Critics Flashcards
Jonathan Bate
“Viola redeems the play because she proves to be selfless, not selfish in love. She becomes Echo instead of Narcissus”
Harry Bloom
” An abyss hovers just beyond Twelfth Night, and one cost of not leaping into it is that everyone, except the reluctant jester, Feste, is essentially mad without knowing it”
C.L Barber (heart over head)
“We love the play so much because it is a wish-fulfillment presented so skillfully that we do not notice that our hearts are duping our heads”
William Hazlitt
Sir Andrew Augecheek is “ a mere echo and shadow of the heroes of his admiration. A “puppet”, “ the butt of jokes” and “brainless”
Nancy Lindheim
“If Twelfth Nigh as a festival suggests a time of folly and disguise that must come to an end, drunkenness can be the mask that Sir Toby can discard”
Nigel Hawthrone
Malvolio is “ a sad man and in many ways completely ludicrous, because he displays the height of conceit and pomposity”
Joseph Summers
“Although he is a noble duke, he is bound by his own mask of love. This mask us a distorted sense of love and is fed by boredom, lack of physical love and excessive imagination”
Marilyn French
“Feste is an outsider because his experiences have damaged his capacity of joy”
Joseph Pequigney (Sebastian and Antonio)
Sebastian and Antonio’s relationship “ is the classic homoerotic relationship”
Gibson
Illyria s a “Topsy-tervy world of confusion and masquerades”
Micheal Dobson
” The whole of Twelfth Night debates the very nature of morality of comedy”
Joseph Pequigney (Sebastian and Olivia)
“Sebastian could never have done what was necessary to win Olivia, and his only chance was for his sister to perform this masculine role for him”
Charles Spencer
“Twelfth Night is the darkest and most haunting of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies, it’s humor constantly shadowed by cruelty and a keen awareness of morality”
Nicole Smith
“There is a sense of hopelessness in the battle between what one says and what is truth”
David Lewis
“For both Orsino and Olivia, self-deception serves as an avoidance of the real world and real emotions”
