Twelfth Night Joy and Festivity Essay
NAME: Danielle Granderson
TEACHER: Mrs De Silva
SUBJECT: Literatures in English
QUESTION: “The title of the play Twelfth Night or What You Will promises joy and festivity, but expectations are not fulfilled in the play.”
Discuss the extent to which you agree with this statement.
Twelfth Night has often been called the most perfect of all Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. The very title of this play refers to the saturnalian revel where, according to Frank Kermode, the world ‘lost its normal, sane order, suddenly becoming topsy-turvy, slightly mad’. Although in all his previous comedies the comic is incidental to the progress of action of the drama, in this last comedy the notion of the provocation of laughter is somewhat absent. Twelfth Night is a bridge between the two forms, comedy and tragedy, and contains elements of both, thus there being an undercurrent of serious sentiment. It is not that the joy and festivity of Twelfth Night is not fulfilled, but the play offers tribute to certain aspects of the merriment rather than being a full-blown comedy. Thus, I am of the view that the joy and festivity promised are present in the play, but expectations are fulfilled to some extent. Evidence of this is seen in Shakespeare’s celebration of madness, the minor characters’ comical scenes and the taunting of Malvolio.
Like the celebration, a major feature of the Twelfth Night is madness, or even disorder. During this time disorder is prevalent where there is love, madness and mass confusion. In the play, Malvolio is prey to a prank done by Maria, Feste, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, where he is convinced that his lady, Olivia, and him are meant to be lovers. He behaves so bizarrely when trying to woo Olivia that he is assumed to be mad and is locked away in a dark room. Malvolio himself knows that he is sane, and he accuses everyone around him of being mad. As Hazlitt puts it, “We [man] are amused at misunderstandings of intention, the fruitless struggles of absurd passion,
TEACHER: Mrs De Silva
SUBJECT: Literatures in English
QUESTION: “The title of the play Twelfth Night or What You Will promises joy and festivity, but expectations are not fulfilled in the play.”
Discuss the extent to which you agree with this statement.
Twelfth Night has often been called the most perfect of all Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. The very title of this play refers to the saturnalian revel where, according to Frank Kermode, the world ‘lost its normal, sane order, suddenly becoming topsy-turvy, slightly mad’. Although in all his previous comedies the comic is incidental to the progress of action of the drama, in this last comedy the notion of the provocation of laughter is somewhat absent. Twelfth Night is a bridge between the two forms, comedy and tragedy, and contains elements of both, thus there being an undercurrent of serious sentiment. It is not that the joy and festivity of Twelfth Night is not fulfilled, but the play offers tribute to certain aspects of the merriment rather than being a full-blown comedy. Thus, I am of the view that the joy and festivity promised are present in the play, but expectations are fulfilled to some extent. Evidence of this is seen in Shakespeare’s celebration of madness, the minor characters’ comical scenes and the taunting of Malvolio.
Like the celebration, a major feature of the Twelfth Night is madness, or even disorder. During this time disorder is prevalent where there is love, madness and mass confusion. In the play, Malvolio is prey to a prank done by Maria, Feste, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, where he is convinced that his lady, Olivia, and him are meant to be lovers. He behaves so bizarrely when trying to woo Olivia that he is assumed to be mad and is locked away in a dark room. Malvolio himself knows that he is sane, and he accuses everyone around him of being mad. As Hazlitt puts it, “We [man] are amused at misunderstandings of intention, the fruitless struggles of absurd passion,