class 4-22-13
Agenda
Quiz 12
Plot/Sentence Questions
Discussion of acts 1 -2 via blog posts
Tone of play
Quiz 12
1. Who is Sebastian?
2. Who is Antonio?
3. Who does Malvolio believe the letter he has found is from?
4. Who actually wrote the letter?
5. Name something Malvolio “learns” from the letter.
Bonus 1: name a specific piece of advice Malvolio is given in the letter regarding how to get what he wants.
Bonus 2: What is “taffeta”?
Blog Posts
Category: Twelfth Night Comments (0)
In Act 2, Scene 2, we see Viola, who at the time is still disguised as a man, professing her worries about Olivia’s mistaken affections for her. In this long speech, we hear Viola, a woman, proclaiming how foolish women are and that it’s all their fault that they fall in love because they’re just too impressionable. However, these lines are interesting because Shakespeare is projecting to his audience how women feel about and see themselves, yet no women have been taken into account on this matter. Shakespeare, a man, wrote the play and Viola is being played by a man dressed as a woman. So Shakespeare is enforcing a certain set of ideas about women from the standpoint of men onto both men and women in this audience, therefore creating/reinforcing stereotypes within real society from a fictional story. This isn’t incredibly different from what we see the media today doing towards audiences.
In addition, Viola as a female only gains recognition and authority from the other characters because she is dressed like a man, and therefore gains more respect. Olivia, by contrast, throws away her own future because of the death of her brother and this is supposed to be seen as some sort of noble act. She’s seen as an object to obtain and her whole plot line revolves around love, whether it be because someone loves her or she loves someone else.
Gender and Love Confusion
Category: Twelfth Night Comments (0)
Act 2 of The Twelfth Night is full of events in which the behaviors of both the male and female characters seem quite odd. It is strange enough that a love triangle between Viola (Cesario), Olivia, and Orsino exists where Viola is both a male and a female, but to have Antonio and Sebastian’s relationship the way it is causes the play to challenge the role of gender within the play. Since women were not allowed to act in plays, the parts of females had to be played by young boys. Throughout history, there has been a connection between adult men and their relationships to young boys, so there may be a direct link to the fact that males who had a natural inclination to young boys could act on stage according to that feeling. Homosexuality was punishable by death during the Elizabethian Era, but two men on stage acting to be in love on stage was generally accepted by the audience. Perhaps Shakespeare uses this behavioral freedom to dive deeper into the confusion that these gender roles create, and saw the opportunity to create all sorts of wrong relationships.
Tone of Play
Orgasm and Death
Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;
And done, we straight repent us of the sport:
Let us not then rush blindly on unto it,
Like lustfull beasts, that onely know to doe it:
For lust will languish, and that heat decay.
But thus, thus, keeping endlesse Holy-day,
Let us together closely lie, and kisse,
There is no labour, nor no shame in this;
This hath pleas’d, doth please, and long will please; never
Can this decay, but is beginning ever.
each such Act, they say, Diminisheth the length of life a day
They that would be commended to their Wedlock actions, and be happy in the fruit of their Labour, must observe to Copulate at distance of time, not too often, nor yet too seldom, for both these hurt Fruitfulness alike; for to eject immoderately, weakens a Man, and wasts his Spirits, and too often causes the Seed by long continuance to be ineffectual, & not Manly enough.”