Characters From Shakesperes Twelth Night Essay Research

Fictional characters From Shakesperes Twelth Night Essay, Research Paper

Viola

Viola is one of Shakespeare & # 8217 ; s most charming and admirable heroines, and surely the most sympathetic of the major & # 8220 ; serious & # 8221 ; characters ( Orsino, Olivia, and herself ) in Twelfth Night. Though she & # 8217 ; s forced to mask herself as a page, for safety & # 8217 ; s interest, she & # 8217 ; s seemingly every bit well-born as Olivia is & # 8211 ; the girl of Sebastian of Messaline, a highly-placed Lord in his ain land. She & # 8217 ; s besides really attractive physically & # 8211 ; which can be inferred from the fact that even in male garb she & # 8217 ; s graceful plenty for Orsino to notice on her good expressions.

But possibly the most attractive facet of Viola & # 8211 ; to a modern audience, at least & # 8211 ; is her vigorous, amiable, unpretentious personality. Unlike Olivia, whose opposite number and opposite she is, she makes no melodramatic programs to mourn her brother & # 8217 ; s evident decease with excessive gestures. Alternatively, her heartache is quiet, deep, sincere & # 8211 ; and tinged with hope that Sebastian may still be alive. Furthermore, happening herself in a hard, possibly compromising place in a unusual state, she spends small clip deploring the abrasiveness of her destiny, but instantly sets to work with characteristic practical energy to calculate out a manner to better her state of affairs. When she enters Orsino & # 8217 ; s service, her endowment, humor, and good expressions rapidly captivate him, merely as, shortly after, when she & # 8217 ; s sent to & # 8220 ; woo & # 8221 ; Olivia, these qualities besides entrance the Countess. Indeed, in about every scene in which she appears & # 8211 ; whether she & # 8217 ; s joking with Feste, softly philosophising with Orsino, or gracefully flattering Olivia-Viola & # 8217 ; s courtly skill and earthy appeal are clearly apparent. Most of all, when she herself falls profoundly, and seemingly hopelessly, in love with Orsino, though she feels really strongly the defeat and hurting of her place ( disguised as a male child, but absolutely able to love like a adult female ) her justifiable melancholy is neither excessive, like Olivia & # 8217 ; s, nor narcissistic, like Orsino & # 8217 ; s. She does her best at all times to hide it, and we can & # 8217 ; t assist esteeming her for her finding to sit & # 8220 ; like Patience on a memorial, & # 8221 ; ever seting the best face on things and ever, whenever possible, & # 8220 ; smiling at grief. & # 8221 ;

Olivia

Though fundamentally a baronial, generous, passionate adult female, Olivia has many more mistakes than Viola has. Indeed, Shakespeare likely meant us to see the two as emotional antonyms, or at least as opposite numbers of each other, Thus Olivia & # 8217 ; s name may be considered an anagram ( rearrangement ) of Viola & # 8217 ; s, since it contains all the same letters ( with an excess I ) , and Olivia & # 8217 ; s jobs ( the loss of a brother, an unwanted wooing, and unanswered love ) are besides the same as Viola & # 8217 ; s. But the Illyrian lady & # 8217 ; s reaction to these troubles is really different from the energetic immature & # 8220 ; page & # 8217 ; s. & # 8221 ; Olivia seems to hold been much more spoilt than Viola, and as Viola herself points out, she is Vtoo proud, & # 8221 ; every bit good as excessively excessive by nature. She melodramatically resolves to mourn her brother & # 8217 ; s decease for seven old ages & # 8211 ; and in that infinite of clip, ne’er to go forth the house.

Viola, on the other manus, reacts more calmly and sanely, though no less sorrowfully, to the possibility that Sebastian may hold been killed. She in cold blood, and instead unsympathetically rejects Orsino & # 8217 ; s proposals of matrimony, but Viola is a little more compassionate in her reaction to Olivia & # 8217 ; s ain avouchments of love. Finally, she falls passionately and wholeheartedly in love with & # 8220 ; Cesario, & # 8221 ; and is unable to keep herself from impetuously declaring her feelings for the & # 8220 ; youth & # 8221 ; about at the first chance. ( Viola, in contrast, comes near to squealing her love for Orsino, but her Fe self-denial doesn & # 8217 ; t weaken in the terminal. )

