Twelfth Night social problems

A detailed Summary of Twelfth Night social problems

As a comedy, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, is not only meant to entertain its audience but also bring attention to problems in society. One must let go of several realistic concepts before they can truly understand Shakespeare's intentions. The audience must suspend their logic to believe that so many coincidental situations could occur. They are taken far away to a romantic land, where no penalties or consequences exist for practical jokes and constant drunkenness. It is this incongruity compared with our, everyday mundane lives that provides for the humor in this play. Humor is used to point out social concerns, such as balance in one's life, and the not to judge based solely on appearance; however, the humor is not blunt, but brought out by puns and subtitles and is meant not to take away from the greater themes and morals of the play. Shakespeare has carefully intertwined comedy and pain in both the main and the subplots to highlight the comical situations of irony and coincidence and explore the social themes.

A balance in one's life is based around self awareness: something achieved through being well balanced rather being excessive. This theme is developed from the opening were Ors

Shakespeare uses comedy to bring out his concerns about society and how it acts towards one another. The first theme is the theme of excess. In almost every character, we see some type of excess throwing that character out of balance. This unbalance effects how effectively the character can act to towards other characters and how he/she views him/herself. The second theme is how society should not judge based solely on appearance. This theme is echoed very vividly through Viola assuming another identity of a man. She fools everyone with her "boyish" looks and Olivia even falls in love with her, refusing to believe that she is anything but a man. Shakespeare is trying to evoke from the audience to be fooled by such superficial things as looks, but to gaze deeper into a person and see who they truly are.

ino proclaims his love for Olivia, "If music be the food of love, play on./ Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,/ the appetite may sicken and die" (I.i.1-3). The idea that Orsino is in love with the idea of love, rather than the actual person is prevalent here. He cares more for the association with something as intangible as love, rather the person and the emotions that go along with love. Olivia is also a person of excess, mourning her brother's alleged death for seven years, an action which appears more for her sake rather than in actual despair of a loss such as dea

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Approximate Word count = 940
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English