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Role-reversals (nobility acting as servants and servants pretending to be nobility) and the crossing of usually strict social class distinctions were common activities during a Twelfth Night celebration.
Jul 31, 2015 · Named for the twelfth night after Christmas, the end of the Christmas season, Twelfth Night plays with love and power. The Countess Olivia, a woman with her own household, attracts Duke (or Count) Orsino. Two other would-be suitors are her pretentious steward,…
Read and download Twelfth Night for free. Learn about this Shakespeare play, find scene-by-scene summaries, and discover more Folger resources.
The protagonist of Twelfth Night. An aristocratic woman, she is tossed up on the coast of Illyria by a shipwreck at the beginning of the play and disguises herself as the pageboy, Cesario, to make her way. Throughout the play, Viola exhibits strength of character, quick wit, and resourcefulness. Although her disguise puts her in an impossible ...
Feste, Twelfth Night. Feste is a character in Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night. He is a jester, employed by Olivia, a wealthy lady of Illyria. His job is to make her laugh and his particular skills are singing and dancing. He also moonlights, going to the houses of other wealthy people to perform for them. Feste is a fairly central character.
Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play’s main focus. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various lovers find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain. Many of the characters seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims ...
Characters in Twelfth Night constantly disguise themselves or play parts in order to trick those around them. Some of the most notable examples of trickery and role-playing in Twelfth Night are: Viola disguising herself as the page-boy Cesario; Maria and Sir Toby playing their prank on Malvolio; and Feste dressing up as the scholar, Sir Topas.