Despite all her mistakes, nevertheless, Olivia has many delivering good qualities. She & # 8217 ; s undeniably beautiful and intelligent. More of import, she & # 8217 ; s generous and wise in the regulation of her family, as her fundamentally sort intervention of both the drunken Toby and the & # 8220 ; mad & # 8221 ; Malvolio attests. Furthermore, though she herself is basically serious & # 8211 ; and throughout Twelfth Night, melancholy & # 8211 ; she has a sense of wit and can appreciate true humor wherever she finds it, whether in the page & # 8220 ; Cesario, & # 8221 ; or in Feste, the fool. In amount, she & # 8217 ; s a existent blue blood: courtly and baronial in her bearing ; a small self-involved, spoilt and proud, because of the importance of her place ; but beneath a haughty exterior & # 8220 ; generous, innocent and of free disposition. & # 8221 ;

Mares

Olivia & # 8217 ; s clever, witty servingwoman & # 8211 ; truly a sort of lady-in-waiting & # 8211 ; is supposed to be exceptionally little, and as speedy and crisp infher motions as in her thoughts. We & # 8217 ; rhenium informed about her tallness and her daintiness by a figure of mentions. For case, Sir Toby describes her as & # 8220 ; the youngest Wren of nine, & # 8221 ; and as a & # 8220 ; small villain. & # 8221 ; In another topographic point, he ironically calls her & # 8220 ; Penthesilea & # 8221 ; ( the Queen of the Amazons, and Viola, with the same dry purpose, calls her & # 8220 ; giant. & # 8221 ;

But besides being little and astute, Maria is fun-loving and frolicsome, about every bit ready as Sir Toby ( on whom she has matrimonial designs ) to do merry, though with much more of a respect for the propernesss. Indeed, throughout the drama she & # 8217 ; s torn between her trueness to Olivia and her sense of the self-respect of the family ( the disapproving & # 8220 ; By my engagement, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier O & # 8217 ; darks! & # 8221 ; is her first line in the drama ) and her fancy for Toby and desire to delight him. The latter desire-probably fortified by a acute involvement in the reasonably knight & # 8217 ; s money and societal position-wins out, and Maria invents the anti-Malvolio secret plan, the main amusing action of the drama, at least in portion to do Toby happy. Of class, the fantastic athletics of & # 8220 ; fooling & # 8221 ; Malvolio ( for whom she & # 8217 ; s conceived an implacable disfavor ) makes Maria herself happy excessively, and in the terminal, holding made her pick between Olivia and Toby, she gets her reward-Olivia & # 8217 ; s really mild displeasure, and Toby & # 8217 ; s manus in matrimony.

Orsino

Orsino is the lone & # 8220 ; serious & # 8221 ; male character whom we get to cognize at all good. The others & # 8211 ; Sebastian, Antonio, the Sea Captain, etc. & # 8211 ; are all instead shadowy. But Orsino is a really existent and realistic individual, anything but the handsome, idealized sovereign of a fairytale land. He is fine-looking, of class, and as Olivia says & # 8220 ; I suppose him virtuous, know him baronial, / Of great estate, of fresh and unstained young person ; / In voices & # 8211 ; [ languages ] good divulged [ knowing ] , free, learned, and valiant ; And in dimension and the form of nature, / A gracious person. & # 8221 ; It is, in fact, these qualities which make it possible for Viola to fall in love with the Duke so rapidly and so irrevocably.

Yet even so, they aren & # 8217 ; t the most of import portion of his personality, forF Orsino, more than being a brave adult male or a handsome or a erudite adult male, is a immature, narcissistic and instead affected adult male. In this sense, he & # 8217 ; s much like Olivia: merely as she nurses her & # 8220 ; heartache & # 8221 ; for her brother, he nurses his infatuation for her. This love of his, of class, is no more true love, like Viola & # 8217 ; s than Romeo & # 8217 ; s & # 8220 ; love & # 8221 ; for Rosalind was true love. Romeo had to run into Juliet to experience the existent thing, and so Orsino is fated non to cognize the significance of love until he truly meets his page, & # 8220 ; Cesario, & # 8221 ; as Viola, her existent ego. In the interim, nevertheless, like all idle, excessive, passionate immature work forces, he spends much clip suspiring verbosely for an unachievable & # 8220 ; beloved, & # 8221 ; and once more, like Olivia, he & # 8217 ; s consumed with the kind of melancholy that was stylish among aristrocrats in Shakespeare & # 8217 ; s twenty-four hours.

