twelfth night Critics Flashcards
Miranda Fey
Twelfth Night portrays gender as essentially a role to play
Emma Smith
Feste “his Role is to point out the truths other characters don’t want to hear”
Bloom
“everyone except Feste, the reluctant jester, is essentially mad without knowing it
Summers
‘every character has his masks, for the assumption of the play is that no character is without a mask in the seriocomic business of the pursuit of happiness
Lindheim
Maria ‘succumbs to the lack of limit and control that she earlier censured in Sir Toby’s rivalry”
Bevington
Malvolio is a hypocrite, secretly he longs for the pleasure of this world and the authority to control others
Bates
Viola redeems the play because she proves to be selfless, not selfish in love. She becomes echo instead of Narcissus
Bergson
‘Shakespeare presents Illyria’s society as emotionless and unsympathetic’
Emma Smith
Shakespeares “comedies reveal themselves as socially conservative, reinforcing hierarchies and boundaries”
Pequiney
Sebastian could never have done what was necessary to win Olivia, and his only chance was of his sister to perform this masculine role for him
Barber
Sebastian could never have done what was necessary to win Olivia’s love but seeks instead the social status he will gain from it’
Orel
Sebastian and Antonio are “the only overtly homosexual in Shakespeare”
Kott
With all its appearance of gaiety, it is a very bitter comedy about the Elizabethan dolce vita
2001 Posner Production
Antonio and Sebastian wake up in an unmade bed together
1884
Henry Irving made Malvolio tragic rather than comedic so his desruction became sad
1865 Olympic production
Kate Terry played Viola and Sebastian
Hogdon
On the early modern stage, clothed made the man - and woman
Hogdon
‘picking up the sword confirms Cesario’s manhood, but her inability to use it ‘proves’ her femininity”
Batkin
Carnivalesque “they live in it; an everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people”
Carol Thomas Needy
Malvolio serves as a scapegoat who is punished for the flaws others share
Lewis
for both Orsino and Olivia self-deception serves as an avoidance of the real world and of real emotion.
Lewis
all the characters are engaged either in deceiving themselves or in deliberately or accidentally deceiving others
Wanamaker
viola is the catalyst of the play
Barber
“The energy usually occupied in maintaining inhibition is freed for celebration”
Christopher Luscombe 2017
twins are washed up in Victorian England from colonial India - ideas of race/caste/status emphasised by Malvolio sings
Kiernan Ryan
“The raucous conduct of the tipsy triumvirate violates the fundamental principles on which the decorum of everyday social life depends
