Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Portrayal of women in twelfth night
Analyse twelfth night
Female sexuality in shakespeare
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Shakespeare’s romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing, serves as psychological barometer of the 1600’s combing a cheerful mood with an intricate series of deceptions and miscommunications, or as critic Muriel C. Bradbrook put it, this play, a comedy of masks where deeper issues are overlaid with mirth.” Explains quite perfectly the quirkiness of the romantic relationships of Beatrice/Benedick and that of Hero/Claudio as they traverse through a maze of masterful ruses bringing to light the importance we place on social constructs of marriage, feminine ideals, and ultimately an ineptness of authority. In Victor Cahn’s book The Plays of Shakespeare: A Thematic Guide, he points out that, “During Shakespeare’s time, marriage was a maledominated
For the remix project, my group and I chose to do our remix on act 2 scene 4 of Twelfth Night. In my group was Lexie Gula, Kristen Reid, Karen Larkin, and Gabby Baker. In the group we all had different tasks for contributing to the remix.
Throughout the years, authors have written about love in many endearing ways. There is the love of a puppy, the love of money, the love of a mother, the love of a friend, and the passionate love that is only expressed to a lover. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, many different forms of love are presented to the reader, from the love of a friend to the love’s truest form, romantic love. One of the most prevalent forms of love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is romantic love. There are many different examples of romantic or true love in this play.
In his play, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare has his characters participate in the practice of deception and dishonesty of others - after all, the foundation of Shakespeare’s play resides within a lie. One of the major deceptions in the play is executed by the Illyrian countess, Olivia, as she repeatedly claims to need solitude to mourn her brother’s death in order to avoid Duke Orsino and his obsession towards her. This deception contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole by adding the thematic message, deception and dishonesty is sometimes the better option when it comes to love. From the beginning of the play, Olivia is introduced as the grieving countess that has recently lost a brother.
“Although that kind of romance can be found in Shakespeare’s romances, the genre of romance contains so much more. No two romances are the same, and there is no precise formula for these plays as Shakespeare wrote them. Romances swerve between humor and heartbreak in a way that can be powerful, confusing, beautiful, and contradictory” (Tucker). In William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing,” relationships are formed and put to the test. The relationship between Hero and Claudio are completely different from the relationship between Beatrice and Benedict.
In the novela, A Midsummer Nights Dream, written by William Shakespeare, there are many moments, issues, themes, and problems to discus. A major issue that I would like to discuss would be love’s difficulty throughout the story. Although love is driving a majority of the characters in this play, it is not a romance, but a comedy. A comedy that shows the audience how people can be blind, foolish, and innocent when manipulated by the extraordinary strong power of love. Love is an uncontrollable force in the play having the characters used like puppets after taking a love potion, which shows they are controlled by love.
The historical symbolism within Shakespeare’s plays set him apart from any writer. The script was given to him through daily life, and his ability to mold it into fictional art is what makes Shakespeare the creator of fictional man. His confusing and conflict filled plays like twelfth night ressemble the back and forth change of monarchs, marriage, and trickery during the early years and how conflict can consume a person and spin them into insanity like Henry VI. Henry VIII’s love letters to Anne Boleyn saying, “Mine own sweetheart, these shall be to advertise you of the great loneliness that I find here since your departing, for I ensure you methinketh the time longer since your departing now last than I was wont to do a whole fortnight”(Henry VIII). This letter mirrors the words of lovers within any of Shakespeare’s work.
We can all relate to a time where we have had no control over the course of love, “the course of true love never did run smooth”. True love always encounters difficulties, which is clearly present throughout A Midsummer Night’s dream. A Shakespearean comedy is a play where everything starts in chaos but ends in harmony. For my Shakespeare lovers, I, Neil Armfield have interpreted A Midsummer Nights Dream to accommodate the modern world we have evolved in. My play is intended for mature audience due to nudity, mild adult themes and mild violence.
William Shakespeare’s works, written primarily from the late eighteen hundreds to the very early sixteen hundreds, have long been the subject of academic debates and analysis. Potent with double entendres, metaphors, and social commentary, it is easy to apply queer theory to Shakespeare’s plays, notably Twelfth Night, written in 1601. Though Twelfth Night’s ending pushes its characters into traditional heterosexual romances and binary gender roles to satisfy the genre and placate conservative Elizabethan audiences, the characters in the comedy defy tradition by exploring homosexual love and expression of gender. The most apparent homosexual themes are present in the relationship between Antonio and Sebastian.
in Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain and suffering with unrequited love and complicated love triangles. the love triangle consists of duke Orsino who loves Olivia, yet Olivia who does not love duke Orsino and in fact loves his servant Cesario who is actually viola in disguise. I believe duke Orsino's fantastical and obsessive love for Olivia who he hasn't even interacted with shows that he is in love with the idea of olives and her looks, not her personality, he believes he should be with Olivia as they come from the same class, yet Olivia has no interest in him causing duke Orsino to feel love sick, shown through “if music be the food of love, play on give me excess of it” expressing how he wants excess
It is evident from the phrase “O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,/Methought she purg’d the air of pestilence!” (I.i.18-19) that Orsino’s love for Olivia is based on a physical attraction rather than an informed, intimate one in which Orsino’s feelings are validated by spending enough time with her to develop a deep connection. Orsino’s illusory love provides a weak foundation on which he tries to build a relationship during the course of the play, which as we see, fails to earn Olivia’s affections. To find ‘true’ and realistic love in the play, Orsino needs to be cured of his artificial
“Loving can hurt sometimes,” Ed Sheeran said, and this is no lie when it comes to Twelfth Night. Love is often an inevitable struggle in a plot, but in this Shakespearean play, a complete love triangle dominates as the main conflict. It cause happiness, excitement, deception, or even insanity, we still can’t seem to figure out if the benefits outweigh the consequences. Throughout Twelfth Night Shakespeare demonstrates love as a cause of suffering, a ‘knot that cannot be untied’ with Olivia’s love, Viola’s disguise, and Malvolio’s fake letter. Lady Olivia’s initial suffering contributes to the cause of this complex knot.
Despite popular opinion, love at first sight does not exist. The idea of “love” is widely misinterpreted as a mere attraction between two individuals. However, many do not understand that love goes much further than this, and what follows is a common misconception between love and lust. Shakespeare in his 17th century play Twelfth Night delves deeper into this idea of love. He presents the character Duke Orsino who appear to be infatuated and love-sick for the Countess Olivia, a woman with which he knows little about.
Today, men and women have equal rights, but that does not mean life has always been simple for both genders. When Shakespeare writes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there are roles, behaviors, and expectations for the dominant men and submissive women. This literature portrays the major changes in the lives of both sexes throughout the years, which shows the advances women gain with time. The gender issue of men being dominant and women being submissive used in the drama, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, shows the differences in the roles, behaviors, and expectations appropriate for each gender and is an example of an outdated stereotype.
Shakespeare’s novel “Macbeth” demonstrates the many ways in which love can factor into a play. Through the connections built between characters, and the relationship Macbeth holds with power, the ways in which love are perceived through “Macbeth” are evident. In Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth,” there is a strong relationship between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, the relationship between the two characters is known as the most obvious - yet this relationship challenges traditional perceptions of love. The attitude Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have towards each other constantly changes, thus making it hard to form a clear-cut opinion of their relationship.