QUOTATION and COMMENT

TERM 2 – WEEK 8 – LESSON 2 – MONDAY – 30-01-23

Level M – Final Exam- Sample Practice Prompt

Shakespeare’s plays are driven by their characters and every choice that’s made about
words, structure and rhythm tells you something about the person, their relationships
or their mood in that moment. You should always try and ask yourself, like actors do,
why is the character saying what they are saying or doing what they are doing? What
is their motive?

PROMPT

In these extracts, how does viola use language to hide her true feelings from Orsino
and Olivia - in Twelfth Night.

Identify quotes/textual evidence (fill in Quotation + Comment Table) to address

prompt.
In your answer you should consider:
• the role of Viola and her actions –Ch and Dr. Ir
• Plot Structure ( EP,RA,CO,CL,FA,RES)
• Other applicable P.O.As – TH,FORS,SYMB.
• the writer’s choice of language – (Diction and / Figurative Language -
Imagery, M,Allu,Per…)

Twelfth Night is a play about love and nearly all the characters have romantic
feelings for someone. The ways in which they each express these feelings,
through the imagery they use and the structure of their language, reveals a lot
about them.

Cambridge O Level Literature in English 2010

 Character __________________VIOLA_________________

Viola’s disguise as a young man allows her to move between the two households of Orsino and Olivia
and to interact with every other character in the play. Her style of language changes according to the
situation she is in and who she is speaking to. She can be both witty and passionate in her speeches
and moves easily between prose and verse.

From her first scene with the Captain in Act 1 Scene 2 until the last scene of the play, no character
who meets Viola knows who she really is, but the audience know about her disguise from the start.
This gives Viola a special relationship with the audience.

Act: Scene Quotation This suggests…

Act 2,Scene 2 ‘My master loves her dearly, /
And I, poor monster, fond as
much on him, / And she,
mistaken, seems to dote on
me.’
The repetition of sounds in this sentence gives a sense of Viola
thinking through her situation. There is use of assonance with the key
words ‘master’, ‘monster’, ‘mistaken’ and it takes time to make the
repeated sound ‘m’. These three words can also be seen to sum up
Viola’s dilemma: Orsino has become the ‘master’ of her affections as
well as her boss, but she has become a ‘monster’ in wearing a
physical disguise but also in lying to Olivia, which has lead to Olivia
being ‘mistaken’ in how she feels.

Act 1,scene 4 I’ll do my best Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 4. Viola, disguised as a man, says this
To woo your lady. [Aside] Yet after Orsino asks her to make Olivia love him. But in her aside Viola
a barful strife! reveals she is actually in love with Orsino and so has to convince
Whoe’er I woo, myself would another woman to love the man she loves. This is the precarious
be his wife.’ situation she has put herself into by disguising herself.
(DECEPTION) Just before the beginning of the action in Twelfth Night, there is a storm at
sea. While we don’t witness this storm, the effects of it are felt throughout the
play. Storms in Shakespeare often symbolise the emotions at the heart
of the play. For example, if love is like a storm at sea, Shakespeare’s
characters feel tossed around upon the emotions that attend love:
happiness, anxiety, excitement, sadness, grief. The sincerest expression
of love in the entire play might be Viola’s, when as Cesario she reveals
that contrary to Orsino’s opinion, women do feel love, sincerely and deeply.
She reveals her own affections for Orsino as a woman in love, although
disguised as a boy, pretending she is referring to her father’s daughter
who

Clothes are powerful in Twelfth Night. (SYMB) and implications to

several THEMES.
They can symbolize changes in gender—Viola puts on male clothes
to be taken for a male— as well as class distinctions. Clothing is used

Cambridge O Level Literature in English 2010

Act: Scene Quotation
Act 2,scene 4 – “Too well what love women to
lines 98-102 men may owe. In faith, they
are as true of heart as we. My
father had a daughter loved a
man. As it might be, perhaps,
were I a woman, I should your
lordship.”
(DECEPTION)
Act 2,scene 4, never told her love,
But let concealment like a worm
i’th’bud
Feed on her damask cheek. She
pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow
melancholy
She sat like patience on a
monument,
Smiling at grief.
This suggests…
as an instrument to mislead others. It has the power to deceive
people into believing an alternative reality. Indeed, Orsino is so
attached to the unreal Cesario, he chooses to continue calling Viola
“Cesario” even though Orsino is now aware that Cesario is really
Viola.
POA – Dramatic Irony.
In the character of Viola, this true spirit of love is most clearly and
effectively figured, registered and expressed.
In the character of Viola, this true spirit of love is most clearly and
effectively figured, registered and expressed. The multiple layers of
concealment of ‘character’ in the modern sense of the true essence of
an individual, beneath ‘character’ in the older sense of an outward
inscription (clothing and behavior that constitute a disguise or
semblance)is sufficiently expressed in her characters depiction to the
reader
Here Viola suggests that love is like a canker or
worm that feeds on a fresh flower, and potentially
destroys its youthful bloom. The woman who suffers
in silence is like a statue who sits patiently for
eternity, and whose feelings never falter or change.
The play’s preoccupation with love also concerns
love between friends – Aguecheek and Sir Toby
Belch, for example; love between a servant and
master; love between a niece and an uncle; and love
between brother and sister. Thus, Twelfth Night is a
play that all of us can relate to in some way. Each
storyline might bear some resemblance to an
experience we have had or are about to have. In
many ways, when we begin to explore this play, we
realise that we are exploring our own lives and the
feelings we have about love, friendship, loss,
identity, and even the mixed emotions we experience
at the end of a joyous occasion, like the Christmas
revels or a live performance in the Globe Theatre.
Cambridge O Level Literature in English 2010
Act: Scene Quotation This suggests…

