Twelfth Night

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Twelfth Night

• A Quick Intro

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Alternate Title

• What You Will

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To what does twelfth night refer?

• Last night of Christmas celebrations that were
  popular in Elizabethan times (Jan. 6)
• Also known in the church calendar as Epiphany,
  the Feast of the Magi (the Wise Men who visited
  baby Jesus)
• This holy day, however, covers over a Pagan
  mid-winter holiday, Saturnalia, which became the
  medieval Feast of Fools
• A day given to fun, disguises, and pranks

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Feast of Fools

• A holiday celebrated as a festival in which
  everything is turned upside down much like the
  topsy-turvy world of Illyria!

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Reconciling Oppposites

• Dark and Light of the season
• Male/Female
• Good/Bad
• Rich/Poor
• Higher Class/Lower Class
• The Origin of Love from Hedwig and the Angry
  Inch

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Setting Illyria

• City of Illyria
• Known to Shakespeare as an actual region off the
  coast of the Adriatic Sea (present day Albania)

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Illyria ideal for many of the plot developments,
themes, imagery, etc. that arise in the play
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Distant Land

• It acted as a generically exotic setting for a
  play full of romance and intrigue

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Shipwreck

• Situated off the coast, offered preconditions for
  a shipwreck
• Illyria associated with piracy in the Elizabethan
  mind

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Illusion

• The word Illyria brings forth associations like
  illusion or the illusory

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What is the play about?

• Illusion
• Deception
• Disguises
• Madness
• Love
• Concerned with the extraordinary things well do
  in the name of love

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The Play

• Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are
  shipwrecked in a violent storm off the coast of
  Illyria and lose contact, with each thinking the
  other is dead
• Viola disguises herself as a boy named Cesario
  and becomes a page in the service of Duke Orsino

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Transvestite Comedy

• Features a female protagonist who disguises
  herself as a young man
• In Shakespeares day, all parts were played by
  men, so the actor playing Viola would be a boy
  pretending to be a girl pretending to be a boy

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Gender Roles

• Orsino speaks about women not loving as strong as
  men do
• Sebastian and Antonio
• Viola/Cesario
• Lady Olivia as head of the house and rejecting a
  Duke
• Men dressing as women and women as men

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Class

• Malvolio, Sir Andrew (whos impoverished)
  reaching above their class
• Feste, the fool, skewers the upper class
• Feste dressed as Sir Topaz
• Viola dressed as Cesario

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Religion

• Puritanism
• Fool as Preist
• Marriage

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Honor

• Loyalty to beloved
• Duel
• Malvolios disgrace

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Sanity

• Love as insanity Orsino, Antonio, Cesario,
  Olivia, Malvolio
• Who is the fool?
• Malvolio declared insane

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Love

• Love at first sight
• Loving the wrong person
• Unrequited love
• Love for money, power
• Inverted marriage

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Identity

• You are not who you think you are
• Others are not as you think they are
• You do not love who you think you love
• Reality is not reality