Themes, Motifs and Symbols for the Twelfth Night Essay Example for Free

Themes, Motifs and Symbols for the ordinal shadow EssayTwelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic recognize is the suffers main focus. Despite the fact that the make for offers a happy ending, in which the various lambrs find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespe atomic number 18 shows that love can cause pain. Many of the characters seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively. Various characters claim to suffer painfully from organism in love, or, rather, from the pangs of unrequited love. At one usher, Orsino depicts love dolefully as an appetite that he wants to satisfy and cannot, at another point he calls his desires fell and cruel hounds. Olivia more bluntly describes love as a plague from which she suffers terribly. These metaphors manipulate an element of violence, further painting the love-struck as victims of some random force in the universe. Even the little melodramatic Viola sighs unhap pily that My state is desperate for my masters love. This desperation has the potential to terminus in violencewhen Orsino threatens to kill Cesario because he thinks that Cesario has forsaken him to become Olivias lover.Love is also exclusionary some pot achieve romantic happiness, while others do not. At the end of the play, as the happy lovers rejoice, both Malvolio and Antonio are prevented from having the objects of their desire. Malvolio, who has pursued Olivia, must ultimately face the realization that he is a fool, socially unworthy of his baronial mistress. Antonio is in a more difficult role, as social norms do not allow for the pleasure of his apparently familiar attraction to Sebastian. Love, thus, cannot conquer all obstacles, and those whose desires go unful fill up remain no slight in love except feel the sting of its absence all the more severely.The Uncertainty of sexuality Gender is one of the most obvious and much-discussed topics in the play. Twelfth Nig ht is one of Shakespeares alleged(prenominal) transvestite comedies, in which a fe manly characterin this case, Violadisguises herself as a man. This situation draws a sexual mess Viola falls in love with Orsino but cannot tell him, because he thinks she is a man, while Olivia, the object of Orsinos affection, falls for Viola in her guise as Cesario. thither is a clear homoerotic subtext here Olivia is in love with a woman, even if she thinks he is a man, and Orsino muchen remarks on Cesarios beauty, suggesting that he is attracted to Viola even before her priapic disguise is removed. This latent homoeroticism finds an explicit echo in the minor character of Antonio, who is clearly in love with his male friend, Sebastian. But Antonios desires cannot be satisfied, while Orsino and Olivia both find tidy heterosexual gratification erst the sexual ambiguities and deceptions are straightened out.Yet, even at the plays close, Shakespeare leaves things somewhat murky, especially in the Orsino-Viola relationship. Orsinos declaration of love to Viola suggests that he enjoys prolonging the pretence of Violas masculinity. Even after he knows that Viola is a woman, Orsino says to her, Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand propagation / Thou never shouldst love woman like to me. Similarly, in his last lines, Orsino declares, Cesario, come / For so you shall be while you are a man / But when in other habits you are seen, / Orsinos mistress, and his fancys queen. Even erstwhile everything is revealed, Orsino continues to address Viola by her male name. We can thus only wonder whether Orsino is truly in love with Viola, or if he is more enamoured of her male persona.The Folly of Ambition The problem of social ambitiousness works itself out largely through the character of Malvolio, the steward, who seems to be a competent servant, if prudish and dour, but proves to be, in fact, a supreme egotist, with tremendous ambitions to rise out of his social class. Maria plays on these ambitions when she forges a earn from Olivia that makes Malvolio believe that Olivia is in love with him and wishes to marry him. Sir Toby and the others find this fantasy hysterically funny, of physiquenot only because of Malvolios unattractive personality but also because Malvolio is not of noble blood. In the class system of Shakespeares time, a noblewoman would generally not sully her reputation by marrying a man of lower social status.Yet the atmosphere of the play may render Malvolios aspirations less unreason open than they initially seem. The feast of Twelfth Night, from which the play takes its name, was a time when social hierarchies were turn upside down. That same spirit is alive in Illyria indeed, Malvolios antagonist, Maria, is able to increase her social standing(a) by marrying Sir Toby. But it seems that Marias success may be due to her willingness to accept and sanction the anarchy that Sir Toby and the others embrace. This Twelfth Night spirit, then, seem s to pass by Malvolio, who doesnt wholeheartedly embrace the upend of order and decorum but rather wants to blur class lines for himself alone.MotifsLetters, Messages, and Tokens Twelfth Night features a immense variety of messages sent from one character to anothersometimes as letters and other times in the form of tokens. Such messages are used both for purposes of communication and miscommunicationsometimes deliberate and sometimes accidental. Marias letter to Malvolio, which