a second mission to Olivia.

He offers instruction in love, while missing the point of Cesario’s story of his “sister” who pine away while concealing her love.

This is a scene of high erotic friction between Viola and the unobservant Duke.

Act 2, Scene 5

Malvolio convinces himself that Maria’s riddling letter is Olivia’s declaration of passion for him.

MAOIYellow stockings,

cross-gartered.Among the group

eavesdropping on Malvolio, Sir Toby declares that he could marry Maria for having contrived the gulling of Malvolio.

Act 3, Scene 1

After Cesario says she can never love a woman, Olivia lies, desperately asking her to come back and woo for the duke.

Viola meets the Fool Feste at Olivia’s house; she had met him previously at Orsino’s.

Olivia pursues Cesario.

Act 3, Scene 2

After Fabian and Toby convince Andrew to challenge Cesario as a way to win Olivia’s favor, Maria invites them to watch Malvolio approach Olivia in crossed garters.

Does a man win the way to a woman’s heart by valor?

Is there anything worse for a man in love than to be laughed at?

Act 3, Scene 3

Antonio gives Sebastian his purse, to see the town, while he goes to the Elephant to hold rooms.

This action sets up Andrew’s confusion, when he will attack Sebastian, thinking he is Viola.

Act 3, Scene 4: Malvolio

Malvolio appears before Olivia, who is expecting Cesario. Maria convinces her Malvolio is mad, so Olivia orders Maria to have Sir Toby look after Malvolio.

“O ho, do you come near me now? No worse man than Sir Toby to look to me! This concurs directly with the letter: she sends him on purpose, that I may appear stubborn to him.”

Act 3, Scene 4: The “duel”

Sir Andrew brings in his challenge, which Toby undertakes to deliver. The he and Fabian warn Cesario.

Act 3, Scene 4: the jewel

Olivia gives her picture to Cesario. Olivia invests this picture with symbolic significance: it represents her honor and her commitment to Cesario.

The duel is prepared, but interrupted as the play returns to Cesario and Olivia in order to increase Viola’s problems: for Cesario besieged by aggression, that of Olivia in love and of Sir Andrew.

Act 3, Scene 4: the duel

Toby and his companions so frighten Cesario and Andrew that both are too frightened to duel. Nonetheless, Viola does not run away.

Now Antonio, who is always following Sebastian, “saves” him from Sir Andrew. Doing so, however, means he is no longer hidden. Officers recognize him, and arrest him.

Act 3, Scene 4: confusion of identities

Under arrest, and thinking Cesario is Sebastian, Antonio asks for his purse back. Viola realizes that she has been mistaken for her brother, who must still be alive.

At this point the resolution of the play is clear, but Shakespeare delays and delays Viola’s public recognition of her brother. The effect is an eros of expectation for the audience that imitates the pursuit of desire.

Act 4, Scene 1

The clown (= a rustic servant), sent to bring Cesario to Aoliva finds Sebastian instead, who accepts this gift of fortune and Olivia’s declaration of passion for him.

Before meeting Olivia, Sebastian wallops a confused Sir Toby, who now enters the hangover phase of the play.

Act 4, Scene 2

Feste teases Malvolio in prison.

Why does Feste need a disguise of the room is dark?

Act 4, Scene 3

Sebastian, figuring he or Olivia is mad, nonetheless agrees to a quick wedding.

Olivia wants a quick wedding just to calm herself down. She’s willing to wait to make it public and have another ceremony more fitting for her high station.

Act 5, Scene 1: Recognitions

At the court of Duke Orsino, Viola relates how Antonio saved her in the duel.

Antonio has been recognized as a pirate.

Act 5, Scene 1: Recognitions, cont.

Olivia, now married, comes in, and wonders why Cesario is so cold to her. She pronounces him “husband.”

Olivia mistakes Cesario for Sebastian (who she married, thinking he was Cesario).

Act 5, Scene 1: Recognitions, cont.

The duke is furious at Cesario for his disloyalty and, of course, because he loves Olivia.

Now, quickly, anger is added to the obstacles Viola must overcome. What mechanism will allow this? . . .

Act 5, Scene 1: Recognitions, cont.

Sir Andrew enters, having been beaten by Sebastian, whom he confused with Cesario.

Andrew’s confusion allows all the others to recognize their mistakes.

Act 5, Scene 1: Recognitions, cont.

Sebastian enters. Viola delays her

recognition of her brother long enough to warm the duke to her.

The delayed recognition explains the “sudden” turn in the duke’s affections; in fact, by stage time, it is a long period.

Act 5, Scene 1: the scapegoat

Feste reads Malvolio’s letter from prison. Olivia delivers him. Fabian confesses how they tormented him.

Malvolio curses the merry makers.

The clown sings a sad song.