| orsino | the Duke of Illyria.powerful, a gentleman, loves Olivia, unaware of his secret admirer |
| Viola | desguises herself as a man – Cesario, the secret admirer of Orsino, works for Orsino after being shipwrecked, entrusted to convey the Duke’s love to Olivia. Olivia likes him (Cesario), has an identical brother – Sevastian |
| a sea captain | a friend to Viola, helps her disguise herself, reports Sebastian dead |
| lady olivia | countess of high social standing, has great beauty, desired by orsino, in 7 years of solitude after her father and brother died, doesn’t like Orsino. falls for Cesario(viola), marries Sevastian |
| Sebastian | Viola’s twin brother,was shipwrecked, thinks his sister is dead, mistaken for Cesario, is eventually reunited with Viola, marries Olivia |
| Antonio | a sea captian, a man with many enemies, goes with Sevastian in his travels |
| Sir Toby Belch | Olivia’s uncle, drinks with Sir AA, Olivia, Maria, and Malvolia don’t like him, pulls practical jokes – onMalvolis, Sir AA and anyone else |
| Sir Andrew Aguecheek | drinking partner of Sir Toby, Olivia doesn’t like him, loud, lewd behavior, not overly intelligen, doesn’t like Malvolia, helps play a practical joke on Mal. Sir toby like him cause he is rich, a pawn to Sir Toby, naive, pursues Olivia and challenges Cesario becuase Toby tells him too, |
| Malvolio | Olivia’s steward, sees himself in a grandiose light, imagens Olivia is in love with him and wants to be at a higher rank than he is, the target of a romantic ruse of Toby and Andrew |
| Maria | Olivia’s woman, patient and tactful, doesnt like Toby and Andrew, she creates the trick on Malvolio – because she doesn’t like him and to calm down Toby and Andrew |
| Feste | the clown, a servant to Olivia, speaks the truth from the source of recognized foolishness, Toby likes him |
| Fabian | a servant of Olivia, dislkies Malvolia, participates in Malvolio’s downfall |
| Calentine and Curio | Gentlemen attending Orsino at the start of the play |
| plot | Duke loves olivia, Duke sends Caesario(Viola) to “woo” Olivia, Olicia falls in love with Caesario(Viola) ~ a problem because C is actually a girl, Ceasario(Viola) is in love with Duke |
| symbols: costumes | the costumes a chacter wears represents different identities that people take on. the costumes in the play show that a character or persons identity can change in different situation |
| symbols: Hallucination | compairing the feeling of being in love to hallucinating, this stresses that love is often based on misperceptions, mistakes, or fantasies imagined by the lover, rather than on real characteristics of the beloved |
| symbols: hunting | a metaphor for the lover’s pursuit of his beloved, this emphasizes the extent to which a lover takes pleasure in pursuing, rather than consummating love |
| Themes: desire and love | every major charcter esperiences some form of desire or love, the play gets alot of its comic force by making fun of these lovers – pkes fun at orsinos flower poem(orsino is more in love with being in love than with his supposed beloveds) shakespeare examines how characters play the “game” of love, the play mocks the romantic ideas about love through the actions of the servants, love is at least partly motivated by desire and sex, it makes fun of romantic love by showing the devotion that connects siblings and servants to master that is more constant that any of the romantic bonds in the play |
| themes: melancholy | in the Renaissance it was belived to be a sickness rather like modern depression, it was throught to arise from love: primariliy narcissistic self-love or unrequited romatnic love(ex. orsino, Cessario and Malvolio), the play reveals the painfulness of love through melancholy |
| themes: madness | this overlaps the themes of desire and love, orsino said love produces multiple changing images of the beloved, similar to hallucinations, olivia clames her desire for Cesario was making her mad, metaphorically: madness becomes a way fro characters to espress the intensity of their romantic feelings, (M,T and F convince everyone Mal is craxy,the confusion in mixing un viola/cesario and sevastion) |
| themes: deception, disguise, and perfomance | the character constantly disguise themselves to trick those around them(Viola, Maria and Suri toby play a prank on Malbolia and Feste, olicia and Orsinos cliched lovesicknesses) shakespeare reminds us that we like the characters may play toles in our own lives and be susceptible to the role playing of others |
| theme: gender and sexual identity | connects with deception,disguise and performance, violas disguise fools Olivia into fallin in love with her, distinctions between male/female and heterosexual/homosexual are not as absolutely firm as you might think, stresses the petential ambiguity of gender, gender in infuencable, based on how you act not based on something you were bon with, ( olivia is attracted to C because he is a womanly lookin man, Orsino is attracted to Cesario as he is to viola) |
| theme: class, masters, and servants | similarites between the master or nobels and the servants, these characters and their parallel plots provide comic counterpoint, reflecting the nature of the 12th night holiday – celebratin by inverting the ordingary social order, (mal is obsessed with status, Andrew wants to maryr O, Sebastian is moved in part by O wealth, Biola loses her wealth and disguises herself as a boy impersonating a different class this suggests that class, like gender identity, is to some extent a changeable role that cou play by adopting a certain set of clothing and behaviors |
