Preview

Twelfth Night: elements of comedy and irony

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1877 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Twelfth Night: elements of comedy and irony
Trevor Nunn's adaptation of "Twelfth Night" is a masterpiece of insight and nuance. Instead of simply playing this gender-bending comedy of mistaken identity, the director highlights the dark undertones of the plot which show surprising depth. There are some alterations from the original text, but those who are less familiar with Shakespeare among the audience can appreciate the story being more easy to follow. For example, when Duke Orsino utters the famous opening line of the play, "If music be the food of love, play on," ten minutes have already elapsed. But what takes place in those ten minutes sets up the plot and brings the characters to life.

Twelfth Night opens with a scene alluded to, but never presented in the original text., The twin siblings, Viola and Sebastian, are aboard a ship that is wrecked off the coast of the imaginary country of Illyria. Explaining the context of the play, it is a mute ouverture which helps the viewer in understanding much of the otherwise complicated situation.

The unique design of the film allows the story to leave the stage. The locations in Cornwall allow for some marvelous, liberating exteriors, and the late 18th century settings and costumes allow the film to balance on the border between period piece and contemporary romance. The veteran stage director has attempted to modernize the play without changing its meaning. The era has been shifted from the 1600s to the 1800s, giving the film a fresher context.

As a comedy, Twelfth Night is obviously intending to not only entertain its audience but also point out problems in society. It is imperative to entire merit of the play not to be realistic but to allow for empathy. Therefore to have a comedy of complete lightheartedness there would be no balance and hence no avenue for audience interaction. Without light we would have no darkness and for this reason Shakespeare has had to incorporate tragedy in order for the comedy to have its desired effect. The two in juxtaposition

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Elaborate on “She’s the Man” and “Twelfth Night”, and emphasize on the mood, symbolism and imagery portrayed in the different situations and how they are similar:…

    • 642 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    For hundreds of years people from all over the world have seen the works of William Shakespeare performed by thousands of actors. Twelfth Night or What you Will is but one of the many comedies written by William Shakespeare that have been produced in many formats, from theater, television and even several feature films. So many different productions of the same works have opened the door to directors adding their own twist to the original script to make it their own. One play can be performed countless different ways, from very conservative or to unconventional depending on the director’s interpretation and intentions. So all writings are open for creative interpretation thus being for this paper I am going to focus on the directorial staging of this play and how the staging and direction brought the focus of the subplot of Antonio and Sebastian into a homoerotic relationship opposed to other renditions of Twelfth Night that were homosocial. Directors have creatively reconstructed these plays pulling from the era, the popular ideology of the community and political correctness at the times the different styles and interpretations so that Shakespeare can be adapted to the current times.…

    • 2073 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    twelfth night

    • 953 Words
    • 4 Pages

    While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.…

    • 953 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Twelfth Night and The Servant of Two Masters both relate to this course’s theme of the carnivalesque. Both plays share the commonality of having a clown, or a fool; in Twelfth Night it is Feste or the Fool, and in The Servant of Two Masters it is Truffaldino. Both characters play the fool in contrasting ways to express similar yet different forms of the carnivalesque. During carnival, laughter is prominent; people are laughing together, they are laughing at each other, and they are being laughed at. The laughter of carnival is both malicious and happy and everyone is included in it. Feste and Truffaldino show the different aspects of carnival laughter through their portrayals of the fool. Feste plays the role of the artificial fool and because of this people laugh with him at his wit and humor. As an artificial fool, Feste is a bit removed from the action of the play. He is in contact with almost every character but he is not what drives the main plot. By being detached, Feste is able to observe what is going on more and laugh with the audience. Feste further proves he is an artificial fool with his trick against Malvolio. The trick was though out carefully and done out of revenge so that people would laugh at Malvolio and with Feste. Truffaldino plays the role of the natural fool. Because he is a natural fool, people laugh at him, not with him. When he tricks his two masters, the tricks are not well thought out and are done only to cover up previous tricks. His messes and blunders cause the audience to laugh at him but he is too wrapped up in the action of the play to even notice. By playing the artificial fool, Feste is able to display the dimension of carnival laughter where he laughs with others. Turffaldino displays the dimension of carnival laughter where he is laughed at by playing the natural fool.…

    • 1421 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Northrop Frye’s concept in A Natural Perspective discusses a peculiar, yet often seen, occurrence within Shakespeare’s comedies, which is the alienation of minor characters. Typically, the minor character’s isolation is emphasized in the play by the prominent contrast of the other main character’s joy during a celebration, and Frye further explains how the audience should pay close attention to these characters by stating,“there is always a part of us that remains a spectator, detached and observant, aware of other nuances and values” (125). The alienated minor character adds a darker element to Shakespeare's comedies; and in Twelfth Night, the playwright uses Antonio to convey this theme by having him be excluded from the others. More specifically, Antonio’s exclusion is brought to the audience’s attention because he does not end up in a relationship by the end of the final act, unlike the majority of the characters. Due to his harmless infatuation with Sebastian, Antonio is unnecessarily alienated by the new world formed at the end of the play.…

    • 565 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The play starts off with the shipwreck and explains how two twins, Viola and Sebastian get separated. Viola gets swept up on land and doesn’t know where she is. She is told by a captain that she is in Illyria. Viola asks herself, “What should I do in Illyria?” Her brother is in Elysium and she thinks he might be dead. The captain tells her about the Duke Orsino and how he loves a woman named Olivia, and he is very sad because Olivia is not interested. Olivia is mourning over her dead father and brother. Viola wants to serve the duke, but in order to do that she has to dress up like a man to get the job. She pretends to be a man named Cesario. She gets the job and her and Orsino become good friends, and the Duke tells Cesario how he loves Olivia. But, Viola (who is playing Cesario) has a crush on the…

