How Does Shakespeare Present Human Foibles In Twelfth Night
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Task Title – Explore how Shakespeare demonstrates human foibles through the themes of love and deception.
Both playwrights, Shakespeare and Wilde, explore the theme of love in their plays. They show us the ridiculous things that people do for love. Love is also a good theme to write about as it reveals human weaknesses and foibles.
Twelfth Night or What you Will, was written in the 1600s’ by William Shakespeare, whereas The Importance of Being Earnest was written in the 1890’s by Oscar Wilde. The title Twelfth Night suggests that there will be ticks and jokes as the twelfth night of Christmas was full of jokes and tricks that would be led by ‘The Lord of Mis-rule’, this role could be associated with Maria as she organised the trick on Malvolio.…show more content… Oscar Wilde uses irony as the characters are disguised. ‘This ghastly state is what you call Bunburying, I suppose?’ This quote is when Jack confronts Algernon about his ‘Bunburying’ – disguised as Jack brother Ernest.
Stage directions are used to create physical comedy in Twelfth Night. ‘[Belch]’, ‘[Sir Andrew and Viola put up their swords]’ this is funny to the audience as neither of them can fight.
The jokes that are in the plays wouldn’t be funny today as language as changed however at the time that the plays were written the jokes would have been funny.
Both plays use sub-plots. The sub-plots are intertwined to create confusion between the characters. These sub-plots work well because there are limited scenes / acts – Twelfth Night has 5 acts and the Importance of Being Earnest has 3 acts.
Malvolio is fooled during Twelfth Night by Maria, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Feste and Fabian. During this scene (Act 2 Scene 5) Shakespeare shows Malvolio’s weaknesses. Malvolio is shown to be gullible because of his arrogance. ‘M.O.A.I’ Because Malvolio is full of self-love he believes that this is him because the letters that appear in his name. ‘M - Malvolio – M’ this implies that Malvolio has convinced himself, on the basis of very thin evidence that the poem / letter shows that Olivia loves him. Shakespeare also shows Malvolio’s weakness in the fact that he is in love with Olivia before the letter. This is shown when the scene starts and Malvolio is talking to himself in the garden, imagining his