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How Does Shakespeare Use Deception In Twelfth Night

826 Words4 Pages

In order to capture a reader's attention, a story must be filled with alluding imagery and engrossed in the developing relationships between characters. In the Twelfth Night play, Shakespeare does an amazing job on grabbing the reader's attention and truly painting a picture of the deception and hardships characters are facing. Shakespeare uses some of the main characters like Orisino, Viola, and Maria, in order to develop the story overtime. Viola disguises herself as Cesario, the fool dressed up as a priest, and Maria misleads Malvolio (TN 1.2. 44-58). The constant use of deception is the main cause for almost all the problems in the twelfth night which ultimately leads to most of the climaxes and accidents, during the duration of the play. …show more content…

Coincidently, it is no surprise that characters that he annoys like Sir Andrew, Sir Toby, or Maria, try to get back at him in many ways. Unfortunately for Malvolio, this so-called payback came towards him in the form of a merciless prank. Throught the story, it is revealed that Malviolio also has a deep rooted love for olivia. Using this information, Maria composes a heartfelt letter to send to Malvolio, copying Olvias handwriting to make it seem like she wrote it specifically for him. Maria directly states “ I'll drop some mysterious love letters in his path. He’ll think they're addressed to him, because they describe the color of his beard, the shape of his legs, the way he walks, and the expression on his face. I can make my handwriting look just like lady Olivias: she and I can’t tell the difference between each other's handwriting” (TN 2.3 136-142). The statement from this section helps to illustrate and bring attention to the overall goal of maria with this letter. It also helps to illuminate the deception and deceiving image that she is also bringing towards Malvolio, by disguising herself as Olivio with this letter and leading Malvolio to his downfall. In doing so, Shakespeare shows the many forms of deception that can be used to deceive someone, but brings attention to its most potent form:

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