| when written | 1601 |
| first performed in… | January of 1602 |
| how long after Romeo and Juliet did it come out? | 6 years after |
| what number in a series | the 4the in a series of romantic comedies, all have bright heroines who end up teaching valuable lessons to the men who will become their husabnads |
| what do 3 of the 4 plays feature? | heroines who disguise themseles as men and deal with their male dominated societies from theis secret vantage point, they all have sophisticated attitudes toward love and revel human folly |
| what does teh title refers to? | the 12 days of Christmas, the 12th day was associated and continues to be, with comic misrule, upset and especially confusion of gender, the play recalls this very old tradition (men plaing women and women playing men – during the holiday season) by being a play with similar gender confusion at its core |
| the jokes | there are many referances in the play to works by shakespeares contemporaries, jokes are lost on us becuase they refer to things that were in the public mind in 1601 |
| secondary subtitle | What You Will, 1. a throw away line, 2. will refers to sexual desire – saying whatever sexual desire you choose to pursue |
| sourse of the twelfth night | Ridge: His Farewell to the Military Professtion by Barnaby Ridge written 20 years earlies |
| where did the idea of a woman dressing up as a man start? | the acient Greeks and Romans, they also had fun iwth characters who looked alike; identical twins. twelfth night is based on old ideas |
| 4 major themes | everybody who loves faces obstacles to overcome in order to achieve their heart’s desire, love takes many formes and these coexist easily, love makes the unworthy appear foolish while correcting the worthy who are simply misguided, love is an infection we willingly seek |
| them 1: everybody who loves faces obstacles to overcome in order to achieve their heart’s desire | falling in love in a shakespearean comedy is never easy, yo uhave to work hard to win |
| love takes many formes and these coexist easily | self love, misguided love, love which was gender inappropriate – women fall in love with women and men with men without ever having a chance for that love to be requited or returned |
| love makes the unworthy appear foolish while correcting the worthy who are simply misguided | love makes people act ridiculously, those who deserve our scorn appears as fools; those who have somehting going for them are shown the errors of theri ways through love and finally earn our respect as wise |
| love is an infection we willingly seek | love is a form of divine madness, despite the possibility of appearing foolish, we give ourselves permission to experience it |
| three differen story lines | the love triangle(Viola, Orsino, and Olivia), the low life characters and their rought humor(toby and Andrew pull a joke on Mal, last one involves Sebastian (he drowned, thought Vi was dead, his journey) |
| what distinguishes this play from others | gender disguise( a device found in Shakespeare’s comedies – it allows a heroine to exercise creater freedom of action) |
| what couldnt women do | couldnt go into public w/out an escort, forbidden to interact with men w/out a chaperone, were not supposed to be involved in choosing their own mates |
| a double bision | the device of gender camouflage provides a double cision – women see the world in the terms of traditional conflich between the sexes but as men they are able to inject a subversive note into the smug male world view |
| what could shakespeare use disguise as | a way of introducing comic effects and exposing male hypocrisy(most of the audience was men) |
| thoughts about the theatre | disapprobing attitude by the city councilors but the royals approbed |
| when were all the theatres destroyed | 1642, 1644 under order of parliament |
| what is the most baluable sources of the achitecture of theatres back then? | a drawing done by a Dutchman, Arend van Buchell |
| when did the globe theartre open? | 1599 with a production of As You LIke It |
| what happened the first time it was destroyed? | in 1613 a stray spark set the roof an fire when a canon went of marking the entrance of the king |
| how fast did Shakespeare write? | he wrote up to 4 plays in some years and averaged 1.5 plays a year during his wroking life |
| how many performances could the theatres do | 11 performances of 10 differnt playins in 2 weeks – the acts got their lines as they were on stage. women were not allowed to appear on stage – females played by males |
| shakespeare | a shareholder in the Globe, a writer, and an actor – began is career on the stage in 1592 |
| conventions | they assist us in understanding literary works belinging to a particular genre, they help to categorize them and illuminate their common feature, genres set up certain expectations becuase of their shared characteristics |
| the major conventions of the shakespearean romantic comedy | the main action is about love, lovers must overcome obstacles, it contains elements of the improbable the fantastic the supernatural or the miraculous, frequently there is a philosophical aspect involving weightier issues and themes: personal identity, imporatance of love in human existence, power of language, power ofpoetry and art, the disjunction between appearance and reality, the power of dremes and illusions |
the twelfth night
July 25, 2019