University of Baghdad

College of Arts

Department of English

Twelfth Night
PLAY

WRITTEN BY:

Ali Kadum Azez

2 nd stage
Class A
Evening study

Supervised by

Asst. Prof. Dr .Ammar Shamil Kadhim

2019-2020
 Twelfth Night: As a Romantic Comedy

Introduction:
William Shakespeare is a great playwright.Twelfth Night is one of the best romantic
comedies by him. It can be compared with the Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about
Nothing and As you Like It. It deals with the light and trivial incidents of life. It combines
romantic elements with comic elements. It has a happy ending. Happiness through
Marriages: Twelfth Night possesses certain features which are common to all romantic
comedies of Shakespeare. It is based on love leading to marriage. Almost all the
characters are the patients of the same disease - love. The fifth act brings them all
happiness through marriage. The Duke gets Viola, Olivia gets Sebastian and Sir Toby
feels content with Maria. The entire fifth act echoes with the wedding bells and offers a
happy ending.

Female Dominance: In Shakespearean romantic comedies female characters play

important role. This predominance gives the play an air of romance. In this play the entire
story revolves round the two female characters named Viola and Olivia. Even the chief
male characters find their significance due to them. Like Rosalind and Celia, Viola and
Olivia dominate the whole plot.

Mirth and Laughter:

The atmosphere of the Twelfth Night is full of mirth and laughter. From the beginning to
the end the play presents a beautiful love story. When the play opens we find a Duke who
is panting for Olivia. Viola in the guise of a boy gets a job with the Duke. She has fallen
in love with him, though she keeps it a secret. Since the Duke has a great love for Olivia,
he sends Viola to her to plead for him. Viola is good looking and charming. She wins the
heart of Olivia. This triangular love makes this play interesting and romantic.

Twelfth Night is a typical Shakespearean romantic comedy written about the time
as Julies Ceaser, perhaps at the same time. Shakespeare borrowed this romantic comedy
form Bandello’s The History of Apolonius and Silla. Music and love, drinking and
jollity, practical jokes and a riot of laughter are also a part of the play. It is so romantic
that not one, not two characters are in love but the whole atmosphere is full of love. The
Duke is love sick and is in love with Olivia. Viola falls in love with the Duke and she
inwardly wanted to marry him; both, Malvolio and Sir Andrew are in love with Olivia
and wanted to marry her; whereas Olivia is in love with Cesario--- disguise in Viola,
thinking him to be a man---- but she mistakes Sebastian for Cesario and gets hurriedly
married to him. We are also told that sir Toby is married to Maria.

The setting of the play is romantic, that is, it is remote and unfamiliar. It exists only in the
imagination of the dramatist. The scene of action in Twelfth Night is alleria, a country
having no reality. Nicoll remarks that thought the action is full of imagination yet it is
related to the real life. It is romantic in the sense that all the characters have no other
business, but of making love; this aspect of Shakespearean comedy is fully explained by
this play, which opens and ends upon a note of love.

The play opens with the Duke among his lords and musicians, and full of love for Olivia
who refuses to see him. It is enough to make us understand that drama is to be one of
those in which love is the prank player of the world. The Duke is like Sir Philip Sidney
and one of those Elizabethans. His youth is “Fresh and stainless, free, learned and
valiant”. He is also a lover of music, and his love calls for him music to feed his
passion: “If music be the food of love, play on”. The Duke loves Olivia not for her money
but because she attracts “his soul”.

Olivia, on the other hand, swears by the roses of spring, by her honour and by everything
that she loves Cesario--Viola in disguise. However, he gives no encouragement to her but
she reflects her love for him: “Well, come again tomorrow, fare the well A fiend like thee
might bear my soul to hell”. And another heroine, Viola, falls in love with the Duke at
first sight and she inwardly decides to marry him; though she is ready to woo Olivia to
please his master, but she says: “Whoever I woo, myself will be his wife”. Hence, it is
easy for the Duke, in the end, to love Viola whom he knew through and through in long
championship.

