In the comedic play “Twelfth Night”, by William Shakespeare, the idea of deception is a theme explored throughout the entire play. In the case of Viola, a shipwrecked girl who believed her brother to be dead, decides to distance herself from others after hearing about a Lady Olivia who was also mourning the death of her own brother. She then assumes the persona of a young man named Cesario and enlists in the Duke Orsino 's services. The Duke, having befriended Cesario, a.k.a. Viola, asks Cesario to head over to Lady Olivia’s in hopes of wooing her over for him.
At the beginning of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Hermia had the choice given by her father and the duke of Athens to either become a nun or to be executed if she refuses to marry Demetrius. The conflict that Hermia faces makes it seem as if the play will end in a tragedy. The catharsis brought in the next act when Bottom wants to act all the roles and when Flute complains about having to be the female lead in the play performed on Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding day relieves that tension. The play “Pyramus and Thisbe” had been a part of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Also, the theme of forbidden love that presents itself in “Pyramus and Thisbe” shows up in many of Shakespeare’s works such as “The tragedy of Othello”, “The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet”
The famous playwright known as Shakespeare has created a variety of plays where secrecy and deceptions are recurring themes found throughout his works. William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night makes use of these themes through several characterizations, most notably seen with protagonist Viola. As the protagonist survived a shipwreck in the land of Illyria, she intends to aid the noble Duke Orsino in hopes of connecting with mourning Countess Olivia by using a masculine disguise. Throughout the play Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, examples of disguises, misunderstandings, and mistaken identities contribute to the represented secrecy and deceptions portrayed in the play.
In Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare utilizes the relationship between Olivia and Cesario to subvert Elizabethan gender norms by expressing that men and women aren’t that different and should be treated the same. The play focuses on a love story between multiple characters taking place in the imaginary place of Illyria in the western Balkan Peninsula. A woman named Viola and her brother were wrecked at sea and are separated taking them both on a wild tail featuring love, disguise, and anticipation. Through the disguise of Cesario as a male, Olivia challenges societal expectations by falling in love with a person she believes to be a man, blurring the lines of traditional gender roles and sexual attraction. The fluidity of Cesario's gender identity and Olivia's disregard for societal norms further emphasizes the theme of disguise and the absurdity of
Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream dealt with the theme of love and its four types, including loves many complications such as disappointment and confusion. The play rotates around different forms of love, two of them being friendship love (Phileo) and romantic (Eros) or true love. Love is the most important theme of the play and the asymmetrical love seen in the play between the four Athenians and romantic encounters cause conflict within the play. There is a strong friendship love between two characters, Hermia and Helena. However, their friendship love is tested throughout the play by their pursuit of true love which, in the end, ultimately prevails.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream dealt with the universal theme of love and its complications: lust, disappointment, confusion, and marriage, featuring three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta. The play rotates around different forms of love, two of them being love for friendship (Philia) and romantic (Eros) or true love. Love is the most important theme of the play and the asymmetrical love seen in the play between the four Athenians and romantic encounters cause conflict within the play. There is a strong friendship love between two characters, Hermia and Helena. These two ladies are regarded as sisters as they have grown up together always having each other’s
One of the important themes that Shakespeare shares with the reader in Twelfth Night is that unrequited love makes one ache. In a way, it is prevalent to the point that it connects each of the characters in the play. On example is that Duke Orsino starts the play by stating: If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,
Twelfth Night seems to present gender as a mask to be worn and taken off at will, a fluid concept that changes to suit one’s needs and emotions. By playing Cesario, Viola partly becomes this version of herself, so Olivia, by loving Cesario, has feelings for Viola by extension. When Sebastian makes his reveal, Olivia marries him for two reasons. The first is an external piece of reasoning, being that in Elizabethan comedies such as this, heterosexual pairings must happen for the play to follow the fairly strict expectations of a comedy. The second falls to Sebastian’s demeanor.
Vanity, one of Twelfth Night 's major concerns, is displayed throughout the play by characters who are plagued with emotional conditions which prevent them from loving others. The lives of Illyria 's Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia, for example, remain circumscribed by vanity and narcissism. Similarly, Olivia 's steward, Malvolio, remains encumbered by vanity and narcissism, while Olivia 's Uncle Toby shows himself to be selfish, and his drinking partner, Sir Andrew, stands as a caricature of vanity. In contrast, Viola, an outsider shipwrecked upon Illyria 's shore, suffers solely from grief for her sea-drowned twin brother. In further contrast, Olivia 's lady-in-waiting, Maria, displays none of these characteristics, but instead operates as the play
In the story it shows a love triangle between Orsino, Cesario (Viola), and Olivia. Cesario falls in love with Orsino, Viola is in love with Cesario, and Orsino is still in love with Olivia. The characters in the story all show happiness and joy throughout because it’s a story that ends in love unlike Romeo and Juliet where it ends in a tragedy. As said in Twelfth Night, “Its central plot concerns a love triangle between the Illyrian nobleman Orsino, his beloved but unattainable Olivia, and the shipwrecked Viola.” (Lee
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.
Shakespeare’s renowned play Twelfth Night centers around love, both in platonic and romantic instances. Characters display elements of self, brotherly, amorous, and friendly love towards one another; however, of the relationships portrayed, the strongest ones are those between men. In contrast, relationships between men and women lack depth and sincerity due to the lapse of communication between the opposing genders. Men are able to express their feelings to one another more freely, which gives their bonds strength that heterosexual relationships fail to display.
In Twelfth Night, Viola and Olivia are the central characters to the play’s plot. Each are young women that take approaches to dealing with the people around them, which are mainly men. There is much trickery that goes on in Twelfth Night, but the ending is for the most part happy. Viola marries Orsino and Olivia marries Sebastian, but the events leading up to this are more or less chaotic. Ultimately, I argue that while Olivia uses her higher social status in order to maintain control of herself and others, Viola resorts to trickery in order to bring about her desires.
Numerous events and conflicts from Twelfth Night are dependant on Viola’s disguise, as she is caught in between Olivia and Orsino’s affection due to her disguise. In the beginning of the play, she dresses up as a male in order to conceal her identity and to get a job at Orsino’s court. In doing so, she is able to gain more of his trust than she would have if she was a female. By disguising herself as a man Viola is able attract his attention and appreciation to ultimately prove her worth to him as a woman. Moreover, Viola's disguise also allows Orsino to respect her intelligence which causes her to win his love.
In the play Twelfth Night, through the depiction of Orsino’s and Viola’s desires for romantic love, Shakespeare portrays how adjustable and self-delusional human romantic attraction can be, especially when blinded by wants and needs. Viola, who puts on the appearance of a man, makes everybody think she is a male. Her disguise becomes a sexual confusion throughout the play for several characters, creating an odd love triangle where Viola loves Duke Orsino, who loves Oliva, which then on the other hand loves Viola, in disguise as Cesario. On the other hand, Malvolio dreams of marrying his beloved Olivia, and gaining authority over his superiors, like Sir Toby. Shakespeare uses disguise in the play to show several confusions and internal conflicts between the characters, proving how malleable and deluded some human attractions can be.
