Viola/Cesario Flashcards
What are some traits of Viola?
- likeable
- main protagonist
- charming
- resourceful
- witty
- practical
- intelligent
Boundaries crossed by Viola?
- gender
- life and death
- geographical
- emotional
“What country, friends, is this?”
Act 1 Scene 2
- pragmatic
- resourceful
- resilient approach
“I’ll serve this duke”
Act 1 Scene 2
- declarative
- subverts gender expectations
- powerful, controls her fate
“What I am and what I would are as secret as maidenhead”
Act 1 Scene 5
- simile
- parallel phrasing
- admits to disguise
“Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness”
Act 2 Scene 2
- personification
- contemplating the unintended consequences of her disguise
- metaphor
- conflicted
- criticising her own idea
- questioning her morals
“And I, poor monster, fond as much on him”
Act 2 Scene 2
- pre modifier
- feels bad for herself
- claiming women’s hearts are easy to deceive
- loves Orsino as much as he loves Olivia
“O time, thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me to untie!”
Act 2 Scene 2
- metaphor
- exclamatory, heightened emotions
- tying knot is a reference to marriage, foreshadows Olivia’s unrequited love
- feels bound and restricted by disguise
- time is personified, distancing herself from the problem
- personal pronouns reflect how it is her conflict
“Where love is throned”
Act 2 Scene 4
- abstract noun
- metaphor
- love is a rich persons indulgence. love is the ruler
“I am almost sick for one”
Act 3 Scene 1
- sick for Orsino
- wishes she were a man to avoid desired relationship
“I am not what I am”
Act 3 Scene 1
- parallel phrasing
- oxymoron
- hinting to disguise
“I am no fighter”
Act 3 Scene 4
- minor sentence
- crosses gender boundary
- lack of will to fight is a feminine trait, alludes to her disguise
“Pray God defend me!”
Act 3 Scene 4
- calling for religious guidance
- desperate
- wants to escape the reality of the duel
“I am Viola, which to confirm i’ll bring you to a captain”
Act 5 Scene 1
- revealing identity
- declarative
“What else may hap to time I will commit. Only shape thou thy silence to my wit”
Act 1 Scene 2
- rhyming couplet, link back to Orsino
- deceiving, set on her intentions
“Yet, a barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife”
Act 1 Scene 4
- irony, wants to be who she’s distanced herself from
- exposing her internal thoughts to the audience
- unhappy because she likes Orsino
- creates sympathy within the audience because Viola’s love is unrequited AND unattainable
“In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms”
Act 2 Scene 2
- Implies women are frail, easily impressionable
- Opposite of empowering women.
- suggests women are at fault for their own frailty, which has been proven wrong by characters such as Olivia and Maria
“As it might be perhaps, were I a woman”
Act 2 Scene 4
- refers to her identity issues and disguise
- possible reference to transvestite comedies: were popular in Elizabethan era, which required young men to dress up and play as women in the theatre as they had high and softer voices because of the undesirable views on theatre for women
“Cesario is your servants name, fair princess”
Act 3 Scene 1
- referring to herself in the third person
- pre modifier
“Madam, I come to whet on your gentle thoughts”
Act 3 Scene 1
- pre modifier gentle reinforces stereotypical femininity. ironic
- connotes women as vulnerable
“I pity you.”
Act 3 Scene 1
- declarative
- verb
- feminine response, breaking disguise
- compassionate, can relate to how Olivia feels
- feels sorry because she cannot tell the truth
“For now I am your fool”
Act 3 Scene 1
- love makes characters foolish, changes their behaviour and actions
- noun
“I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth”
Act 3 Scene 1
- repetition
- ironic because she’s in disguise
