Agenda

Quiz 15
Plot/Sentence Questions
Performance 3
Discussion of act 4 via blog posts
Scene from Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night

Quiz 15

1. Why is Feste confused when he meets Sebastian?
2. To what request from Olivia does Sebastian agree?
3. Where is Malvolio?
4. Who pretends to be the priest Sir Topas?
5. Name the character in act 4 who wonders if he’s mad and the character in act 4 who is told he is mad.

Bonus: what is the “opinion of Pythagoras” to which Feste refers?

From Our Blog Posts

Olivia marries him on the spot, to who she thinks is Cesario, but is actually a very confused Sebastian, who for some reason, agrees not to question anything that is happening to him, despite his confusion.
–Reza

Antonio is the only person in this play that actually makes sense to Sebastian. Perceived by Sebastian, all the characters are new to him and their actions against him are without and reason. It would make sense for Sebastian to be more trusting and open to Antonio than to any other character in this play. There has been speculation that Sebastian and Antonio have acquired a romantic relationship for each other. Although it may be common in Shakespeare’s time for friendship to be as strong as marriage, it does not appear that Sebastian has romantic feelings towards Antonio like how Olivia feels about Cesario. Sebastian instead plans to marry Olivia.
–Ryan

After witnessing the interactions between Feste and Malvolio and between Feste and those who created the plot, we get the impression that Feste is only trying to amuse himself. What do you think Shakespeare meant to imply with Feste’s questionable behavior? Does he want us to understand that Feste is a deceitful and unkind person? Perhaps he wants us to pity Malvolio now that the joke has gone “too far”.
–Brad

In this act of Twelfth Night characters use the element of disguise as implemented earlier in the play…..This concept also relates to theatricality where the characters in a play are playing the role of another character.  They are characters but they are also taking on the role to be someone else and are putting on disguises to fit the part that they are trying to portray.
–Yelca

To the second [objection], therefore, that they [poets] should be the principal liars, I answer paradoxically, but truly, I think truly, that of all writers under the sun, the poet is the least liar; and though he would, as a poet, can scarcely be a liar. The astronomer, with his cousin the geometrician, can hardly escape when they take upon them to measure the height of the stars. How often, think you, do the physicians lie, when they aver things good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great number of souls drowned in a potion before they come to his ferry. And no less of the rest which take upon them to affirm. Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth; for, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false: so as the other artists, and especially the historian, affirmeth many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from many lies: but the poet, as I said before, never affirmeth; the poet never maketh any circles about your imagination, to conjure you to believe for true what he writeth: he citeth not authorities of other histories, but even for his entry calleth the sweet Muses to inspire into him a good invention; in troth, not labouring to tell you what is or is not, but what should or should not be.–Philip Sidney, Defence of Poesie (c. 1580)

A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all ‘hues’ in his controlling,
Much steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.
–Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20