Indeed, possibly even more than Olivia, Orsino is a lampoon of an blue blood, with his languid hungering for music, his notional philosophizing on the nature of love, and even his spiteful, despotic willingness to & # 8220 ; sacrifice the lamb that I do love ( & # 8221 ; Cesario & # 8221 ; ) to avenge himself on Olivia for rejecting him. All this, like Olivia & # 8217 ; s behaviour, is meant to contrast with Viola & # 8217 ; s true aristocracy, level-headedness and self-restraint. But at least in the terminal Orsino, once more like Olivia, recovers a sort of balance, and in his traffics with Malvolio and his speedy credence of Viola as a bride ( he & # 8217 ; vitamin D loved her all along, anyhow, in her pretense of a page ) he shows a basic strain of good will and good sense.

Sebastian

Sebastian is basically a male version of Viola, with all the differences in their personalities stemming from the difference in their sex. For one thing, of class, he & # 8217 ; s her twin, and so he & # 8217 ; s every spot as physically attractive as she is-which can be seen non merely from the fact that Olivia loves him every bit passionately as she does & # 8220 ; Cesario & # 8221 ; ( believing, in fact, that he is & # 8220 ; Cesario & # 8221 ; ) but besides from the remarks Antonio makes about his good expressions. Second, and possibly even more of import, he & # 8217 ; s merely as charming, with every bit much personal magnetic attraction, as Viola, which can besides be seen from his relationship with Antonio. Further, he & # 8217 ; s every bit loyal as she is ( both to Antonio and to Olivia, every bit good as, of course, to Viola herself ) , and every bit practical, energetic and ebullient, which can be seen from his enthusiastic desire to & # 8220 ; make & # 8221 ; the town every bit shortly as he arrives in Illyria. As for the differences between sister and brother: Sebastian is, of class, much fiercer and more aggressive-e.g. in his affaire d’honneur with Andrew and Toby. And, of course, he & # 8217 ; s able to react with entirely masculine delectation ( as Viola surely could non ) to the beautiful Olivia & # 8217 ; s romantic progresss. In short, though Sebastian is truly a minor character, we learn a good trade about him in the class of the drama, partially through his ain actions and partially from the manner in which his personality reflects Viola & # 8217 ; s.

Antonio

Loyal, generous, unprompted and brave are the four adjectives which best describe Sebastian & # 8217 ; s savior, the charitable, wrangling sea-captain Antonio. He & # 8217 ; s loyal throughout to his immature friend, Sebastian, and generous, excessively, in his intervention of the boy-lending him his bag when he thinks he may be in demand, besides seemingly holding maintained the young person at his ain disbursal for several months after delivering him from drowni

nanogram. His impulsiveness shows both in the quick and deep fondness he conceives for the male child, and in his loyally following Sebastian to Illyria, even against the immature man’s wants. His bravery, of class, is clear from the fact that he’d brave such hostile district to fall in his friend, every bit good as from his ready intercession in the affaire d’honneur between Viola and Andrew. Finally, his bravery may be inferred from his outstanding efforts in the sea-fight against Illyria, even though Orsino accuses him ( whether justly or wrongly we don’t know ) of holding been a “pirate” and a “saltwater stealer, ” on that juncture. In any instance, we can be certain that because of his kindness to Sebastian – and, even more, because of his ( unwitting ) generousness to Orsino’s hereafter “Queen, ” he’ll be rapidly plenty forgiven for whatever his past evildoings may hold been.

Feste

Feste has been called Shakespeare & # 8217 ; s & # 8220 ; most musical & # 8221 ; sap. Less witty than Standard in As You Like It and less profound, possibly, than the sap in King Lear, he & # 8217 ; s however a extremely complete jester-clever, polished and perceptive plenty for Viola to note of him that & # 8220 ; This chap is wise plenty to play the sap, / And to make that well, craves a sort of wit./ He must detect their tempers on whom he jests, / The quality of individuals, and the time. & # 8221 ; Shakespeare is thought to hold written the portion for Robert Armin, a celebrated comic of the twenty-four hours who & # 8217 ; d late joined the dramatist & # 8217 ; s moving company. Armin was more musical and, in certain respects, more serious than the fool he succeeded, and therefore the musical quality of Feste & # 8217 ; s portion.

