Act 5 Scene 1

Question 1

QUOTES

“My love without retention…”

Answer 1

“My love without retention, or restraint,
All his in dedication. For his sake,
Did I expose myself, pure for his love.”

Question 2

QUOTES

“I’ll sacrifice…”

Answer 2

“I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love”

Question 3

QUOTES

“Then he’s a rogue…”

Answer 3

“Then he’s a rogue, and a passy-measures pavin. I hate a drunken rogue”

Question 4

QUOTES

“One face, one voice…”

Answer 4

“One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons -

A natural perspective, that is and is not!”

Question 5

QUOTES

“How have you made…”

Answer 5

“How have you made division of yourself?
An apple ceft in two is not more twin
than these two creatures”

Question 6

QUOTES

“Given your drunken…”

Answer 6

“Give your drunken cousin rule over me”

Question 7

QUOTES

“The madly…”

Answer 7

“The madly used Malvolio”

Question 8

QUOTES

“most not…”

Answer 8

“most notoriously abused”

Question 9

What mix of techniques does Shakespeare write with in this scene?

Answer 9

skilful mix of prose and blank verse

Question 10

How do the characters express their highly charged emotions over these serial revelations?

Answer 10

in frequent references to madness and to witchcraft

Question 11

What last twist remains unresolved at the end of the play?

Answer 11

Malvolio’s promise for revenge on the ‘whole pack’

Question 12

What is this long scene structure around?

Answer 12

flurry of declarations and revelations

short and concentrated exchanged between the various true and false pairings

Question 13

Does Shakespeare’s writing always show love?

Answer 13

While the spotlight of emotional intensity pinpoints different moments and contributions, all of these are brought together by love

Question 14

What is Orsino’s love close to?

Answer 14

hate as he articulates it primarily as a threat to Olivia

“Him I will tear out of that cruel eye”

Question 15

By what is the imaginative reality of Illyria permeated by? And how does Shakespeare achieve this?

Answer 15

the everyday reality of money

there are continual reminders of the need to pay bills and settle accounts

Question 16

Give examples of where money is deemed the ruler:

Answer 16

1. Sir Toby refuses to ‘confine’ himself but money is the constraint which misrule cannot avoid
2. Malvolio’s role as steward is to ensure economy and balance the books
3. Feste is paid for his fooling and uses his wit to beg for money

Question 17

What does all the play’s revelry take place against (Feste’s comment)?

Answer 17

“pleasure will be paid, one time or another”

in other words, pleasure in youth may be paid for with suffering in old age

Question 18

How is the ‘happy ending’ precarious?

Answer 18

Viola states twice that her women’s clothes are with the Captain, whom is being held by Malvolio ‘upon some action’

the happy ending is therefore, to some extent, dependent on the alienated steward (Malvolio)

Question 19

What is it important to recognise about the way Shakespeare used suspended resolution?

Answer 19

it created endings which mix light and dark elements

Question 20

Who is left out in the metaphorical cold by the ‘happy ending’?

Answer 20

Sir Andrew had nothing to show for his expensive stay in Olivia’s household
Antonio is soon forgotten when Sebastian is reunited with Viola
Feste is still singing his own mournful songs

Question 21

Why would one interpret that even the lovers may have been hastily paired off?

Answer 21

Orsino’s sudden proposal to his former page
Olivia’s silent acceptance of her mystery husband

suggests an ending which owes more to dramatic convention than to emotional truth

Question 22

What did Direction Michael Pennington note about the supposedly ‘happy ending’?

Answer 22

that the final marriages ‘have something perfunctory about them as if the fantastic contortions of the plot had made the characters unto puppets’

Question 23

What continues the homoerotic tinge of the relationship between Orsino and Cesario?

Answer 23

that we never see Viola back in her own clothes

Question 24

How does Orsino refer to to the twins’ physical presence?

Answer 24

as a paradox of numbers ‘one’, ‘two’

and words, ‘is and is not’

Question 25

What does Orsino’s phrase ‘is and is not’ recall?

Answer 25

many similar riddling variations on the verb ‘to be’:
Feste’s opposition assertion as Sir Topas, ‘That that is, is’

‘Nothing that is so, is so’

Question 26

What does the riddling of the verb ‘to be’ have an effect on?

Answer 26

blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion
questions the nature of self
opens up the possibilities of change and renewal