Summary Of Twelfth Night By Elouise M Bell

In her 1991 article, retired English professor Elouise M. Bell quotes one of the Bard’s clowns, starring in Twelfth Night. Both witty individuals make the argument that friends wrongly lie to protect feelings, while supposed enemies tell the truth in order to harm, and yet, that is the better option. As Prince Hamlet, another one of Shakespeare’s clever characters, states, “I must be cruel only to be kind.” Bell explains in detail four ways of viewing and reacting to opposition in her article, all of which showcase a mixture of ignorance and arrogance. She shares her findings not to entertain the reader, but to prompt him into changing his ways, if he should find himself taking the damning road of any of these concepts. Bell calls the first response a “Hatfield-McCoy pattern of response, [with] a ‘Them ‘n Us’ philosophy” (page 55). Individuals who employ this type of ideology do not listen to the other side; there is no communication to be had. Neither side is open to the possibility that they may be in the wrong. Indeed, each has self-appointed himself righteous in this contention with no opposing opinion being heeded nor needed. Bell reminds her audience that while Satan is indeed opposition, not all opposition is rooted in him. She advises to listen and learn from opponents, rather than choosing one view as the be all, end all, as
This philosophy is the one in which opposition is seen as beneath notice, only an irritant to be ignored until it becomes a larger problem. Bell related this to hiking with a little sand in one’s shoes. If one only deals with opposition in order to scratch an itch, or relieve a minor injury, what learning process is occurring? Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints celebrate enduring to the end, overcoming what Shakespeare called, “the whips and scorns of time”, but that does not include opposition. Opposition is not always