Twelfth Night Critics

Emma Smith on Malvolio’s Puritanism and anti-festivity

‘Malvolio represents the threat of social and cultural repression”

“His downfall is a triumph of festivity over puritanical control”

David Bevington on Malvolio’s downfall ( Self-love and ambition)

“ the gulling of Malvolio is an enforcement of Social order”

Stephen Greenblatt on Malvolio as a victim

“ the audience become complicit in the cruelty”

Leslie Hutson on Malvolio’s ending

“ subverts the typical comedic ending”

Anne Barton on Orsino and the Petrarchan lover

“ Shakespeare questions the truthfulness of Petrarchan convention by making it appear absurd”

Valerie traub on Orsino’s indulgence

“ his poetic language masks the absence of emotional truth”

Kiernan Ryan on Orsino’s melancholy love

“Orsino is in love with the idea of love”

Charles on homo-eroticism

“ Shakespeare challenges the symbolic hegemony of heterosexuality by producing representations of same-sex love”

Dolan on homo-eroticism

“ close attention to Cesario’s physical descriptions bring attention to the gender ambiguity and fluid erotic attractions, Olivia is attracted to a womannish man, and Orsino a mannish woman

Catherine Belsey on Orsino and Viola

“ a strcutual necessity rather than an emotional truth”

Stephen Greenblatt on the ending

“ the instability of the ending shows that identity is not resolved, merely re-labelled”

What does French say about the Shakespearean comedies

“ in Shakespeares comedies, strong women must ultimately submit to a male-defined role, usually through marriage “

What does Boose say about marriage in Shakespeare’s plays

It is used to “re-domesticate “ women

Elam on Viola + gender

“ biological identity is actually cancelled”

Charles on sex and gender

“ he interrogates the exclusionary nature of constricted categories of sex”

Boas on Viola + Gender

“ Viola exemplifies a combination of masculine and feminine traits which allow her to subvert heteronormative expectations”

Boas on identity

His presentation of gender presents a productive route for thinking about the elasticity of identity

Suzuki on sex and gender

“Olivia adopts the male gaze”

“ Shakespeare’s fullfillment of womens desires which acquiesces men to roles usually reserved for women, acknowledges the subject hood of women”

Suzuki on Toby et al, and Class and Status

they separate themselves as spectators from malvolio as an object of their entertainment, thereby attempting to affirm the impermeability of the boundary between classes

Emma smith - Feste

His role is to point out the truths other characters don’t want to hear

Kiernan Ryan - Feste

he embodies the transcendent perspective from which Twelfth night and other Shakespearean comedies are written

Marion Gibson - Malvolio

All three malvolio baiters seek to allay their anxieties about the pervasiveness of social mobility for they themselves exemplify such mobility

Ivo Kamps - malvolio

The repressed malvolio is perfectly sane by Illyrian standards, but the plot makes him perform his madness

Michael Dobson - comedy

The whole of twelfth night debates the very nature and morality of comedy

Miranda Fay - gender

Twelfth night depicts one’s gender as essentially a performed role

John Mullan - gender

The all male cast becomes a kind of artistic freedom, enabling the characters to switch their sexual identity

C. L Barber - gender

twelfth night inverts sexual and gender roles to ultimately re-establish and confirm normal relations

German Greer - gender

“ the inconstancy of men and the solidity and truth of women”

Michael Dobson - conflict / social class

With its dramatisation of the antogism between hedonistic, alcoholic and gluttonous sir Toby belch, and the puritanical steward who longs to discipline him, it is also very much a play about the social implications of festivity

R.S white - conflict

Twelfth night has sometimes been seen as enacting a struggle between an anti-comic Malvolio and comic Feste, with the latter victorious on the behalf of the forces of festivity

Stanivokvic - conflict between ideas

A cultural shift from chivalric to romantic masculinity

Kiernan Ryan - sir Toby

Sir toby’s misrule is customary of the twelfth night festival

C.L Barber - sir Toby

He lives life at ease, enjoying heritage, celebrates what he has, without having to deserve it

Ian Judge - madness

Twelfth Night also shows the comedy of love which occurs when people turn themselves inside out and almost reach the edge of madness

Charles Spencer - comedy

Twelfth Night is the darkest and most haunting of Shakespeares great comedies, it’s humour constantly shadowed by cruelty and a keen awareness of mortality

Hurworth - class / Sir Toby

Gulling shows itself to be a reversible game since Toby himself is gulled most effectively by Maria

Priestly - Malvolio and comic cruelty

Times change and we are more likely to regard malvolio with some measure of sympathy than was Shakespeare

Stevie Davies - Feste

The fools insight sees straight through the facades of his fellow characters

Dash - women

The two major women characters of twelfth night briefly challenge patterns of patriarchy … although at the play’s end, neither woman achieves her goal

Draper - Viola

In her role as Cesario, she enjoys a freedom of actions which is denied her as a woman

Maslen - gender

It makes it possible to believe there is not such thing as stable normality, where gender is concerned, either in Elizabethan times or in our own

Hodgson - Oliviashe remodels the economic exchange of maidenhood

David Bevington on Malvolio

The enemy of merriment

Bhatkin’s fool

• insist on the right to be “other “ in this world

• Life’s perpetual spy and reflector

• An observer of the quality of person and time

Norton - fools

• Shakespeare used Feste as a menas to debunk the follies and delusion of other characters

Kiernan Ryan - Feste

A linguistic terrorist

Production highlighting homo-eroticism

Lindsay Posners 2001 production for the RSC showed Antonia and Sebastian getting out of bed together

Bradley - Feste

Feste is Shakespeares own satirical mouthpiece

Stephen Greenblatt on Violas disguise

Violas disguise challenges Elizabethan conservatism

Laroque - festive comedy

Shakespeare stood in defence of old holiday pastimes

David Bevington - Merrymaking

Shakespeare comes close to being militant in its defence of merrymaking