Still, Feste & # 8217 ; s amusing achievements are legion excessively. His crabbed lampoons of larning do even the melancholy Olivia laugh, and his endowment for apery ( in the & # 8220 ; Sir Topas & # 8221 ; scene ) convulses Maria and Toby, and wholly deceives Malvolio. But besides being musical, astute and amusing, Feste is shown to hold a existent personality of his ain. His hate for Malvolio, conceived when the steward insults him in act 1, scene 5, motivates much of the amusing subplot, and even by the terminal of the drama he hasn & # 8217 ; t rather rid himself of the desire for revenge-as his last twit words to Malvolio reveal. Indeed, throughout the drama, like any good sap, Feste is all things to all work forces, besides looking to be, literally, everywhere-singing vocals for the Duke, heartening up Olivia when she & # 8217 ; s sad, plotting with Toby and his friends, quibbling with Malvolio, and even disinterestedly noticing to the audience, in his concluding vocal, on the absurdity of it all. Because of this, he acts as a perfect nexus between the serious characters, Orsino, Olivia and Viola, for whom he performs, and the amusing characters, Toby, Andrew and Maria, with whom he carouses.

Sir Toby Belch

Sir Toby Belch, Olivia & # 8217 ; s exuberant relation ( truly her uncle, though he & # 8217 ; s frequently called & # 8220 ; cousin & # 8221 ; in the general manner of the twenty-four hours ) is the main amusing character and surely the main amusing plotter in Twelfth Night. The Elizabethan Twelfth Night jubilation, which corresponded to the banquet of the Epiphany, coming 12s yearss after Christmas, was frequently organized and dominated by a reasonably individual called the Lord of Misrule, who was in charge of the plaies and buffooneries that were so popular at this clip of twelvemonth. Many modern critics have rather of course seen in Sir Toby Shakespeare & # 8217 ; s incarnation, in a drama written expressly for the Twelfth Night celebrations, of this same Lord of Misrule. Certainly Toby fits all the demands of the portion precisely. Hard-drinking, healthy, strong-minded, gay and fond of every sort of merrymaking-plots, wordplaies and bash every bit good as vino, adult females and song-he & # 8217 ; s equalled among Shakespeare & # 8217 ; s ain creative activities merely by Sir John Falstaff, that likewise reasonably loose-liver who was so popular in the Henry IV plays that Shakespeare wrote another whole drama ( The Merry Wives of Windsor ) merely for him. Possibly, so, the dramatist was seeking one time once more to recapture his success with Falstaff in & # 8220 ; Twelfth Night & # 8217 ; s Lord of Misrule. In any instance, Toby & # 8217 ; s jokes are ever a hit with audiences, though an Elizabethan audience likely appreciated them even more than we do today.

Of class, Toby has many mistakes, excessively. For one thing, his intervention of hapless Sir Andrew Aguecheek is notably unscrupulous: he keeps the foolish knight about chiefly to hold the usage of his money, and secondarily to badger and & # 8220 ; gull & # 8221 ; him ( as in the first scene with Maria, or, more, in the affaire d’honneur episode. ) Further, he is doubtless a & # 8220 ; sot & # 8221 ; ( rummy ) and a noisy, instead loutish person. He does, as Malvolio accuses him of making, & # 8220 ; do an alehouse & # 8221 ; of Olivia & # 8217 ; s house, maintaining late hours and go againsting the peace of the constitution with his & # 8220 ; tinker & # 8217 ; s gimmicks & # 8221 ; and imbibing vocals bawled at the top of his lungs at three in the forenoon. His feelings for Maria, excessively, are non really romantic: he & # 8217 ; s more pleased by her inventiveness as a amusing colleague than by any feminine attractive forces she may hold. Still, he & # 8217 ; s a cheerful plenty & # 8211 ; and surely an diverting enough-old alcoholic, rather suited, with his high liquors and his conspirative energy, to move as Twelfth Night & # 8217 ; s Lord of Misrule. And as Mark Van Doren has pointed out, & # 8220 ; old families harbor such old work forces. They are nuisances to be endured because they are symbols of lastingness, marks of the household & # 8217 ; s great age. & # 8221 ; The blue Olivia would no more turn her rambunctious uncle out, as Malvolio threatens she would, than she & # 8217 ; d lose the efficient steward himself.