purports to be from Olivia, is a deliberate (and successful) attempt to trick the steward. Sir Andrews letter demanding a duel with Cesario, meanwhile, is meant seriously, but because it is so appallingly stupid, Sir Toby does not deliver it, rendering it extraneous. Malvolios missive, sent by way of Feste from the sin elbow room in which he is imprisoned, ultimately works to expose the confusion caused by Marias forged letter and to free Malvolio from his imprisonment.But letters are not the only kind of messages that characters employ to communicate with one another. Individuals can be employed in the place of written communicationOrsino repeatedly sends Cesario, for instance, to deliver messages to Olivia. Objects can function as messages between raft as well Olivia sends Malvolio after Cesario with a ring, to tell the page that she loves him, and follows the ring up with further gifts, which symbolise her romantic attachment. Messages can convey important information, but they also create the potential for miscommunication and confusionespecially with characters like Maria and Sir Toby manipulating the information.Madness No one is truly insane in Twelfth Night, yet a number of characters are accused of being mad, and a current of insanity or zaniness runs through the action of the play. After Sir Toby and Maria dupe Malvolio into believing that Olivia loves him, Malvolio behaves so bizarrely that he is assumed to be mad and is locked away in a dark room. Malvolio himself k nows that he is sane, and he accuses everyone around him of being mad. Meanwhile, when Antonio encounters Viola (disguised as Cesario), he mistakes her for Sebastian, and his angry insistence that she recognize him leads people to assume that he is mad. wholly of these incidents feed into the general atmosphere of the play, in which normal life is thrown topsy-turvy, and everyone must confront a reality that is somehow fractured.Disguises Many characters in Twelfth Night assume disguises, beginning with Viola, who puts on male attire and makes everyone else believe that she is a man. By dressing his protagonist in male garments, Shakespeare creates endless sexual confusion with the Olivia-ViolaOrsino love triangle. Other characters in disguise include Malvolio, who puts on crossed garters and yellow stockings in the hope of winning Olivia, and Feste, who dresses up as a priestSir Topaswhen he speaks to Malvolio after the steward has been locked in a dark room. Feste puts on the dis guise even though Malvolio will not be able to see him, since the room is so dark, suggesting that the importance of clothe is not just in the eye of the beholder. For Feste, the disguise completes his assumption of a new identityin order to be Sir Topas, he must disembodied spirit like Sir Topas. Viola puts on new clothes and changes her gender, while Feste and Malvolio put on new garments either to impersonate a nobleman (Feste) or in the hopes of becoming a nobleman (Malvolio). Through these disguises, the play raises questions about what makes us who we are, compelling the audience to wonder if things like gender and class are tempered in stone, or if they can be altered with a change of clothing.Mistaken Identity The instances of anomalous identity are related to the prevalence of disguises in the play, as Violas male clothing leads to her being mistaken for her brother, Sebastian, and vice versa. Sebastian is mistaken for Viola (or rather, Cesario) by Sir Toby and Sir And rew, and then by Olivia, who cursorily marries him. Meanwhile, Antonio mistakes Viola for Sebastian, and thinks that his friend has betrayed him when Viola claims to not know him. These cases of mistaken identity, common in Shakespeares comedies, create the tangled situation that can be resolved only when Viola and Sebastian appear together, helping everyone to understand what has happened.SymbolsOlivias Gifts When Olivia wants to let Cesario know that she loves him, she sends him a ring by way of Malvolio. Later, when she mistakes Sebastian for Cesario, she gives him a precious pearl. In each case, the jewel serves as a token of her lovea physical symbol of her romantic attachment to a man who is really a woman. The gifts are more than symbols, though. Youth is bought more oft than begged or borrowed, Olivia says at one point, suggesting that the jewels are intended almost as bribesthat she means to buy Cesarios love if she cannot win it.The Darkness of Malvolios Prison When Sir Toby and Maria pretend that Malvolio is mad, they confine him in a pitch-black chamber. Darkness becomes a symbol of his supposed insanity, as they tell him that the room is filled with light and his inability to see is a sign of his madness. Malvolio reverses the symbolism. I say this house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell and I say there was never man thus abused. In other words, the darknessmeaning madnessis not in the room with him, but outside, with Sir Toby and Feste and Maria, who have unjustly imprisoned him.Changes of Clothing Clothes are powerful in Twelfth Night. They can symbolize changes in genderViola puts on male clothes to be taken for a male as well as class distinctions. When Malvolio fantasizes about becoming a nobleman, he imagines the new clothes that he will have. When Feste impersonates Sir Topas, he puts on a noblemans garb, even though Malvolio, whom he is fooling, cannot see him, suggesting that clothes have a power that transc ends their physical function.