Twelfth Night

Consider the elements of comedy employed by Shakespeare in Act one – how might a modern day audience’s reactions be different to that of a Shakespearean audience?

Shakespeare uses several main elements of comedy in Act One of Twelfth Night. These elements are used to promote comic reaction with the audience; some of these elements are still relevant to modern audiences today.

Throughout Act One, Shakespeare uses antonyms to create comic effect. He uses this element on several of his characters to allow the audience to make a judgment of the character by just their name; this manipulates the audience to find the character funny before they even come on stage. ‘Sir Toby Belch’ creates a comic reaction, as a Juke of Sir Toby’s status you expect him to be a sophisticated and well-educated man, however with a last name as ‘belch’ you expect him to be a drunken and low class man. This perception of
The main focus of the element of satire is the character ‘Orsino’. The play opens with ‘Orsino’ giving a dramatic love speech, other then the speech being very melodramatic and sensitive it isn’t very comic to modern audiences. However ‘Orsino’ was the name of the Spanish Ambassador at that particular time that the play was written, and then adding on the melodramatic love speech creates a huge comic effect on the audience at that time. This continues throughout the whole play and has constant comic effect. This creates a comic effect as soon as the play has started and gets the audience laughing right from the beginning. The audience feels superior to ‘Orsino’ as he is presenting his love for someone who doesn’t even love him back, whilst they’re making their judgment on him for being so foolish. This links in within the superiority theory, which is based around the style of teasing and that there will always be someone who is the subject of everyone else’s