ALL CRITICAL QUOTES Flashcards
Gender Roles: Viola’s ability to shift between genders shows both contrast and connection between them
‘The effect of moving back and forth from woman to sprightly page is to convey how much the sexes differ yet how much they both have in common, how everyone who is fully alive has qualities of both.’ (Ros Barber)
Gender Roles: Viola as an object of desire Schalkwyk
‘As a castrato, Viola becomes an erotic ‘blank’, sexually disempowered but also a screen upon which others project their own desires.’ (David Schalkwyk)
Gender Roles: Orsino’s sexist pronouns reveal flawed view of gender
‘Orsino’s use of pronouns shows his lack of empathy and understanding of women. ‘They’ and ‘them’ puts women at a distance, ‘I’ and ‘we’ shows his identification with men. But Viola is one of ‘them’, and is effectively excluded from the conversation and from the ability to love properly.’ (Miranda Fay Thomas)
Gender Roles: Viola’s disguised love
‘Viola’s speeches on Orsino’s behalf carry all the force of her own love for him. ‘ (Craik)
Language, Mood, Atmosphere, Music: music shaping tone of Twelfth Night
‘Twelfth Night trembles on the edge of music’ - Virginia Woolf
bittersweet irony in Viola’s love
‘The irony is delicately balanced between the humour of Orsino’s unawareness, and the pathos of Viola’s having to conceal her feelings.’ (Michael Dobson)
Feste’s song as a reflection on time
placing the whole play in a vast temporal perspective (John Hallander)
Social Status / Class: Malvolio reflecting changing economic values (rising merchant class) Barber
‘Malvolio and Shylock are representative of the rise of capitalism’ (Ros Barber)
malvolio wanting to rise social class Barber
he is or would like to be a rising man, and to rise he uses sobriety and morality.’ (Ros Barber)
malvolio as a kill-joy- Barber
‘The festive spirit shows up the kill-joy vanity of Malvolio’s decorum.’ (Ros Barber)
Outsiders: Malvolio as an unwanted outsider BARBER
‘A kind of foreign body to be expelled of laughter’ (Ros Barber)
Malvolio’s affection being based on other ambitions- barber
‘While it is perfectly true that Malvolio’s own desire for Olivia is inextricably caught up with his own ambition, he is as, or more, capable of affection as any character in Illyria’ (Richard Levin)
Shakespearean Comedy: comedy as a journey to clarity
‘through release to clarification’ (Ros Barber)
Shakespearean Comedy: social and artistic structures in comedy Barber
‘historical interplay between social and artistic form’ (Ros Barber)
Shakespearean Comedy: comedy mocking unnatural behaviour
‘The plays present a mockery of what is unnatural’. (Ros Barber)
Shakespearean Comedy: Sir Toby as the driver of chaos, secure as lord of misrule BARBER
‘Sir Toby is secure in his role of Lord of Misrule’ (Barber)
Shakespearean Comedy: A1S3 presents the key themes of the play, (berry)
‘This scene (A1S3) establishes all the ingredients of revelry evident in the play: capering, masquerading, music and song, as well as hoaxing and hoodwinking, making language for laughs, double-entendre, overindulgence in food and drink.’ (Ralph Berry)
Foolishness: Shakespeare’s fools as unaware of their meaning
Fool ‘in early plays, the clown is usually represented as oblivious of what his burlesque implies’ (Ros Barber)
Foolishness: Fools as detached observers
Coleridge (C18), writing about the Fool in Shakespeare: ‘We meet with characters who are unfeeling spectators of the most passionate situations.’
marias trick exploiting malvolios self love (Bevington)
Maria’s trick exploits Malvolio’s infatuation with himself (David Bevington)
Madness: questioning sanity and foolishness
‘The play insists on questioning categories of madness and sanity, wisdom and folly.’ (Craik)
comedic effect of malvolios slow realisation when reading the letter (Hollander)
‘The riddling verse of the letter slows Malvolio down to a ludicrous deliberateness, a tortoise-like advance upon its meaning.’ (John Hollander)
Desire: desire and instability of language
‘The labile nature of language is immediately linked to the wilfulness of the libido.’ (Emma Smith)
Loss: shipwreck as symbolic rebirth
‘The shipwreck has metaphorical associations with the birth trauma separating the twins, suggesting the whole play is an attempt to return to the privileged togetherness they enjoyed before birth.’ (John Hollander)
