Twelfth Night: Aspects of Comedy- Text overview

Twelfth Night: Aspects of Comedy- Text overview

1. Twelfth Night contains many aspects of Dramatic comedy

   • Disguise
     • plot hinges with Viola dressing as a male servant in order to survive after being ship wrecked on the shores of Illyria
       • hinges: 1. noun: a movable joint or mechanism on which a door, gate, or lid swings as it opens and closes or which connects linked objects. verb:1. attach or join with or as if with a hinge.
   • mistaken identites
     • Viola and Sebastian so alike that no-one cann tell them apart
   • Trickery + Tomfoolery
     • the lavish use of singing and dancing.
     • the ridiculing of hypocrisy
     • excess
     • and affection
     • the temporary domination of chaos and misrule;
     • and an ending where all confusion is resolved and three marriages take place. A few unhappy endings which result in unrquited love for Antonio and Sir Andrew

2. series of tangled love interest

   • Orsino loves Olivia
   • Olivia loves Cesario and then Sebastian
   • Viola loves Orsino
   • Sir Andrew and Malvolio love Olivia

3. Characters

4. Slapstick and physical comedy

   • most obvious form of comedy is 12th Night is slapstick humuour generated by Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
     • (who's names are themselves a source of humuour.) and their cronies. (crony:noun- a close friend or a companion)
   • humuour is immediately indicated (or signalled) by their use of:
     • prose
       • bawdy language
         • and song that would no doubt have appealed to the working class audience in the pit.
   • Their buffoonery during their midnight revel in Act 2 sn iii, where they...
     • drunkenly carous
       • mock Malvolio and sing at the top of their voices,
         • reflects their use of fun and joie de vivre
   • physical comedy in the scene where Sir Andrew and Cesario attempt to dual, but prove themselves utterly inept and fearful,
     • is clearly entertaining and invites laughter.

5. Role of Fools - Feste and Sir Andrew

6. Malvolio's downfall and schadenfreude (definition noted)

   • schadenfreude: noun:  pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune. "a business that thrives on Schadenfreude"
   • Comic villian ---> Malvolio.
     • whose puritanical stance and attempts to destroy the revelry of Sir Toby's party place him at odds with the lovable rogues and the joyous spirit of the play.
   • His hubristic attitude, evident in both ways.
     • he primands his superior & conceited belief that he could be his mistress' master,
       • means that the audience, much like the onlookers in the Box-tree scene, enjoy his downfall.
   • His appearance in 'yellow and cross-gartered' stocking (where he dressed up in yellow stockings and looked ridiculous), was different from his usual funeral grab, is/this is a source of visual comedy.
   • his suggestive comments as he fantasies about Olivia - 'To bed! Ay sweetheart, and I'll come to thee!'
     • are amusing because of Shakespeare's deployment of incongruity.
   • the way he's thrown into a "dark room" and then taunted by Feste may seem cruel to a modern audience,