Olivia Lynch Mrs. Butterfield AP Lit 5/1/16 When you are ready to dive into the vast world of Shakespeare, you can begin by using what is known as a critical lens. The lens that may help you understand the background details of one of Shakespeare’s plays would be the Historical lens. Although there are many different lens that you can use to interpret a story, the Historical Lens is a great lens to dive into to find what really influenced the great ideas of William Shakespeare as he wrote Hamlet including the role gender plays, the comparison of Elizabeth Tudor, and the religious incorporation throughout the play. First, we can take the Historical Lens and dive into the idea of how gender roles were highly represented in Hamlet
The very act of cross-dressing itself was subversive, especially in Spain where costume was hugely important, not just on stage but in real life. Literary critic William Egginton notes in An Epistemology of the Stage, that when it came to costume the "Spanish public was extremely sensitive to such signifiers of class and could not, for example, tolerate or comprehend a scene in which the signs of social status presented by costume and speech would conflict". (402) With the audience so sensitive to costume details, what must they have thought about Rosaura 's male attire? Women dressing as men was a common device used by playwrights in the Golden Age (mujer vestida de hombre ) and one wonders was it merely because it was practical?
Even though the love in this play might not work out in the end, the characters seem to be content in the present. True feelings that one has for another person can make them act a certain way. In Twelfth Night, the pattern of extreme behaviors shows that Andrew, Malvolio, and Antonio are willing to do anything for the one that they love.
Viola’s aspirations are not to go against the social order as she is not a real servant but the play allows her to transgress and glide through the class mobility. She epitomizes social fluidity, transgressing the boundaries of specific roles in society. However her flexibility is asserted on her higher social status with which she begins the play. This once again proves that although the boundaries can be broken, only the elite bourgeoisie can truly permeate them completely. Malvolio remains ‘mad’ for admitting his love while Viola moves upwards to gain marriage.
When Olivia is first entertained by the Fool, she recognizes that “[Malvolio] [is] sick of self-love,” revealing Malvolio’s arrogance (Twelfth Night 1.5, 89-92). This arrogance is linked to his Christian self-righteousness when Maria describes him as “a puritan...an affectioned ass…[that] persuaded of himself,...that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him, (TN 2.3, 145-150). Thus, Maria identifies that Malvolio’s self-love is tied up in his piousness, and that he uses his moral superiority as justification for his high opinion of himself. Malvolio takes this pride and sense of superiority further by desiring to be “Count Malvolio,” and imagining Sir Toby “curts[ying]” to him, indicating not only his desire for prestige and power, but his belief that Sir Toby is physically lower than himself because of his “drunkenness,”(TN 2.5, 34, 60-73). Malvolio thus uses his Puritanism as fuel for his actions and desires, imagining himself to be morally superior to Sir Toby and therefore more entitled to a higher social position.
Miss Swanson, Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. This is something that we've addressed with Olivia on a few different occasions because we periodically check the Parent Portal to see how she's doing. Olivia seems to be struggling while working on the labs and instead of asking for help she doesn't complete them properly or doesn't do them at all. When she was younger, she was evaluated and they determined she on the genius level and we think that stuck with her. She puts a ton of pressure on herself and now that she's in high school things might not come so easily like they did in the past.
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
For a woman to show interests in current affairs, express opinions, write literature was unladylike. Viola, fending for herself, in distant land, disguises herself as a boy named Cesario. Cross-dressing, in Elizabethan society, was seen as highly immoral. Viola 's male disguise “allows her to escape the confinement of a single perspective and a single voice by momentarily unfixing sexual stereotypes (184)”(Melchoir). Furthermore, Viola’s situation in Twelfth Night is not typical of an Elizabethan woman because she proves herself to be capable and intelligent.
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
Thus, there are ways that Viola and Olivia both reserve information about themselves while also remaining authentic to an extent. Aside from mere personality, though, Olivia as well as Viola can be distinguished from other characters in Twelfth Night not just by their genders, but also by their attempts at isolating themselves from society. Olivia, according to Valentine, vows “till seven years’ heat,/ Shall not behold her face at ample view” (1.1.25-26). This is due to her brother’s death.
Gender was no longer seen in terms of biological or anatomical but social and cultural. For Judith Butler, Gender is a cultural construct formed through repeated ‘acting’ which gives the notion of a static gender while at the same time obscuring the instability of a person’s gender act (Butler 179). In this sense, cross-dressing in Shakespeare becomes an important motif as it supports the fluidity of gender characteristic. Cross-dressing, according to Marjorie Garber, points to the ‘constructedness of gender categories’ (Garber 9).
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.
Viola does this to protect her twin brother as she disguise as him as she puts on the guy type clothes(The Comedies of William Shakespeare, Kathleen Kuiper). Also, characters pretended to be someone they are not to find out hidden secrets about people, that they wouldn’t have known otherwise. In the story this is happened when, Sebastian pretends to be Cesario in front of Sir Toby and Sir Andrew(The Comedies of William Shakespeare, Kathleen Kuiper). Sebastian did this to find out the two servants true perception of him. If the characters would have know who was really “under the mask”, they would have found their real true love, and not be