Sir Andrew Aguecheek

Sir Andrew is possibly the easiest character in Twelfth Night to understand, and the one, so, who is most a imitation and least an individualised character. Quite merely, he is a fool-not a & # 8220 ; sap & # 8221 ; in the sense of fool, like Feste, but a sap in the modern sense of an imbecile. He & # 8217 ; s attached himself to Sir Toby for assorted reasons-mainly because he believes in Toby & # 8217 ; s unscrupulous encouragement of his hopeless wooing of Olivia. But farther, he rather moderately admires Toby & # 8217 ; s high liquors and noisy courage-qualities which he himself decidedly lacks. For besides being stupid, Sir Andrew is a coward: in the affaire d’honneur scene he behaves with every spot as much cowardliness as the of course shrinkage, feminine Viola, despite all his boasted preparation as a knight. Merely when he realizes that & # 8220 ; Cesario & # 8221 ; is a coward excessively, does he get down to lose some of his fright. Finally, Andrew is an egotist-as much of an egoist, as much deluded by amour propre and amour propre, as those other noteworthy egoists, Malvolio and Orsino. It is his self-importance which lets Toby convince him that Olivia will hold him ; his amour propre which is piqued with green-eyed monster at Viola & # 8217 ; s courtly skill ; and his shoal amour propre which enables him to compose his cockamamie, puffed-up challenge to & # 8220 ; Cesario. & # 8221 ; In short, as Toby at last viciously tells him, he is & # 8220 ; an ass-head, and a cockscomb, and a rogue ; a thin-faced rogue, a gull. & # 8221 ;

Malvolio

As Maria notes reasonably early in the drama, Malvolio, Olivia & # 8217 ; s in cold blood efficient steward, is a & # 8220 ; sort of Puritan. & # 8221 ; Indeed, like the other amusing characters, he seems to be instead more closely based on certain Elizabethan societal types than any of the serious characters are. Some modern bookmans have even conjectured that he was meant as a lampoon of Queen Elizabeth & # 8217 ; s main Comptroller ( steward ) , Sir William Knollys. At any rate, whatever the instance may be, Malvolio & # 8217 ; s personality is of such ruling importance to Twelfth Night that King James I is said to hold renamed the drama Malvolio.

Surely Malvolio has many of the features of the Puritans, those representatives of the lifting middle-class who were so hateful to blue revelers like Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, so looked-down-upon by true blue bloods like Olivia, and so disliked by unworried creative persons like Feste, or even Shakespeare himself. But despite his primness and his holier-than-thou ailments about Sir Toby & # 8217 ; s rambunctious behaviour, Malvolio is non strictly a Puritan at wholly. As Maria, once more, notes, he & # 8217 ; s fundamentally an & # 8220 ; fondness & # 8217 ; d [ affected ] buttocks & # 8221 ; & # 8211 ; and Olivia, excessively, sees that he is & # 8220 ; sick of [ with ] self-love. & # 8221 ; This narcissistic amour propre, every bit good as his vain aspiration, makes him really willing to project off his terrible, Puritannical ways at the slightest intimation that more strident behaviour might give him a good opportunity to go Olivia & # 8217 ; s lover. Even before he receives the & # 8220 ; anon. & # 8221 ; missive Maria workss, Malvolio is deep in luxuriously un-Puritanical reveries of being married to his kept woman ; after he finds the missive, of class, he goes off the deep terminal wholly, insanely cross-gartering his legs, smiling and snoging his manus at the amazed Olivia, in the & # 8220 ; mad & # 8221 ; belief that he might be a suited suer for her. Indeed, in this sense Malvolio & # 8217 ; s & # 8220 ; madness & # 8221 ; is no joke-for such excessive self-importance, even more than his earlier, Puritanical ostentation, is genuinely a signifier of lunacy.

Fabian

We learn small about Fabian in Twelfth Night, beyond the fact that he & # 8217 ; s a quick-witted, good-natured retainer, every bit fond as Toby and Maria of a good gag but instead more reticent in his chase of such pleasances. He & # 8217 ; s introduced into the action instead tardily, and for the most portion he remarks on the secret plans which others have set in gesture, instead than straight take parting. He does seek to hush Toby & # 8217 ; s and Andrew & # 8217 ; s out-of-bounds behaviour in the garden scene, nevertheless, and he evidently enjoys torturing hapless & # 8220 ; Cesario & # 8221 ; in the duel scene. In the terminal, he courageously and responsibly takes much of the incrimination for the Malvolio secret plan onto himself-yet we can be certain that Olivia, cognizing Toby & # 8217 ; s inclinations as a schemer, will non fault the fundamentally guiltless Fabian excessively harshly at all.

Minor Fictional characters

All we know of the Sea Captain who rescued Viola is that he was sort and friendly, presenting the miss as a page to Orsino, and maintaining both her secret and her apparels for the length of her stay at tribunal as & # 8220 ; Cesario. & # 8221 ; As for Orsino & # 8217 ; s gentlemen, Curio and Valentine, they are the usual courtly retainers, elegant, polite and of all time dying for their swayer & # 8217 ; s best advantage in the universe, every bit good as for the slightest Markss of personal favour from him to themselves.