    • 752 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Explore how the play Twelfth Night portrays the theme of emotions and compare to at least two poems from the literary heritage.…

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    ‘Appropriations are often a reflection of our time’. This can be seen with Shakespeare’s play ‘Romeo and Juliet’, a play which was written almost 400 years ago. Although modern appropriations have been made; with Franco Zeffirelli’s, Elizabethan version (1968), and Baz Luhrmann’s (1996) more contemporary version, the essence of the play, and why audiences appreciate it remain the same. In order to highlight this, comparisons between the ‘Ballroom’ and ‘Balcony’ scenes of each film can be made. Although the setting, costumes and props are very different, the underlying themes remain true to Shakespeare’s original text.…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shakespeare presents lots of different types of love using a variety of techniques. The plot of twelfth night is very complex and has a lot of thing happening at a time, there is never a time where there is only one thing happening other than the end when all get revealed. This type of pot allows Shakespeare to introduce lots of different types of love to create drama and perhaps even humor at times. In the next couple of paragraphs I will explore all the different types of love presented to us in Twelfth Night.…

    • 954 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Director Nicholas Hytner has dragged Shakespeare's renaissance tragedy into the 21st Century with a contemporary, gritty setting, while still maintaining a rigorous attention to clarity of language. Venice in the opening scenes is a non-descript place and it is only with the departure to Cyprus that the military aesthetic of the production comes to full fruition. Most of the action takes place in the middle of the night, under disorientating arc lights or inside sterile pre-fab army command buildings. Helicopters whir overhead. The sets slide and advance like tanks. Shadowy and devoid of bright colours, the production helped to focus attention on the tense drama that unfolded on stage, and made Shakespeare seem fresh and accessible.…

    • 585 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Twelfth Night has been described as ‘like Hamlet in a comic vein ' . In terms of Shakespearean chronology, the bittersweet edge to the play and the fact that it is essentially a comedy with the dark, sometimes disturbing elements, has been linked with the playwright 's movement toward the genre of tragedy. The range of filmic adaptations of the play illustrates the variation in the interpretation of Shakespeare 's work, with the dark edge often failing to make the transition to screen. However this is not the case with Nunn 's Twelfth Night, which achieves this exploration of the serious essentially through his interpretation of some of the play 's principal characters including Malvolio, Feste and Maria.…

    • 2337 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Twelfth Night is a reference to the twelfth night after Christmas Day, called the Eve of the Feast of Epiphany. It was originally a Catholic holiday but, prior to Shakespeare 's play, had become a day of revelry. Servants often dressed up as their masters. The masquerading that is a frequent part of an Epiphany celebration is of course captured in Viola 's plan to disguise herself as a man. Almost all the in the play are either taken in by another characters disguise or a deception regarding their own identity. The confusions that unravel in amongst it give the audience an urge to want to read on. I think Shakespeare presented these to show that things really are not always what they seem to be, plus to show the consequences of deception. Hence, nearly every character at some points conceals reality behind some type of deception, leading to various consequences. Furthermore, the deception and confusion presented throughout this story makes each character develop an identity with either showing cleverness or madness, while it also makes each character realize the principles towards obtaining love and…

    • 1342 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    William Shakespeare’s works have everlasting significance due to the fact that his plays explore key ideas still relevant in our own time. Shakespeare’s play Twelfth night was written in 1602, as a comedy. It contains ideas and themes that link it closely with society. Twelfth Night explores the idea of love through his characterisation of Viola and Duke Orsino. Andy Fickman’s film modernised Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night through the change of some parts of the play and updating them.…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Insanity In Twelfth Night

    • 1526 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare constantly alludes to the contrast between darkness and light by the use of secrets, mistaken identities and the contrast between sanity and insanity. With this motif Shakespeare shows us that if we act on first impressions without the true knowledge of the entity of the situation or character, then the misinformed motives will surely be in vain; and our efforts futile.…

    • 1526 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Much of the Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ focuses on misconceptions and the way disguises cause the root of misunderstandings in which mistaken identities arise, a fortuitous device for complicating action. Critic John Hollander described the play to be a ‘ritualized Twelfth Night festivity in itself’ . The comedic aspect is all due to the privileged position that the audience hold, consuming more understanding of the true situation than the characters themselves. It also manages to expose the habits and pretences people in the modern world take for granted, thus linking to parody. Reflecting the popular medieval festival The Feast of Fools, a time when rules were subverted through human chaos and masquerade was common, Viola’s decision to cross dress inevitably causes misunderstanding, alongside the appearance of her identical twin, Sebastian. It was especially effective for Shakespeare to incorporate twins, as Eric Weitz describes them as a ‘kind of human pun’ , especially as this double identity heightens the comic value, as well as it being a deliberate evasion. Furthermore, another main concept of misunderstanding is through Malvolio becoming the unconscious victim of the irrational spirit of holiday that he so strongly despises. The festivities, believed to have evolved from the Roman festival Saturnalia, held in honour of the god Saturn, are revealed in the similarity with which all characters overturn societal rules which distresses Malvolio. His anxiety is enjoyed all the more due to double meanings and how he is egotistically trapped in misapprehension. This can be interpreted as an implication as to how our social manners can cause false representation of our true feelings.…

    • 1829 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics