Didacticism Twelfth Night

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For hundreds of years’ scholars have debated the importance and the nature of the hidden meanings and subplots of the work of William Shakespeare. These debates happen through long in depth essays about specific aspects of individual plays. They can be hard to read and even harder to finish, but for some reason when I looked at the essays; Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night; and The Serious Comedy of Twelfth Night: Dark Didacticism in Illyria, by Nancy Lindheim and Lisa Marciano respectively, I knew I had to write my own short essay explaining my belief that Twelfth Night is not serious at all, and that Shakespeare’s use of sexuality and social behavior in Twelfth Night is more simplistic than generations of scholars would suggest.…show more content…
This play is set around the 16th century, a time when it was still common for duals to take place or brawls to happen. Plagues were not unheard of and the average life span of a human being was much less than it is today, meaning that people were much less sensitive to it. The oversight of not figuring out that death was not as serious a subject back then as it is now discredits Marciano’s theory of Twelfth Night being serious (because death is a common theme) rather…show more content…
Specifically, she writes about how the twins; Cesario and Sebastian would have been played by boys (Lindheim 683). This meant that it would be less difficult for the audience to forget that Cesario was a male actor playing a female who was dressed as a male. Lindheim mentions that Cesario is only masculine in how he dresses and talks, Sebastian is only feminine in that he looks like Cesario. I completely agree with this and the silliness of it all further supports my idea that Twelfth Night is a slapstick comedy not a serious

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