In all the imagination the Duke is like Romeo in love with Rosaline, before he met Juliet.
Like Romeo, he seeks solitude “I myself am best when least in company”. These words
remind us of Paradise Lost where Adam observes: “sometimes solitude is the best
society”.

The love affairs are not only a part of main-plot; they are seen very well in sub plot which
concerns with Malvolio, steward to Lady Olivia, one of the two heroines of the main plot.
He loves Olivia so Maria “a hawlk-eyed sparrow” thinks a claver plan against him with
the help of other characters of the play. She writes him to a letter suppose to have been
written by Olivia--- she can imitate the handwriting of Olivia. In this letter, it is written:
“If this falls into thy hands, revolve In my stars, I am above thee, but Be not
afraid of greatness, some are Born great, some achieve greatness,
And some have great thrust upon’em”
Malvolio on account of self love and self conceit believes that Olivia is in love with him
and becomes a living joke--a joke that lives in the memory of reader even after the book
is closed. The clown impersonating as Sir Topas, adds the difficulties to him.

The complication arises in Act V, when Olivia thinks Cesario to be her husband is called
by Sebastian--- Viola is sister to Sebastian and to whom Olivia gets marries in the end--
in the court before the Duke. In the court Viola is every moment on the edge of forgetting
that she is a man. She expresses her love for the Duke in every word. When Viola’s true
identity is disclosed the Duke accepts her as his wife. At the end he observes: “Here in
my hands; you shall form By this time be your master’ mistress”. Thus, in the end,
everyone and the heroine are united with each other happily, like Shakespeare’s another
play As You Like it.

In Shakespeare’s comedy, women always hold the front of the stage, as his earlier
comedies shows--like Rosalind in As You Like it and Portia in The Merchant of
Venice. Here in Twelfth Night, it is Viola who is the body and the soul of the play; and
the truth is that she is the both hero and the heroine of the play. Shakespeare’s comedy
is romantic that it does not follow the classical unities of time, place and action. Here only
the unities of time have been observed. The main object of Shakespearean comedy is to
present innocent pleasure and delight. The words of Charlton fully applicable to this
comedy: “Shakespearean comedy is not satiric, it is public; it is not conservative, it is
creative”.

One may add to it, Twelfth Night is one of the glorious footprints of “The Bard of Avon”
that had left behind on the sand of time and that the world never let willingly die. Way
the comedy moves from its brilliance to its excellence and turns “A thing of beauty is a
joy forever”.

Happy Ending:
The fifth and final act of the play shows the happy ending. In this act we find Sebastian,
the twin brother of Viola. He is very smart. His arrival solves the problem. All mysteries
are exposed and almost all the characters get their due share of cheerfulness. This happy
ending makes the play highly romantic.

Happy Blending of Fact and Fiction:

A happy blending of fact and fiction is a very important characteristic of the Twelfth
Night. The person and the places, the plot and the setting are all imaginary. They have
been given romantic touch by William Shakespeare. Some characters like Fest, Sir Toby,
Sir Andrew and Malvolio are humourous characters. They provoke laughter and create a
romantic atmosphere in the play.

Music and Song:

Music and song play important role in the comedies of William Shakespeare. They are
the keynote of the Twelfth Night. The whole body of the play is studded with songs. In
short, the song and music of the play provide this comedy an excellent romantic
atmosphere.

Conclusion:
To conclude, Twelfth Night is the purest and merriest comedy that Shakespeare wrote
ever. Dowden has rightly called this play ‘Joyous, refined and romantic.’
 References
1-https://www.englitmail.com/
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Satna,+Madhya+Pradesh,+Indi
a@24.6005075,80.83224280000002&z=10

2- http://literarism.blogspot.com/2011/03/twelfth-night-as-
romantic-comedy.html