Oct. 23 Blog 9: Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night is an interesting play written by Shakespeare. It reminds me a lot about his play As You Like It. I thought Twelfth Night was so similar to As You Like it, I wondered why Shakespeare had written two plays so similar but also so different. In As You Like It, I thought it was funny how Rosalind dressed up as Ganymede, I thought it was also funny how Viola dressed up as Cesario. They both disguise themselves as men for different reasons though. Both women while they are in disguise, have other women fall in love with them. In As You Like It, Phoebe fell for Ganymede while in Twelfth Night, Olivia fell for Cesario. We can also see a similarity here because Phoebe already has someone who wants to be with her and so does Olivia and by the end Phoebe does marry the guy, Corin, who loves her but we see that Olivia does not; she marries Viola’s brother. This was a twist compared to As You Like It.

There are many other similarities between As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Olivia confesses her love for Cesario while Phoebe in As You Like It confesses her love for Ganymede. We see fools in both plays, but the fool in this play, Twelfth Night, is not funny. He is actually rude and mean. He helps Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew when they put Malvolio in a room and torture him. Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew are cruel to Malvolio and as in As You Like It, Oliver was cruel to his brother trying to kill him but in the end does not because he has an epiphany, while with the three who are mean to Malvolio leaves him in that room until the end when he is remembered and let out.

One thing that I did find very interesting was the twins in Twelfth Night, Sebastian and Viola. I think its interesting because I have never read any of Shakespeare’s plays that have two people who look alike in them. Also, when twins are in a play or any other story, like how Viola disguises herself as Cesario, once her brother comes along, they both get mistaken for the other person. I believe this is why Shakespeare put twins in this play so they would get mistaken and make the play more interesting with two people who look alike. Otherwise, if Viola did not have a twin, she would have had to tell her secret sooner or later and that would have caused more harm probably to her because Olivia had fallen in love with Cesario. With Olivia being a countess, she could have punished Viola for having deceived her.