Act 3,Scene 1 – I have one heart, one
line 142-147
bosom, and one truth, /
And that no woman
has, nor never none /
Shall mistress be of it,
save I alone.
In response to Olivia's declaration of love, Viola (in
disguise as Cesario) vows "no woman" will have
control of her (Viola's) heart "save I alone." She has, in
effect, told Olivia that she is a woman, but Olivia
doesn't understand this any more than Orsino does.

Act: Scene Quotation This suggests…

Act 2, Scene 2 ‘Disguise, I see thou art Viola has just become award of Olivia’s affection for her in her
a wickedness, Cesario role. This was something she had not bargained for by
donning a male disguise. She sees disguise now as something
Wherein the pregnant
deceitful and evil that causes damage.
enemy does much.’
(DECEPTION)

Act 2, Scene How easy is it for the How easy it is for handsome deceptive men to play havoc with
2. proper false women’s hearts, Viola muses in her soliloquy.
In women’s waxen
hearts to set their forms.’
(DECEPTION)

Act 3, Scene I am not what I am’ Cesario to Olivia, in a line that is full or revelation and
1. concealment. Olivia has no clue that Cesario, whom she has
(DECEPTION)
fallen in love with, is Viola in disguise.

Cambridge O Level Literature in English 2010

 SYMB – TITLE

Twelfth Night might seem an odd name for a play, but this title invokes the
ending of the Christmas revels on the 6th of January. The end of Christmas is
full of contradictory emotions: we are still indulging in cakes and ale, but are very
aware that the festive season will come to an end the following day, and might feel
a bit sad about having to go back to a life of routine and work. This atmosphere of
revelry or festivity and simultaneous melancholy or sadness characterises the tone
of Shakespeare’s play.

• Within such an atmosphere we can identify important questions raised by

Shakespeare, such as how we respond to or recover from loss.
• How stable is identity- are we who we think we are?
• Are our identities much more fluid or changeable than we imagine?
• How do we define love, and what is the best way to express it to the person we
adore?

SYMP – SHIPWRECK and FORS

• Also, given that the action of the play is brought about by a shipwreck, what is the
significance of the sea and imagery related to the sea?
• The sea was considered a dangerous force in Shakespeare’s time. It was
unpredictable, frightening and unknowable.
• The ocean’s destructive forces could wash away identities, prompt new beginnings
and frustrate human endeavour.
• The themes of love and loss are actually tied very closely to the image of a ship and
the people within it being tossed around on a volatile ocean.

CH and PL Struc,D,CO – Love Triangle,Th, Hist and Social Allu

• Central to Viola’s experience though is her increasing love for the Duke, who is in
love not only with the Countess Olivia, but also with the very idea of love itself.
Cambridge O Level Literature in English 2010
 • In Shakespeare’s time, the condition of lovesickness was often commented upon as
a kind of disease with very recognizable symptoms and external signs. For example,
a lovesick person might be slightly dishevelled in their appearance, or be extremely
melancholy (a pleasurable type of sadness); they might sigh, weep and groan aloud
frequently; they are temperamental, moody; they might suffer with insomnia or be
unable to eat; they would get pale and sometimes look a bit sickly.
• Love is experienced, according to the Elizabethan books on the subject, as a kind of
suffering. This play provides a glimpse into this pathology of love. The Duke seems to
be a good example of this kind of lover. Are we to take him seriously, roll our eyes at
his soppy poetry, or are we meant to find him funny? Shakespeare’s original
audiences might have responded to him in all of these ways. But the underlying
message is that love can make us fools, and the Duke’s expressions of love should
remind us how we can all be made fools by love. We witness throughout the play
how different people cope with or express their feelings of love. Orsino is a lovesick
melancholic who seems to relish in Oliva’s constant, painful rejection of him.
Complicatedly, Olivia falls in love with Cesario (Viola in disguise), but she is extremely
bold and direct towards Cesario with her feelings; while Viola bears her secret love
for Orsino patiently as a burden she must carry.

HOME-WORK – WRITE A FULL DRAFT OF ESSAY USING EVIDENCE IDENTIFIED IN

QUOTATION + COMMENT Table

( Due in Week 9) – Sunday , February 5th – during class.

Cambridge O Level Literature in English 2010